Floripes Dornellas de Jesus (9 June 1913 â 9 April 1999), popularly known as "Lola", was a Brazilian Roman Catholic mystic. She is recognized as a Servant of God, following the opening of her cause for beatification in 2005.
Following a fall from a tree in the 1930s that resulted in paraplegia, she is said to have survived for 64 years by nourishing herself exclusively through the Eucharist. Her life was centered on the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and her residence in Rio Pomba has become a notable site for religious pilgrimage.
Born in the city of Mercês, she moved with her family to Rio Pomba around the age of four. Her childhood and adolescence was marked by the common activities of country life, until, in the 1930s, a fall from a jabuticabeira tree caused her to become paraplegic. Since then, in the midst of severe pain, she had gradually begun to reduce her diet. Then, evident alterations were noticed in her body, since she no longer felt hunger or tiredness. For 64 years she is said to have only eaten the Holy Communion.
In the first years in which the phenomenon was observed, thousands of people came to its site, in search of prayers and requests for miracles, even awakening the attention of the press. Until the then Archbishop of Mariana, Don Helvécio Gomes de Oliveira, in 1958, asked her to stop the pilgrimages and leave herself to a more withdrawn life, since her health seemed too weak. She was totally averse to the dissemination of her own person, striving to spread only devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, inspired by the movement of the apostolate of prayer. The work of creating the "Male Prayer Apostolate", which in the city of Rio Pomba, reached the number of 1000 followers, was especially highlighted. Her main request was to make the First Fridays Devotion, dedicated to the Heart of Jesus.
Floripes Dornellas de Jesus was declared a Servant of God on November 30, 2005. Her home, known as SÃÂtio de Lola, is a place of pilgrimage.