Mother General Sister Priscilla Dutra Moreira

Sister Priscilla Dutra Moreira was born on 3 January 1963 in Mantena (Minas Gerais, Brazil). She was baptised on 26 January of the same year with the name Maria Helena Dutra Moreira. She is the daughter of José Moreira Filho and Lusia Dutra Moreira, and grew up in Santa Luzia, a small village in the municipality of Mantenópolis, Espírito Santo Province, Brazil.

She enjoyed a healthy childhood and was an outgoing, engaged child. She loved singing and playing the guitar. She took part in catechesis, youth groups, and as a teenager began serving as a catechist. She attended primary and lower secondary school at Palmerindo Vieira Campos Municipal School in Santa Luzia, and completed her upper secondary studies at Job Pimentel State School in Mantenópolis.

At the age of 19, she entered the Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters of the Lord. She received the religious habit on 21 January 1984; two years later, on 2 February 1986, she made her First Religious Profession, and on 9 January 1993, she was definitively consecrated to God through Perpetual Profession.

In 1986, she was sent to Rome, where she studied Religious Sciences at the Pontifical Antonianum University. Upon returning to Brazil, she later obtained a degree in Education and completed further studies, including a Master's in Educational Institution Management, always believing in the importance of ongoing formation, both religious and professional.

I had the grace of having her as a formator during the novitiate. In fact, as novice mistress in Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais), she guided many young women, forming them through dialogue, freedom, attentive listening, and above all, human development. She also has a vocation for formation within parish life, particularly in the spiritual formation of couples, and she serves as a spiritual assistant in inter-congregational religious groups.

She has also served in Bahia and Bolivia, and in recent years was headmistress of a school in Rio de Janeiro, managing over a thousand students, from nursery to upper secondary level, with the support of around two hundred lay staff. Despite the closure of many religious schools in the city in recent years, she demonstrated outstanding leadership during times of crisis. Not only did the school recover in terms of student numbers, it has now become a reference point for quality education.

She is a woman who shows love and dedication to her consecrated life, endowed with human and spiritual qualities that have always enriched the Congregation, particularly the Brazil/Bolivia Province, of which she has served as councillor more than once.