After a court decision, mother Stella's body arrives in Salvador; the burial will take place on Saturday | Bahia

Mother Stella is deceased at the age of 93 years Thursday, 27 years old, at the INCAR hospital of Santo Antônio de Jesus, also in the state of Bahia, where she had been hospitalized since December 14, when she had been admitted for infection.

Since 2017, Mother Stella lived in the city of Nazareth, located about 210 km from Salvador. She moved from Salvador to this place because of the disagreement between the sons of Saint and his companion, Graziela.

With the death of ialorixá, the courtyard Ax Ax Opô Afonjá will be closed for a year of mourning.In this period, there will be no cults or parties, according to what determines the candomblé tradition each time that an ialorixá or a babalorixá dies.

It is only at the end of next year the terreiro will have a new ialorixá. The substitution will be determined by the orixás, with game of shells. The leadership is entrusted to a woman because Ilê Axé Opó Afonjá is a house of feminine tradition.

Regarded as one of the greatest ialorixás Mother Stella was born May 2, 1925 in Salvador. She was the fourth daughter of Esmeraldo Antigno dos Santos and Thomázia de Azevedo Santos.

At the age of 13, her aunt, who raised her, took her to the land of Mother Aninha, founder of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá. A year later, it was launched in candomblé. In his youth, he always liked to read. She graduated as a nurse, a profession she had been practicing for 30 years. In 1976, at the age of 51, she was chosen by the Orixás to become the new leader of the Terreiro de São Gonçalo do Retiro. Mother Stella was the fifth ialorixa to order Ilê Axé Opó Afonjá.

In 1999, Mother Stella registered the terreiro by the National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage (Iphan).

In 2005, he received an honorary doctorate from the Federal University of Bahia (Ufba). Four years later, he received the same degree from the State University of Bahia. In addition, Mother Stella received the Order of the Knight, the State Government and the Order of Merit, Ministry of Culture, with the commendation Maria Quitéria, of the Salvador City Hall.

A scholar and propagator of African religious beliefs, Mother Stella was the first ialorixá in Brazil to write books and articles on candomblé. In 2013, she was unanimously elected to the Bahia Academy of Letters, where she was named President 33, under the patron of the poet Castro Alves.

The religious, cultural and social leader of his people has always condemned religious syncretism. For the mother of St. Stella of Oxóssi, candomblé is candomblé and Catholicism, Catholicism. He did not agree with the merger between saints and orishas.

Always concerned about preserving black culture, Mother Stella participated in conferences and gave lectures. In Ilê Ax Opô Afonjá, he installed the first open-air museum in a candomblé house, where you can see the clothes and objects used by the mothers of the house and the orixás.

The book "Mother Stella of Oxóssi – Estrela our, the simplest!", Work of the writer Marcos Santana, tells the life of the ialorixá with poetry, testimonials, reviews and badyzes of some of his intellectual productions. The works were launched in 2014, in Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá terreiro.

The book is a collection that combines historical and cultural rescue with texts by several authors such as Edivaldo Boaventura, Muniz Sodro, Antonio Olinto, Jorge Amado, Fernando Coelho, Fr. Arnaldo Lima, Dorival Caymmi, Jorge Portugal, Menininha Gantois back, Shadow of Xango, Marcos Santana and Mother Stella herself.

In 2014, she was also honored by Flica, a literary festival held annually in the city of Cachoeira, in the Recôncavo Baiano. At the same time, he set up the traveling library by adapting a bus to transport books dealing with curiosities concerning all religions. He preached mutual respect and peaceful coexistence among all beliefs so that people could come closer by faith.