Journal of
VOLUME 5 | ISSUE 2
GLOBAL CATHOLICISM SPRING 2021
TRANSFORMATIONS in BRAZILIAN CATHOLICISM
ARTICLES • Marc Roscoe Loustau / Editor’s Introduction • Carlos Alberto Steil and Rodrigo Toniol / Strong Church, Weak Catholicism: Transformations in Brazilian Catholicism • Juliano F. Almeida / Contemporary Brazilian Catholicism and Healing Practices: Notes on Environmentalism and Medicalization • Cecilia L. Mariz, Wânia Amélia Belchior Mesquita, and Michelle Piraciaba Araújo / Young Brazilian Catholics Reaffiliating: A Case Study in the City of Campos, RJ, Brazil • José Rogério Lopes and André Luiz da Silva / Religious Mega-Events and Their Assemblages in Devotional Pilgrimages: The Case of Círio de Nazaré in Belém, Pará State, Brazil
Photo by José Rogério Lopes
2
M A R C R O S C O E L O U S TA U
Transformations in Brazilian Catholicism: Editor’s Introduction
Marc Roscoe Loustau is Managing Editor of the Journal of Global Catholicism and a Catholics & Cultures contributor. As a scholar of religious studies in the context of personal, social, and economic change, his research has focused on Catholicism in Eastern Europe where, after decades of official state atheism, there has been a prominent resurgence of religion in public life. Loustau has taught courses at the College of the Holy Cross on contemporary global Catholicism. He holds a ThD from Harvard Divinity School.
JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
Marc Roscoe Loustau | 3
I
t’s my pleasure to introduce the issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism titled, “Transformations in Brazilian Catholicism.” It is especially gratifying to see this collection published because it emerges from meetings and conversations I had
with the lead author and curator, Carlos Steil, in São Paulo in late 2019.
This Special Issue remained on track through the pandemic that disrupted and
dislocated research projects, not to mention the global suffering it has caused.
The authors were dedicated in writing, translating, and revising their research, coordinating among themselves and with the editorial team under challenging conditions. Dr. Steil, in particular, was instrumental in mobilizing a group of
accomplished Brazilian sociologists and anthropologists of religion to submit articles for this issue, scholars who completed their academic training under his tute-
lage or have collaborated with him in the past. The quality of the assembled articles and the evident creativity they demonstrate in analyzing the changing character of Catholicism in Brazil are a testament to his pedagogical and scholarly skill.
Dr. Steil’s coauthored contribution with Rodrigo Toniol, “Strong Church, Weak
Catholicism: Transformations in Brazilian Catholicism,” stands both as an intro-
duction to this Special Issue and also an effort to answer the impossible: What is the state of the Catholic Church in Brazil? Both Juliano Almeida and Cecilia Mariz, Wania Amélia Belchior Mesquita, and Michelle Piraciaba Araújo explore
the “porosity” of Catholicism in Brazil, which Almeida refers to as its openness to
the circulation of practices and its habit of encompassing modalities of worship. Catholicism’s distinctive practice of organizing mega-events is another parallel
among the articles. Mariz, Mesquita, and Araújo focus on a global event, the World Youth Day held in São Paulo, which José Rogério Lopes and André Luiz da Silva cite as the paradigm of the mega-eventization of faith and a significant influence on the annual festival in Belém (Pará State) called Círio de Nazaré.
My gratitude goes to Mathew Schmalz, the JGC’s Founding Editor, and Thomas
Landy, Director of the Catholics & Cultures program at the College of the Holy Cross. Special thanks also go to Danielle Kane, Associate Director for Commu-
nications, and Pat Hinchliffe, Academic Administrative Assistant at the College’s Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J. Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
4
CARLOS ALBERTO STEIL RODRIGO TONIOL
Strong Church, Weak Catholicism: Transformations in Brazilian Catholicism Carlos Alberto Steil is full Professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and Visiting Professor at the Federal University of São Paulo, and Researcher at National Council for Scientific and Technological Development CNPq. Throughout his academic career he has researched topics such as: pilgrimage, tourism, Catholicism, New Age, spirituality, social movements, religion and politics. His books include O Sertão das Romarias; On the Nature Trail, co-authored with Rodrigo Toniol; and the collections Religião e Globalização; Maria Entre os Vivos; Religiões e Cultura; Caminhos de Santiago no Brasil; Cultura, Percepção e Ambiente; Transnacionalização Religiosa; Religião e Espaço Público, and Entre Trópicos. He holds a PhD in anthropology and masters in theology and philosophy of education. Rodrigo Toniol is full Professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande de Janeiro, Researcher at National Council for Scientific and Technological Development CNPq and
Visiting Researcher at the Utrecht University (Netherlands), University of
California San Diego (USA), and CIESAS (Mexico). He is President of the Association of Social Scientists of the Religion Mercosur and Editor of the Journal Debates do NER. Throughout his academic career he has researched topics such as: health, science, Catholicism, New Age, spirituality, religion and politics. Among his publications are the books Do Espírito na Saúde and On the Nature Trail, co-authored with Carlos Steil; and the collections: Como as Coisas Importam; Conservadorismos, Fascismos e Fundamentalismos; Religião e Materialidade; and Entre Trópicos. He holds a PhD in anthropology.
JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
Carlos Alberto Steil and Rodrigo Toniol | 5
A
simple glance at the Brazilian religious landscape reveals significant changes over recent years, both in the rural world and the urban
peripheries—where little chapels by the roadside have given way to
small churches of diverse Pentecostal denominations—and in the centers of the
metropolises where Catholic cathedrals compete in ostentatiousness with new and
modern neo-Pentecostal churches. While this visual impression is reinforced on a
daily basis by the presence of Evangelicals in public controversies, affording them a prominent place in politics and the media, it also highlights the loss of the hegemony maintained by Catholicism over Brazilian society and culture for five hun-
dred years. This has become increasingly visible in the statistical data on religions produced by the decennial population censuses, which show a constant decline in
the number of the Brazilian population identifying as Catholic. The table below
presents this percentage reduction in Catholics compared to the two groups that have grown most in Brazil: Evangelicals and those with no religion. Catholics
Evangelicals No Religion
1980
1991
2000
2010
4%
9%
15%
22%
89% 1%
84%
4.8%
74% 7%
64% 8%
Source: IBGE (Census 1980/1991/2000/2010)1
Nevertheless, this change in landscape, as well as the steady decline in numbers of
Catholics, contrasts with the Catholic Church’s ecclesiastical growth. As we aim to show in this text, this points to an inverse relationship between the demographic
shrinkage of the Catholic population and the institutional strengthening of the
Catholic Church. This strengthening is evident in both the marked increase in parishes and priests over recent decades, and the vitality of the mass religious manifestations held in public space, where Catholics and Evangelicals vie for power.
As well as enabling the emergence of Evangelical churches and those with “no religion” in the public sphere, Catholicism’s loss of numerical hegemony also
engendered a different religious system to take root in the country, one based
on pluralism and competition. This, in turn, required the Catholic Church to 1
Data made available from the IBGE at http://www.ibge.gov.br/, accessed April 15, 2020.
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6 | Strong Church, Weak Catholicism: Transformations in Brazilian Catholicism
reformulate and strengthen itself to be able to join this new arena in which the
rules of the game were no longer those defined by Catholicism as the official religion of the Brazilian nation. This new game demands the use of modern resources
by religious actors, such as a presence in mass communications media, political
articulation in defense of their interests and their causes in government structures, and the promotion of charismatic leaders capable of mobilizing large crowds. In
other words, the change observed in the Catholic Church is not simply the result of a rational strategy, conceived as part of a conscious ecclesiastical project de-
signed by the church hierarchy. Rather it emerges as a movement that accompanies the loss of horizontal diffusion and ideological domination that Catholicism once
exerted in Brazilian culture. For several centuries until the 1960s, being Catholic and being Brazilian were identities that blurred into each other, although other
religious practices like those of indigenous and Afro-Brazilian traditions subsisted and became syncretized within Catholicism.
Our objective in this text is to show the quickening decline in the number of
Catholics in Brazilian society over recent decades, exploring the statistical evidence
for this claim. Along with other social scientists who have worked with the data from the ten-year censuses, we aim to situate the numerical shrinkage in Catholics among the Brazilian population within a wider context of cultural and social
changes.2 In dialogue with these analyses, we develop a long-term anthropological
interpretation, focusing on the relationship between Catholicism and the country’s culture and modernization. In other words, moving beyond statistical analysis and
the mapping of religious affiliation in Brazil, we seek to comprehend the impact that the reduction in the number of Catholics—which began in 1872, in a very
subtle form, and has accelerated from 1980 on—is having on Catholicism as one of 2
Pierre Sanchis, “O Repto Pentecostal à 'Cultura Católico-Brasileira,'" Revista de Antropologia (1994): 145-181. Faustino Teixeira, “Faces do Catolicismo Brasileiro Contemporâneo,” Revista USP 67 (2005): 14-23, https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2316-9036.v0i67p14-23. Carlos Alberto Steil and Rodrigo Ferreira Toniol, “O Catolicismo e a Igreja Católica no Brasil à Luz dos Dados Sobre Religião no Censo de 2010,” Debates do NER 14, no. 24 (July 2013): 223-243. Ricardo Mariano, “Mudanças no Campo Religioso Brasileiro no Censo 2010,” Debates do NER 2 no. 24 (2013): 119-137, https://doi.org/10.22456/1982-8136.43696. José Eustáquio Alves, et al., “Distribuição Espacial da Transição Religiosa no Brasil,” Tempo Social 29, no. 2 (2017): 215-242, https://doi. org/10.11606/0103-2070.ts.2017.112180. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
Carlos Alberto Steil and Rodrigo Toniol | 7
the core dimensions shaping Brazilian culture.3 At the same time it’s important to Vítor Meireles, "The First Mass in Brazil," 1860, oil
remark that our main focus is to provide data as a basis to seriously take on the de- on canvas. bates about Brazilian Catholicism. After all, as we suggested, the constant decline in the number of people identifying as Catholics in Brazil points to a longer-term cultural process operating beyond the Catholic Church itself.
CATHOLICISM IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD AND DURING THE EMPIRE Catholicism in Brazil merges with the country’s origin and historical formation. The founding act, which marks the beginning of Portuguese conquest and occu-
pation of the territory, was the celebration of the first Mass, immortalized in the painting by Vítor Meireles (1860), reproduced in thousands of copies as an icon of European Discovery.4 From this beginning, Catholicism composed the Brazilian
landscape through the demarcation of both social time and public space. In relation
to time, the calendar, which to a large extent still regulates social life and collective events today, is fundamentally defined by religious festivals, which overlap with
civic dates. As for space, the landscape of Brazilian cities, especially those founded during the colonial period, is marked by baroque-style Catholic churches, whose 3
4
Taking into account data released by IBGE and processed by CPS/FGV, comparison of the years 1872, 1880, 1890, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1991, 2000, 2003 and 2009 shows declines in the participation of Catholics in the Brazilian population for each interval. http://www.cps.fgv.br/cps/bd/rel3/REN_texto_FGV_CPS_Neri.pdf, accessed April 15, 2020. The official history records the arrival of the Portuguese in Brazil on April 21, 1500.
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8 | Strong Church, Weak Catholicism: Transformations in Brazilian Catholicism
impressive design and wealth have made them tourist sites. Meanwhile, the rural
landscape is punctuated by the little roadside chapels, which testify to the presence of Catholicism in everyday life, and the sanctuaries, which during special moments of the year attract thousands of pilgrims to their festivals.
Catholicism not only transformed the landscape of the New World, it also impreg-
nated the culture of the nascent Brazilian nation, shaping its institutions, family life, labor relations, forms of leisure, festivals and civic rituals, arts and the organization of public space.5 The sacraments of baptisms and weddings, along with funeral
rites, were public acts that bestowed citizenship to subjects, demarcating the key moments of their existence. As Caio Prado Jr. observed, the individual during this
era “participates in the religious acts and ceremonies with the same naturalness and conviction as any other banal and everyday occurrence of their earthly existence
[…]. There were disbelievers and skeptics, but the incredulity of the latter was limited to the small, closed and insulated circles of masons and freethinkers who carefully conceal their disbelief.”6 In organizational terms, Catholicism was instituted
in Brazil as an official religion of the State, governed by the Regime do Padroado.7 Through this legal instrument, the Catholic Church delegated to the colonial
Portuguese State and the emperors of Brazil after independence (1822) “the 5
6 7
One of the most important institutions of Catholicism with substantial impacts on social life is the compadrio, co-godparenting, which operated through the double baptism of children. Home baptism, which consolidated solidarity within the working classes, and church baptism, which instituted moral bonds of loyalty and protection between the workers and owners of the big plantations. For a deeper exploration of this topic, see Duglas Teixeira Monteiro, Os Errantes do Novo Século: Um Estudo Sobre o Surto Milenarista do Contestado (São Paulo: Livraria Duas Cidades, 1974) and Pedro Ribeiro de Oliveira, Religião e Dominação de Classe: Gênese, Estrutura e Função do Catolicismo Romanizado no Brasil (Vozes, 1985). Caio Prado, Jr., Formação Econômica do Brasil Contemporâneo (São Paulo, 1977). This right of Padroado (patronage) was based on a series of papal documents, three of which have particular importance. The first is the bull Romanus Pontifex (1455), issued by Pope Nicholas V, which granted the King of Portugal the right to dispatch missionaries and found churches, monasteries and other pious places in the new overseas territories. The following year, Pope Callixtus III promulgated the bull Inter Coetera (1456) which confirmed the provisions of his predecessor and granted spiritual jurisdiction to Infante Dom Henrique, King of Portugal. This jurisdiction was subsequently passed to members of the royal family through the bull Praeclara Charissimi (1551). Together these defined the legal framework of the Padroado, by which the kings of Portugal became responsible for the expansion, implantation and administration of the Catholic religion in the overseas territories. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
Carlos Alberto Steil and Rodrigo Toniol | 9
decision on the creation of dioceses and parishes, the establishment of religious
orders and the founding of convents, nomination for ecclesiastical posts, and ap-
proval of ecclesiastical documents, including papal documents.”8 As a counterpart,
it was the State’s responsibility to maintain the clergy and the religious orders. This power of the State, however, while curbing Rome’s ecclesiastical and clerical
control over the organization of religion, also enabled the emergence of lay and devotional Catholicism, disseminated by non-clerical religious actors.9
Implemented by lay members of the church, organized in brotherhoods, sisterhoods and associations that could dispense with the clergy in their everyday activ-
ities, Catholicism thus became established at the margins of the Catholic Church. In the rural context, where the large majority of the population lived, religious life occurred within the houses of families, who gathered around domestic altars or in the little chapels by the roadsides, where a rezador presided over the worship of
the patron saints with the local population. On special occasions, once or twice a year, pilgrimages would be made to sanctuaries in the region, run by monks and
devout lay worshipers (beatos), recognized for their holiness and life of reclusion and penitence.
In the cities, the organization of religious life was under the responsibility of the brotherhoods and sisterhoods, formed by lay members, who ran the churches by
now proliferating in the urban centers. The logic of organization was not the ter-
ritorial division into parishes, or the optional communities of belief formed by congregations, but instituted through the division of social structure, which shaped
the colonial society and monarchical regime implanted in the country after inde-
pendence. Through its priests, the Catholic Church was responsible for dispensing
the sacraments on the occasion of the annual festivals for the local patron saints 8 9
Oliveira, Religião e Dominação de Classe. Covering a territory of 8.5 million km2 until 1854, the Roman Catholic Church had just twelve dioceses across the entire country. From 1890 with the Republic (1889) and the separation between Church and State, the process of creating dioceses quickened with seventy-eight new dioceses created in forty years. See Eduardo Hoornaert, A Igreja no Brasil-Colônia: 1550-1800, Vol. 45 (Editora Brasiliense, 1984). Today the Roman Catholic Church has 2,014 dioceses and 10,720 parishes. Steil and Toniol, “O Catolicismo,” 223-243.
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10 | Strong Church, Weak Catholicism: Transformations in Brazilian Catholicism
and the sanctuaries, especially baptisms and weddings, confirming the religious
code and Catholic morality. This produced a relation of complementarity between
Catholicism—which ensured its reproduction through the apparatus of worship, maintained by non-clerical institutions with deep roots in the local culture—and
the Catholic Church, which conferred a sense of unity (ecclesia) and common belonging via the sacraments.
ROMAN CATHOLICISM IN BRAZIL The context described above started to change from the second half of the nine-
teenth century with the emergence of the reformist movement. This eventually led to a structural division between the Catholicism practiced by the mass of wor-
shipers and Roman Catholicism. The latter was introduced into the country with the arrival of the modern religious orders and congregations from Europe, which
created the conditions for the restructuring of Catholicism.10 Initiated during the pontificate of Pius IX (1846-1978), this movement became global in reach and
arrived in the New World. Its principal objective was to submit local forms of
Catholicism to the institutional control of the Roman Curia. In Brazil, this pro-
voked a significant conflict between the Church and the monarchical government, culminating in the imprisonment of two bishops who refused to submit to the
rulings of the Emperor, whose powers had been conferred by the Padroado regime. This anticipated a rupture between the Catholic Church and the State that would become official with the Proclamation of the Republic in 1889.11
10 The notion of the Romanization of Brazilian Catholicism was first suggested by Roger Bastide and later developed by Ralph Della Cava in the book Miracle at Joaseiro and Pedro Ribeiro de Oliveira. Ralph Della Cava, Miracle at Joaseiro (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970). Oliveira, Religião e Dominação de Classe. 11 The religious conflict in question took place in the 1870s, a few years before the separation between the Catholic Church and the Brazilian state. The main actors on the Catholic Church’s side were the reformist bishops Dom Vital Gonçalves de Oliveira and Dom Macedo Costa. The origins of the crisis lay in the interdictions imposed by the prelates on the presence of masons in religious institutions, like the brotherhoods and sisterhoods, and the Emperor’s ban on the divulgation and implementation of papal resolutions in Brazil. The conflict resulted in the imprisonment of the bishops and their condemnation to forced labor. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
Carlos Alberto Steil and Rodrigo Toniol | 11
As a strategy of social legitimation, the reformist movement invested in the mor-
al and theological formation of the clergy and the creation of male and female religious orders and congregations. The latter were growing rapidly in Europe at this time, providing an intense flow of missionaries to the Americas. Along with
these missionaries arrived new forms of devotion, which overlapped with tradi-
tional forms, while dioceses and parishes were also created throughout the national territory, submitting Catholicism to the control of the clergy.12 Seminaries were
instituted in the form of boarding schools, run by European priests, to train a new clergy capable of replacing the brotherhoods and sisterhoods in the administration
of churches in the towns and cities, and the monks and beatos in the running of the pilgrimage sanctuaries. Future bishops began to be trained in Rome, in the pontifical universities recognized by the orthodoxy. As well as the internal reform of the
institutional apparatus, the Romanizing project aimed to gain public legitimacy
through the creation of colleges and universities for training a literate middle class, as well as hospitals, old people’s homes and orphanages.
This positive agenda, however, coexisted with a series of negative actions, such as
combating the forms of worship and rituals of traditional popular Catholicism. The creation of the dioceses and parishes, for example, resulted in intense conflicts with
the brotherhoods and sisterhoods in the urban centers.13 In the outback regions, or sertões, the conflict unfolded primarily in the sanctuaries—the majority of them
run by beatos and lay monks—and in the local chapels, maintained by rezadores
(prayer leaders).14 These conflicts, though, did not immediately cause any rupture 12 The main devotion brought by these missionaries was worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The devotions of Our Lady, especially those associated with the modern apparitions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as the founding saints or members of new religious orders and congregations, also became widespread, very often overlapping with traditional devotions. 13 As Pedro Ribeiro de Oliveira writes, “The brotherhoods and sisterhoods were associations of laypeople recognized by ecclesiastical and civil law. Their statutes had royal and ecclesiastical approval, recognizing them as legal entities independent of ecclesiastical authority for their internal government and their everyday affairs,” Oliveira, Religião e Dominação de Classe, 130. 14 Popular Catholic worship in the field occurred primarily in three spaces: the domestic oratories where the family mother or father would preside over the prayers, litanies and songs; the chapels, operating at a local level, run by the rezadeiras or rezadores, and built not to shelter altars or Masses but to house the image of the worshiped saint; and the sanctuaries, presided over by monks and beatos, which operated at a regional or even national level. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
12 | Strong Church, Weak Catholicism: Transformations in Brazilian Catholicism
between the Catholic Church and the Catholic masses. In part this was due to the institution’s interest in maintaining the connection with the country’s Catholic majority, since through this connection the Catholic Church could present itself to
society as the voice of the Brazilian people, almost entirely Catholic, and thus claim privileges in a social context of low institutionality and inchoate political organiza-
tion.15 This ambivalence largely explains the position of the Romanizing clergy in relation to the Catholicism of the people, which oscillates between its recognition as a cultural value and combating the traditional devotions and rituals, seen as superstitions to be eradicated through catechesis and evangelization.16
For many decades, therefore, the Catholic Church believed that the reproduction of Catholicism was something that would take place “naturally” as a consequence
of Catholic culture and tradition, rooted in the people’s soul. If there was any problem with Catholicism, it was related to the “religious ignorance of the people” and
the lack of clerics capable of enabling the mass of Catholics to receive the dogmas of the Church through catechesis, internalizing its values and moral code in the conscience of the faithful. Hence, the reduction in the number of people identi-
fying as Catholics, registered in each new census, was explained by the fact that evangelization and catechesis were insufficiently organized or strong enough for the people to be reached by the “true religion” over which the institution claimed legitimacy.
Our argument runs counter to the Enlightenment interpretation of the reformist clergy, which explained the decline in the number of Catholics by the lack of an
effective response from the institution to the challenges of evangelization, associ-
ated with the inadequate number of priests to meet the religious demands of the 15 The ambiguity of the clergy in relation to the followers of popular Catholicism appears, for example, in the ethnography of Rubem César Fernandes on the Sanctuary of Our Lady Aparecida, in the state of São Paulo, the Southeast of Brazil. He writes that “addressing the state authorities, the priests of the sanctuary represented the true nation, materialized in the Mass of the faithful; when it came to the pilgrims, however, they represented foreign missionaries,” Rubem César Fernandes, Romarias da Paixão (Rocco, 1994), 109. 16 According to the historian Oscar Beozzo, the ideology of the reformist bishops was founded on the notion of purifying popular Catholicism of its abuses and superstitions. Jose Oscar Beozzo, “Irmandades, Santuários, Capelinhas de Beira de Estrada,” Revista Eclesiástica Brasileira 37, no. 148 (1977): 753. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
Carlos Alberto Steil and Rodrigo Toniol | 13
population. Contrary to this interpretation, we believe that there was a structural problem at the level of the reproduction of Catholic culture, which no longer had
the resources and instruments available to it before the modernization of Brazilian society. A situation attributable to the change in the religious demands of
individuals, who underwent a process of increasing rationalization, and also to the secularization of many of the local religious organizations, which began to operate as folkloric, touristic or even ethnic and social movements.
THE DATA AND ITS INTERPRETATION In the following pages, we compare data from the 2010 Census—produced by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE)—with data from re-
search undertaken by the Centre for Religious Statistics and Social Investigation (CERIS). Comparing these two sources of data, we show that the decline in the
number of Catholics coincides with the growth of the Catholic Church. The latter
is evinced by the continual increase in the number of dioceses, parishes and priests. The table below on the evolution in the number of dioceses17 demonstrates this
institutional growth, while also revealing the sudden shift that occurred during the period when Romanization was being implemented. 1551 Creation of
dioceses Total
1676 -
1850 -
1890 -
1930 -
1
1677 3
1719 -
1
4
9
11
77
278
1745 5
1745 3
1930 68
2010 271
Source: Table produced by the authors
In the opposite direction, the sequence of data produced by the IBGE censuses shows a continual and progressive decline in the number of Catholics in Brazil.
17 This figure takes into account all ecclesiastical divisions, including 217 dioceses, 45 archdioceses, 3 eparchies, 8 prelacies, 1 exarchy, 1 ordinariate for the followers of the Eastern Rite without their own ordinary, 1 military ordinariate, 1 personal apostolic administration and 1 archeparchy. Source: http://www.osaopaulo.org.br/noticias/a-igreja-no-brasil-conclui-2019-com-481-bispos-enove-dioceses-vacantes, accessed April 15, 2020. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
14 | Strong Church, Weak Catholicism: Transformations in Brazilian Catholicism
SHARE OF CATHOLICS IN BRAZIL’S POPULATION COMPARED TO OTHER RELIGIONS
Source: Graph produced using data and microdata made available by the IBGE.
If we take as reference points the censuses from 1991, 2000 and 2010, we can note a continual reduction in the Catholic population in the country of almost
10% per decade. However, although the drop in the number of Catholics has been systematic since 1872, it was only in the 2010 Census that the absolute number of
Catholics fell, declining from 125.5 million people in 2000 to 123.3 million in 2010, a loss of 2.2 million worshipers.
Our argument that the crisis revealed in the census figures represents a crisis of Catholicism, not of the Catholic Church, becomes clearer when we compare the
data above with the indicators relating to the growth in the number of parishes and
priests in the country. Taking as a starting point the mid-1990s, we can observe that the number of parishes rose from 7,786 to 10,720, this is an increase of almost
40% in 16 years. The increase in the number of priests is even more striking. From
the 1980s to 2010, the number of priests rose from 12,688 to 22,119, an increase of more than 60%.
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Carlos Alberto Steil and Rodrigo Toniol | 15
CATHOLIC POPULATION IN ABSOLUTE NUMBERS
Year
Catholic population
Brazilian population
1970
85,678,714
93,139,037
1980
105,912,408
119,002,706
1991
121,865,144
146,825,475
2000
124,972,189
169,799,170
2010
123,213,320
184,184,264
Source: Graph and table produced using data and microdata made available by IBGE
PARISHES IN BRAZIL Year
Parishes
1994
7,786
1999
8,602
2004
9,410
2010
10,720
2015
11,011
Source: Graph and table produced using data and microdata made available by CERIS
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16 | Strong Church, Weak Catholicism: Transformations in Brazilian Catholicism
PRIESTS IN BRAZIL
Year
Priests
1970
13,092
1980
12,688
1990
14,198
2000
16,772
2010
22,119
2018
27,300
Source: Graph and table produced using data and microdata made available by CERIS
For many years, the Catholic Church invested in vocational recruitment, in train-
ing priests and in the structuring and multiplication of parishes in the expectation that this institutional strategy would be capable not only of strengthening and
enhancing Catholicism’s presence in society, but also of staunching the migration
of Catholics to other religions or to the contingent of those with no religion. Com-
paring the data from the IBGE censuses with the CERIS data, though, shows that any cause-effect relationship between the growth of the clergy and the Catholic
population in Brazil is actually nonexistent. While the number of priests becomes the highest in the entire history of Catholicism in the country, the absolute number of Catholics dropped for the first time since the series of data on religion be-
gan to be included in the censuses. In sum, this confirms an argument very often
JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
Carlos Alberto Steil and Rodrigo Toniol | 17
repeated in the sociological literature on traditional popular Catholicism since the
1970s, namely that the reproduction of Catholicism depended fundamentally on
lay members rather than the clergy.18 As a competitive and diversified religious
field of options became established in the popular sphere, the reproduction of these agents, as well as the maintenance of Catholicism as a founding element of cultural identity, experienced a crisis.
CATHOLICS PER PRIEST
The graph on the right shows the ratio of inhabitants per priest in Brazil from the
1970s, covering the population as a whole, both Catholics and non-Catholic. We
can observe that since 1980 the number of priests per inhabitant has been rising. The first graph, though, considers only the proportion of priests and Catholics. This makes the difference even clearer, given that the number of Catholics has been declining while the Brazilian population has increased in absolute terms. Thus, while there had been 8,347 Catholics per priest in 1980, the ration had fallen to 5,570 per
priest by 2010. This situation is also confirmed when we observe the data relating
in the first graph to the inhabitant-priest ratio in 2018. Even with the significant
increase in the Brazilian population over the last five decades, the number of priests 18 Pedro Ribeiro de Oliveira, “Catolicismo Popular e Romanização do Catolicismo Brasileiro,” Revista Eclesiástica Brasileira 36, no. 141 (1976): 131-141.Oliveira, Religião e Dominação de Classe. Beozzo, “Irmandades.” Riolando Azzi, “A Visão do Paraíso na Sociedade Colonial Luso-Brasileira.” Perspectiva Teológica 23, no. 59 (1991). Rubem César Fernandes, Os Cavaleiros do Bom Jesus: Uma Introdução às Religões Populares, Vol. 7 (Brasiliense, 1982). VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
18 | Strong Church, Weak Catholicism: Transformations in Brazilian Catholicism
in 2018 ensured that this ratio remained very close to the level seen in the 1970s. In other words, even though today there are around 35% fewer Catholics in Brazil, the proportion of priests per Brazilian is the same as in the 1970s.19 Without doubt, therefore, it is not the lack of pastors that explains the scattering of the Catholic flock. Our intention is not to claim the existence of a cause-effect relationship, but only to underline that the increase in priests coincides with the shrinkage of the
Catholic population and Catholicism. This points to a trajectory in which Catholicism tends to become the size of the Catholic Church in the country.20
Next, we present a sequence of three graphs on the decline in the number of nuns
and its relationship to the number of priests. In our evaluation, this adds another
indicative feature of the institutional and clerical growth of the Catholic Church: its machismo. The Catholic Church in Brazil, in its upper echelons and at its inter-
mediary and grassroots levels, is assuming an increasingly masculine profile. This
contrasts with the female hegemony throughout the period of Romanization when the number of nuns was always numerically higher than the number of priests. As shown by the sociological analyses of religious congregations in Brazil, nuns played
a decisive role in the modernization of Catholicism, through works in the field of
education and healthcare—colleges and hospitals—and through the catechesis of children and, more recently, the implementation and maintenance of ecclesial base communities.21 Based on our field research over the last few decades, we can assert fairly confidently that the secularization of the education and healthcare systems—
19 The data used to estimate the Brazilian population in 2018 was obtained from the IBGE’s projections. 20 In this text we are discussing the institutional strengthening of the Catholic Church. We are not comparing the proportionality between the increases in the general and religious populations, therefore. Even so, it is worth stressing that such a comparison only corroborates our argument, given that while the country’s population grew by 101% between 1970 and 2010, the number of priests rose by 108% over the same period. 21 Cecília Mariz and Maria das Dores Campos Machado, “Mulheres e Práticas Religiosas–um Estudo Comparativo das CEBS e Comunidades Carismáticas e Pentecostais,” Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais 34 (1997). Paula Leonardi, “Congregações Católicas e Educação: O Caso da Sagrada Família de Bordeaux,” Revista Brasileira de História da Educação 11, no. 2 (2011): 103-129. Ivan A. Manoel, “O Início da Educação Católica Feminina no Brasil (1859-1919): Os Colégios das ‘Freiras Francesas,’” Páginas de Educación 5, no. 1 (2012): 115-134. Maurício de Aquino, “A Diáspora das Congregações Femininas Portuguesas para o Brasil no Início do Século XX: Política, Religião, Gênero,” Cadernos Pagu 42 (2014): 393-415, https://doi.org/10.1590/0104-8333201400420393. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
Carlos Alberto Steil and Rodrigo Toniol | 19
which began to be taken over by the State from the 1970s, along with the loss of Catholicism’s hegemony in the popular sphere—contributed significantly to the decline in the number of female religious vocations in the country.
ECCLESIASTICAL STRUCTURE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN BRAZIL
NUNS IN BRAZIL
NUN-PRIEST RATIO
Source: Graphs produced using data and microdata made available by CERIS.
As we can observe in the graph of the ecclesiastical structure in Brazil, therefore, over an interval of twenty years (1990 to 2010), we can observe a growth in the
number of parishes and clergy (priests and deacons) while the number of nuns de-
clined. In other words, while the number of male agents has increased, the number of female agents decreased. Meanwhile the graph containing the figures relating to VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
20 | Strong Church, Weak Catholicism: Transformations in Brazilian Catholicism
nuns shows that the decline has only occurred since the 1970s. Finally, the graph
displaying the nun-priests ratio in Brazil shows the sharp fall in this proportion in
the interval of four decades, dropping from 3.1 nuns per priest in 1970 to 1.5 nuns per priest in 2010. What we can observe based on this set of graphs, therefore, is a clear tendency towards the masculinization of the Catholic Church’s ecclesiastical structure.
Although the purpose of this text has not been to discuss gender questions as part of the crisis of Catholicism, as can be seen, these nonetheless become apparent
when we interpret the statistical data. We could state, therefore, that Catholicism cannot respond to its crisis without taking into account the gender issues that emerge so explicitly in the context of the apparent institutional strengthening of
the Church. Our hypothesis is that this characteristic of the Catholic Church’s institutional configuration may affect the shaping of Catholicism as a cultural
movement, suggesting that the decline in nuns may have been accompanied by a migration of women away from Catholicism. If this is confirmed, as the institution becomes more clerical, so Catholicism will become more masculine.
THE CRISIS OF CATHOLICISM AS A PROCESS OF DETRADITIONALIZATION For many years, the Catholic Church interpreted the crisis in Catholicism, evident in the decline in the number of Catholics in the Brazilian population, as an insti-
tutional problem. The idea that it actually represents a structural crisis, situated in the domain of culture, that extends far beyond the institution thus appears little
reflected in the pastoral concerns and proposals of the Catholic Church’s leaders. Having explored this question from a social scientific perspective, therefore, in this
conclusion we offer some brief remarks on the responses that the Catholic Church has given to the problem.
One first response, which began with the movement of Romanization and has lasted until the present, is determined by an Enlightenment view of religion, in other words, sharing a modern concept of religion defined by the idea of conscious
and explicit belonging to an exclusive community of belief, the Catholic hierarchy
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Carlos Alberto Steil and Rodrigo Toniol | 21
has invested its efforts for decades in the expansion and improvement of the means of evangelization and catechesis, seeking to reach out to those who still recognize
themselves as Catholics, but who do not frequent the weekly Masses and are not
active in the parish community. As we saw in the development of our argument, this strategy has been successful in strengthening the Catholic Church institution-
ally, but has proven completely ineffective in halting the drop in the number of people who, when replying to the question about religion in the census, no longer identify as Catholics.
From the 1970s to the 1990s, another possible response for the Catholic Church
loomed on the horizon: the creation of the Ecclesial Base Communities (EBCs). The Catholic hierarchy, stirred into action by the repercussions of the Second Vat-
ican Council and the Episcopal Conferences of Medellin and Puebla, saw in the
EBCs a possibility for structural insertion in the popular sphere, establishing the conditions for free and conscious adherence to the institution among those migrating in ever increasing numbers to Pentecostal Evangelical churches.22 Mobi-
lized by the Evangelical values of justice and the “option for the poor,” as well as by the modern values of human rights, part of the hierarchy, advised by liberation
theologists, positioned itself alongside the vast majority formed by the country’s
impoverished population, as well as the social movements that fought against the
oppression, torture and censorship imposed by the military regime that had seized power in 1964 through a coup d’etat. The EBCs thus became a space where poor people articulated their religious experience with social and political activism. This
response, centered on raising awareness and political mobilization, allowed the
Catholic Church to claim a place in the array of left-wing forces, dissociating itself from a past marked by collusion with the ruling classes. However, with the return
of the democratic regime at the end of the 1980s and the rise of popular governments, the EBCs lost their heightened political role and their social visibility. Many
of their leaders began to work directly in the State’s structures and in class orga-
nizations and lay movements among civil society. On the other hand, the working 22 Carlos Alberto Steil, “A Igreja dos Pobres: Da Secularização à Mística,” Religião e Sociedade 19, no. 2 (1999): 61-76.
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22 | Strong Church, Weak Catholicism: Transformations in Brazilian Catholicism
classes, as well as a substantial contingent of the emergent middle class, instituted
as reflective and free individuals, discovered an affinity between the Evangelical religions and the core set of cultural principles and values that had spread with the
modernization of society, eroding a Catholic tradition that had been hegemonic in Brazil until the mid-twentieth century. This laid the foundations for the emergence and multiplication of Evangelical groups and Pentecostal churches on the peripheries of the country’s large urban centers and in more remote areas. At the end of this long process of modernization, it can be stated that the option for the poor has been more recurrent and extensive for Evangelical religions than for the
Catholic Church, whether through membership of the latter’s parish churches or among the EBCs.
The Catholic Church’s third response to the migration of Catholics has involved
a degree of imitation with the institution incorporating the Evangelical Pentecostal model through the Charismatic Catholic Movement. Although this move-
ment had its origins abroad and is indeed global in scale, it has operated in Brazil as a counterpoint to liberation Catholicism and as an alternative path for those migrating away from Catholicism. In the mid-1990s, the Charismatic Catholics
in Brazil were 3.8% of the population (four million people), according to sam-
ple-based research coordinated by the sociologists Reginaldo Prandi and Flávio Pierucci.23 However, this figure seems fairly modest given the visibility that the
movement has maintained in the media and the crowds it has managed to draw in
public spaces. Acting as a movement transversal to the Church’s institutional space, the Charismatic Catholics are organized in groups autonomous from the ecclesial
structure, formed and run by clerics and laypersons. These groups are owners of media outlets like radio stations, television channels, publishing houses, national
newspapers and promoters of events. Generally critical of the left-wing political stances of the EBCs, the Charismatic Catholics have aligned with the Evangelicals
and assumed conservative positions in the State’s power structures and in public 23 The research was conducted in 1994 by the Folha de São Paulo, a national newspaper. Based on sampling, it included some questions on religious belonging, frequency of religious activities, and participation in religious movements. Pierucci, Antônio Flávio. “‘Bye Bye, Brasil’: O Declínio das Religiões Tradicionais no Censo 2000.” Estudos Avançados 18, no. 52 (2004): 17-28. https://doi. org/10.1590/S0103-40142004000300003. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
Carlos Alberto Steil and Rodrigo Toniol | 23
controversies, especially in relation to gender issues and the campaign against the legalization of abortion in the country. Although it functions as an option for many Catholics who perhaps would otherwise cease to identify as Catholics, the Catho-
lic Charismatic Movement has not managed to staunch the flow of Catholics who increasingly swell the ranks of Brazil’s Evangelical churches. Its most significant
contribution seems to have been to strengthen the institution and make it more plural by incorporating and legitimizing a charismatic form of being Catholic into
the Romanized and liberation model. In sum, the Catholic Church’s responses to the crisis in Catholicism have not succeeded in renewing the tie of complementarity between the institution and the Catholic populace. Instead, its responses have
strengthened the Church institutionally, making Catholicism increasingly a reli-
gion of the few. In other words, in the modern context in which the religious field is diversifying, the model of mass religion, once configured as a tradition, embed-
ded in the culture and passed from generation to generation as a legacy left by the
parents, is no longer plausible. This leads us to think that the crisis in Catholicism is less a question of the migration of its worshipers and more a problem of cultural
transmission. Beyond Catholicism, a process of detraditionalization is under way, which requires people to make a reflexive choice in the face of the sheer diversity of
options with which they are presented in a context of religious pluralism. And, in this setting, the Catholic Church ceases to be “the religion of everyone,” becoming merely “the religion of the few.” Of those who choose to engage in a community
of faith, assuming an exclusive Catholic identity, faced with other religious groups competing with one another to save souls.
CONCLUSION The interpretation of the data proposed thus far in our discussion has associated the crisis in Catholicism with a broader process of cultural change that has hin-
dered its transmission through the path of tradition. This is a crisis taking place in
other countries with a Catholic tradition too. In the Brazilian context, though, it is imbued with certain particularities to which we have called attention. A comparison with Catholic Europe allows us to situate Brazil within the broader crisis in world Catholicism, at the same time as highlighting the specific nature of the crisis
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24 | Strong Church, Weak Catholicism: Transformations in Brazilian Catholicism
faced by Brazilian Catholicism. Taking as a comparison the crisis experienced by Catholicism in France, we can recognize the same movement under way in both
national contexts, a process that Alphonse Dupront called detraditionalization.24
Philippe Portier, meanwhile, in a more recent article, conceives of a desubstantial-
ization of Catholic civilization as a key to interpreting the transformations of the religious sphere in France. In the view of this author, it involves “a double crisis that simultaneously affects Catholicism’s capacity for internal attraction and its
external influence.”25 In the reading of Otávio Velho, these concepts acquire another meaning when applied to Brazilian Catholicism, where detraditionalization or
desubstantialization indicate “less a break in tradition and more a reflexivity and consequent loss of any automatic alignment with tradition.”26
A glance at the figures from the census on religion in Brazil and France reveals points of convergence and divergence in the process of Catholic migration and the
reconfiguration of the religious field in each country.27 Among the shared elements, we can identify the accelerating decline in the number of people calling themselves
Catholic. This allows us to speak of a crisis in the transmission of Catholicism at a cultural level in both national contexts, especially within families and associations that were important epicenters for the diffusion of Catholic values within France
and in its missionized colonial territories. But while in France the crisis in Catholicism has coincided with the crisis in the Catholic Church, expressed in the
reduction in priestly and religious vocations, in Brazil the crisis in Catholicism, 24 Alphonse Dupront, Puissances et Latences de la Religion Catholique (Gallimard, 1993). 25 Philippe Portier, “Les mutations,” 196. 26 Otávio Velho, “Globalização: Antropologia e Religião,” Mana 3, no. 1 (1997): 154, https://doi. org/10.1590/S0104-93131997000100005. 27 In the 1950s and 1960s, the statistical data on religion in France is not very different from what we find in Brazil. In 1952, 90% of the French population identified as Catholic, while in 1981 the percentage had already fallen to 70%, and in 2008 to 42%. The differences appear first in relation to age: in France the older generations are clearly more Catholic than the younger generations, which is not observed in Brazil. Second in relation to where they live: French Catholics are more strongly present in the rural world, while in Brazil they are distributed more evenly between rural and urban regions. And third in relation to sex: in France there is a predominance of women among Catholics, unlike Brazil where men form the majority of the Catholic population. Philippe Portier, “Les Mutations du Religieux dans la France Contemporaine,” Social Compass 59, no. 2 (2012): 196, https://doi.org/10.1177/0037768612440961. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
Carlos Alberto Steil and Rodrigo Toniol | 25
as we have shown above, has produced neither a reduction in vocations nor an institutional retraction of the Catholic Church in society.
Another difference worth mentioning is the destination of those who cease to declare themselves Catholic in the two countries. In France, those leaving Ca-
tholicism have swollen the ranks of those declaring themselves with no religion, now representing 50% of the population, while in Brazil they have migrated to Pentecostal religions (22%) with the numbers of those with no religion, though growing, representing just 8%.28 In both national contexts, though, the category of
those with no religion tends to designate people unaffiliated to any specific religion (unchurched) rather than those who are entirely secularized. Today many of these people are followers of a lay spirituality, which is disseminating concomitantly with
the institutional deregulation of religions and the autonomy of subjects in relation to specific religious traditions.
The decline in the Catholic population in both contexts, albeit each with its own specificities, allows us to reiterate our interpretation that the crisis in Catholicism
is an intrinsic part of a broader cultural process, one beyond the control of the
Catholic Church over the loss of its congregations. But while the roots of the crisis
are cultural, we need to recognize that “the relation between culture and religion,” as Sanchis reminds us, “it is not a simple or direct relation.”29 Thus, while we can
affirm that the reduction in Catholic numbers coincides with the institutional crisis of the Catholic Church in France, in Brazil such a direct coincidence is not observed. On the contrary, as we have aimed to show in this text, the Catholic
Church in Brazil, as an institution, has expanded and become consolidated over
recent decades, although it is simultaneously experiencing a crisis in its social and political recognition and legitimacy. It seems like we are facing, one more time, the bias and the epistemological inconsistency of Anglo-European interpretations to understand phenomenons on the global South.
28 In 1950, France had the same percentage as Brazil has today of people declaring themselves without any religion. Portier, “Les Mutations,” 201. 29 Sanchis, “O Repto Pentecostal,” 53. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
26 | Strong Church, Weak Catholicism: Transformations in Brazilian Catholicism
As we have looked to demonstrate over the course of our discussion, the crisis in Catholicism is part of a much more extensive dilution of the conditions of reproduction and plausibility of the religious and cultural regime in which traditional Catholicism operated until the second half of the twentieth century. The new
regime, which became established with the process of modernization, reconfigured the forms of religious belonging, as well as the ritual, aesthetic and moral
practices, conferring individuals the right to opt personally for one path among
the many that present themselves in a plural religious context. Catholic holism, which encompassed the diversity of religious manifestations, thus gave way to the
emergence of a plural religious field in which differences became legitimate and desirable. Questions about whether and how to recognize such differences became
focal points in disputes between religious actors and between them and other social fields, especially the political field.
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Carlos Alberto Steil and Rodrigo Toniol | 27
REFERENCES Aquino, Maurício de. “A Diáspora das Congregações Femininas Portuguesas para
o Brasil no Início do Século XX: Política, Religião, Gênero.” Cadernos Pagu 42 (2014): 393-415. https://doi.org/10.1590/0104-8333201400420393.
Alves, José Eustáquio, Suzana Cavenaghi, Luiz Felipe Barros, and Angeli-
ta A. de Carvalho. “Distribuição Espacial da Transição Religiosa no Brasil.” Tempo Social 29, no. 2 (2017): 215-242. https://doi.org/10.11606/0103-2070. ts.2017.112180.
Azzi, Riolando. “A Visão do Paraíso na Sociedade Colonial Luso-Brasileira.” Perspectiva Teológica 23, no. 59 (1991).
Beozzo, Jose Oscar. “Irmandades, Santuários, Capelinhas de Beira de Estrada.” Revista Eclesiástica Brasileira 37, no. 148 (1977): 741-758.
Della Cava, Ralph. Miracle at Joaseiro. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970. Dupront, Alphonse. Puissances et Latences de la Religion Catholique. Gallimard, 1993. Fernandes, Rubem César. Os Cavaleiros do Bom Jesus: Uma Introdução às Religões Populares. Vol. 7. Brasiliense, 1982.
Fernandes, Rubem César. Romarias da Paixão. Rocco, 1994. Hoornaert, Eduardo. A Igreja no Brasil-Colônia: 1550-1800. Vol. 45. Editora Brasiliense, 1984.
Leonardi, Paula. “Congregações Católicas e Educação: O Caso da Sagrada Família de Bordeaux.” Revista Brasileira de História da Educação 11, no. 2 (2011): 103-129.
Manoel, Ivan A. “O Início da Educação Católica Feminina no Brasil (1859-1919): Os Colégios das ‘Freiras Francesas.’” Páginas de Educación 5, no. 1 (2012): 115-134.
Mariano, Ricardo. “Mudanças no Campo Religioso Brasileiro no Censo 2010.” Debates do NER 2, no. 24 (2013): 119-137. https://doi.org/10.22456/19828136.43696.
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Mariz, Cecília, and Maria das Dores Campos Machado. “Mulheres e Práticas Religiosas–um Estudo Comparativo das CEBS e Comunidades Carismáticas e Pentecostais.” Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais 34 (1997).
Monteiro, Duglas Teixeira. Os Errantes do Novo Século: Um Estudo Sobre o Surto Milenarista do Contestado. No. 2. São Paulo: Livraria Duas Cidades, 1974.
Oliveira, Pedro Ribeiro de. “Catolicismo Popular e Romanização do Catolicismo Brasileiro.” Revista Eclesiástica Brasileira 36, no. 141 (1976): 131-141.
Oliveira, Pedro A. Religião e Dominação de Classe: Gênese, Estrutura e Função do Catolicismo Romanizado no Brasil. Vozes, 1985.
Pierucci, Antônio Flávio. “‘Bye Bye, Brasil’: O Declínio das Religiões Tradiciona-
is no Censo 2000.” Estudos Avançados 18, no. 52 (2004): 17-28. https://doi. org/10.1590/S0103-40142004000300003.
Portier, Philippe. “Les Mutations du Religieux dans la France Contempo-
raine.” Social Compass 59, no. 2 (2012): 193-207. https://doi.org/10.1177 /0037768612440961.
Prado Júnior, Caio. Formação Econômica do Brasil Contemporâneo. São Paulo, 1977. Sanchis, Pierre. “O Repto Pentecostal à ‘Cultura Católico-Brasileira.’” Revista de Antropologia (1994): 145-181.
Steil, Carlos Alberto. “A Igreja dos Pobres: Da Secularização à Mística.” Religião e Sociedade 19, no. 2 (1999): 61-76.
Steil, Carlos Alberto, and Rodrigo Ferreira Toniol. “O Catolicismo e a Igreja Católica no Brasil à Luz dos Dados Sobre Religião no Censo de 2010.” Debates do NER 14, n. 24 (2013): 223-243. https://doi.org/10.22456/1982-8136.43576.
Teixeira, Faustino. “Faces do Catolicismo Brasileiro Contemporâneo.” Revista USP 67 (2005): 14-23. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2316-9036.v0i67p14-23.
Velho, Otávio. “Globalização: Antropologia e Religião.” Mana 3, no. 1 (1997): 133154. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-93131997000100005.
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Carlos Alberto Steil and Rodrigo Toniol | 29
The Good Friday service at the Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows (das Dores da Santa Virgem Maria) in Ouro Preto, Brazil, attracts a more local, low-key crowd than the one in the center of town. Photo by Thomas M. Landy.
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30
J U L I A N O F. A L M E I D A
Contemporary Brazilian Catholicism and Healing Practices: Notes on Environmentalism and Medicalization
Juliano Florczak Almeida is a Brazilian anthropologist. His doctorate thesis was about the Catholic Church and healing practices in Brazil. He also has experience in ethnobotanic studies, material dimensions of religion, and history. He has published many papers in scientific journals and a book, Bom Jardim dos Santos (Editora da UFRGS, 2016), about the presence of plants in religious rituals in the South of Brazil. In 2014, he received First Place in the Heloísa Alberto Torres Award, offered by the Associação Brasileira de Antropologia (ABA). Currently, he is an associated researcher at Núcleo de Estudos da Religião, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (NER-UFRGS).
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Juliano F. Almeida | 31
INTRODUCTION
A
nthropological studies on Brazilian Catholicism have traditionally fo-
cused on popular variants of religious practice and their relationship with official Catholicism. Within research on the interface between Ca-
tholicism and healing practices, scholars have highlighted how unofficial variants
of Catholicism guide popular healing practices.1 As a result, researchers have given special attention to figures such as healers (benzedeiros and curandeiros), their ritu-
als, and the conflicts they have with members of the Catholic hierarchy or doctors. By privileging the above mentioned aspects, this body of literature has emphasized
basic characteristics of popular Catholicism: inclusiveness, openness to other religious traditions, and difference from official Catholicism.2
Recent anthropological perspectives point to the benefits of investing research in not only marginal but also core and official social practices. Bruno Latour3 noticed that when anthropologists have studied in the tropics, they focused on central aspects of these globally marginal communities. However, according to Latour, when anthropologists redirected its investigations to metropolitan societies, they were
contented with observing the marginal elements of these societies.4 Latour sug-
gested that it was now necessary to think anthropologically also about the center 1
2
3 4
Juliano Florczak Almeida, Bom Jardim Dos Santos: Plantas, Religiosidades Populares e Seus Fluxos Em Guarani Das Missões (RS), 1st ed. (Porto Alegre: UFRGS Editora, 2016); M. Cecília S. Minayo, “Representações Da Cura No Catolicismo Popular,” in Saúde e Doença: Um Olhar Antropológico, ed. P.C. Alves and M.C.S. Minayo (Rio de Janeiro: Editora FIOCRUZ, 1994), 57–71; Raymundo Heraldo Maués, “Catolicismo e Xamanismo: Comparação Entre a Cura No Movimento Carismático e Na Pajelança Rural Amazônica,” Ilha 4, no. 2 (2010): 51–77; Ático Vilas-Boas Mota, Rezas, Benzeduras et Cetera: Medicina Popular Em Goiás (Goiânia: Oriente, 1977); Elda Rizzo Oliveira, O Que é Benzeção (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1985); O. F. Leal, “Benzedeiras e Bruxas: Sexo, Gênero e Sistema de Cura Tradicional,” Cadernos de Antropologia 70, no. 5 (1992): 7–22; Melvina Araújo, Das Ervas Medicinais à Fitoterapia (Cotia, SP: Ateliê Editorial, 2002). Duglas Texeira Monteiro, Os Errantes Do Novo Século: Um Estudo Sobre o Surto Milenarista Do Contestado (São Paulo: Duas cidades, 1974); Pedro Ribeiro de Oliveira, “Religiosidade Popular Na América Latina,” REB 32, no. 126 (1972): 354–64; Pedro Ribeiro de Oliveira, Religião e Dominação de Classe: Gênese, Estrutura e Função Do Catolicismo Romanizado No Brasil (Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes, 1985). Bruno Latour, Jamais Fomos Modernos: Ensaio de Antropologia Simétrica (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. 34, 1994). Latour, Jamais Fomos Modernos.
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32 | Contemporary Brazilian Catholicism and Healing Practices: Notes on Environmentalism
and Medicalization
of the center.5 While this research program resulted in Latour’s important work on scientific communities, it also prompted scholars to expand the field of anthropology by examining other hegemonic groups.6
Encouraged by the aforementioned approaches, I analyze current healing practices
promoted by members of the Catholic hierarchy in Brazil. Analyzing practices endorsed by the Catholic Church makes it possible to point out that its modus
operandi is not absolutely distinct from the practices of popular Catholicism;7 both are characterized by porosity.8 By porosity I mean the inclusive character of Ca-
tholicism, which opens itself up to the circulation of practices and encompasses different modalities of worship both diachronically and synchronically.9
To grasp this modus operandi, I analyze Brazilian Catholic priests’ best-selling
books about health and healing as well as newspaper reports and interviews with
these authors. Through the analysis of three case studies, I observe the circulation
of ideas about health and healing techniques, and I provide an overview of the
main trajectories of healing practices within contemporary Brazilian Catholicism. I describe and analyze practices proposed by Friar Romano Zago, a Franciscan brother who became famous for creating a medicinal product based on aloe and known as babosa; Father Paulo Wendling, a diocesan priest who promotes holistic
therapy; and Father Renato Roque Barth, a Jesuit priest and advocate of a healing technique called BiosHealth (Biosaúde).10 In addition, I analyze the practices of 5 Latour, Jamais Fomos Modernos. 6 Emerson Giumbelli, “Para Além Do ‘Trabalho de Campo’: Reflexões Supostamente Malinowskianas,” Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais 17, no. 48 (2002): 91–107, https://doi.org/10.1590/ S0102-69092002000100007; Bruno Latour, Ciencia En Accion. Cómo Seguir a Los Científicos e Ingenoeros a Través de La Sociedad (Barcelona: Open University Press, 1992). 7 By official Catholicism I mean the religious practices of members of Catholic hierarchy. On the other hand, by popular Catholicism I mean the religious practices of lay people. This is a methodological differentiation. This study aims to show that both variants of Catholicism have the same modus operandi, which is characterized by the Catholicism’s inclusiveness. 8 Juliano Florczak Almeida, “Atos Dos Bons Samaritanos: Romanização e Medicalização Na Vida de Religiosos Católicos” (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, 2019). 9 Almeida, “Atos Dos Bons Samaritanos." 10 Friar Romano Zago is a Franciscan brother who was born in 1932. In the '90s, he became famous because of his herbal product. Father Paulo Wendling is a diocesan priest who was born in 1954. He is the author of six books about holistic therapy. Father Renato Roque Barth is a Jesuit priest who was born in 1939. In 1997, he was one of the founders of Associação Brasileira de Saúde JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
Juliano F. Almeida | 33
“interior healing” proposed by other friars and priests in order to grasp the complexities of healing techniques within contemporary Brazilian Catholicism.11
Such an approach enables us to notice how two big processes permeate the healing
practices within current Brazilian Catholicism. The first process is medicalization, today consolidated in Brazil as a result of a long historical process that involves the medical corporation in almost all healing practices.12 The second is a certain environmentalization of healing practices promoted by Catholic friars and priests,13 through which friars and priests understand that staying in tune with “nature” is
a condition for healing. These crossings seem to point to Catholicism’s inclusiveness14, which characterizes also its official variants.15 The relationship between reli-
gion and health is recurrent within Catholicism due partially to the long tradition emerged from the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan, whose message suggests
a relation between Christian people and healing practices. Paying attention to this relationship is fruitful to grasp the porosities I referred to earlier. In the next sec-
tion, I present the cases of a friar and two priests marked by the above-mentioned crossings. Getting to know them enables us to also understand the tensions religious leaders themselves encounter in their relationships with doctors and other medical professionals: Priests who advocate techniques for promoting health
11 12 13
14 15
Popular (Brazilian Association of Popular Health - ABRASP), a non-governmental institution that is present in many Brazilian regions. It is a mistake to evaluate how central these priests are, because the centrality is a relative feature (Márcio Goldman, Como Funciona a Democracia: Uma Teoria Etnogrdfica Da Politica (Rio de Janeiro: 7 Letras, 2006).). Giumbelli (“Para Além Do ‘Trabalho de Campo’”) says that the anthropologists should take advantage of the possibility of investigating everything. But I highlight that Zago is member of the Catholic hierarchy, as well as Wendling and Barth. Therefore, they are authenticated by the Catholic Church. Cf. Emerson José Sena da Silveira, “A Cura Interior No Catolicismo Carismático: Tecnologias de Si e Psicologização Da Religião,” Debates Do NER 8, no. 12 (2007): 45–79. Beatriz Teixeira Weber, “As Artes de Curar: Medicina, Religião, Magia e Positivismo Na República Rio-Grandense - 1889/1928” (doctorate thesis, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 1997), http:// www.repositorio.unicamp.br/handle/REPOSIP/280635. Isabel Cristina de Moura Carvalho and Carlos Alberto Steil, “A Sacralização Da Natureza e a ‘Naturalização’ Do Sagrado: Aportes Teóricos Para a Compreensão Dos Entrecruzamentos Entre Saúde, Ecologia e Espiritualidade,” Ambiente e Sociedade 11, no. 2 (2008): 289–305, https://doi. org/10.1590/S1414-753X2008000200006. Carlos Alberto Steil, “Renovação Carismática Católica: Porta de Entrada Ou de Saída Do Catolicismo? Uma Etnografia Do Grupo São José, Porto Alegre (RS),” Religião e Sociedade 24, no. 1 (2004): 11–36. Almeida, “Atos Dos Bons Samaritanos.”
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struggle to discern whether they should construe their work as a complement or alternative to official bio-scientific medicine. I begin by discussing the ways that
environmentalist ideology influences the practice of contemporary Catholic advocates of health and healing.
THE APOSTLE OF ALOE The questions of where to find the sacred and how to get in touch with divinity
have not always had the same answer in the history of Catholicism. Certainly, churches have played a prominent role in the spatialization of the sacred in Christianity over the centuries. In his classic study of memory, Maurice Halbwachs16 draws attention to the importance Catholicism places on periodic gatherings of the faithful in churches. In addition, Halbwachs argues that creative work of tradition
can also build holy spaces and highlights the wide extent of what can become the place of the divine: “[...] for the saints everything is holy, and there is no place apparently so profane where Christians cannot evoke God.”17
Not by chance, religious experience has been lived elsewhere as well. In the fourth century, the Mediterranean tradition of the hermits, which expanded along with
the expansion of Christianity itself,18 found the sacred in the isolation of natural
spaces. In line with this movement, in the 16th to 18th centuries, in colonial Brazil, hermitages were erected in the hinterlands and in places far from urban centers, which gave rise to most of the country’s main Catholic shrines.19 Nature, as a place of experience of the Sacred, appears as a new element of Catholic practices in history in different ways and times, according to the changes in the cult.
This long-duration tradition, however, gains other configurations when it joins the shift observed in recent decades of internalizing the environmental issue. This pro-
cess is identified in different spheres of social life, whether in Brazil or in other parts of the world.
16 Maurice Halbwachs, Memória Coletiva (São Paulo: Vértice, 1990). 17 Halbwachs, Memória Coletiva, 227. 18 André Vauchez, “Santidade,” in Enciclopédia Einaudi, vol. 12 (Lisboa; Porto: Casa da Moeda/Imprensa Nacional, 1987), 287–300. 19 Carlos Alberto Steil, O Sertão Das Romarias: Um Estudo Antropológico Sobre o Santuário de Bom Jardim Da Lapa (Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes, 1996). JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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According to Steil and Carvalho,20 it is possible to notice in current times a link
between certain cultivation of the self through ascetic practices and the environmental sensitivity expressed in the ecologic concern. This link characterizes the
healing practices of Catholic friars and priests and engenders unique biographies
and ways of life. By taking part in Catholicism, some other elements linked to Christian cosmologies are joined to the current environmental movement. There-
fore, a double conversion is taking place: from Catholicism to environmentalism
and the transformations promoted by Catholicism in environmentalism. This is what we observe when we follow the trajectory of Friar Romano Zago, who in recent years has become a kind of apostle of aloe.
The Franciscan Friar Zago considers the recipe that made him famous to be simple. According to his best-seller originally written in Portuguese and translated into
eleven other languages, he decided to spread it as far as he could. 21 It was enough to add a certain species of aloe (Aloe arborescens), honey and a few spoonfuls of cachaça22 to obtain the cure of one of the great evils of humanity: cancer.23 The recipe
was ideally to be used by the poor people whom he assisted in parishes of rural Rio Grande do Sul state, in South Brazil. They gave him good feedback after using the recipe. The simplicity of the formula can be related to Catholic liberation theology’s empowering the poor. Encouraged by this understanding, Friar Zago became
a sort of apostle of aloe. After learning the recipe in a conversation with confreres, Zago advertised it in the places where he worked as Franciscan friar, as well as in radio and TV programs.
Unlike the simplicity of the recipe, understanding why it was so efficient was not
easy to Friar Zago. He needed to study books published in different parts of the
world to understand that the reason for aloe’s success in combating cancer did not 20 Carvalho and Steil, “A Sacralização Da Natureza.” 21 Romano Zago, Câncer Tem Cura! Manual Que Ensina, de Maneira Prática e Econômica, a Tratar, Sem Sair de Casa, Do Câncer e de Outras Doenças, Sem Mutilações, Sem Aplicaçoes Nem Remédios, Sem Efeitos Colaterais (Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes, 1997). 22 A Brazilian distillate made with sugar cane. 23 To elaborate this tale, besides drawing on Zago’s book Câncer Tem Cura!, I also used information given by Friar João Renato Puhl, confrere of Zago’s who studies his trajectory and his production. Puhl gave me an e-mail interview in May 2020. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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come from one or other substance that aloe contained, but from the synergy of the different active principles encapsulated in the plant. After long discussion, Zago concluded: “This concept of synergism cannot be stressed enough in understanding the combination of aloe. It is the combination that makes the plant perfect.”24
The friar guarantees that aloe’s perfection comes from the fact that it is one of
God’s creatures: “You are the essence of God, perfect, beautiful and harmonious,” says Zago, in his ritual of harvesting aloe, that includes a sort of conversation with aloe, as he transcribes in his book.25 The cure is in nature, because creatures that
remain purely divine also are in nature. Thus, one ecological narrative connects with another, theologically Christian-oriented narrative.
Human beings are different from the pure creatures of nature, says Friar Zago,
demonstrating some sadness. They insist on living in sin, on envying others’ success, on nurturing anger and grudges, on performing other unscrupulous acts. Sexual practices, envy, anger, and resentment, among other sins, provoke what the Franciscan calls “spiritual pollution”, which he lists among the causes of cancer. 26 Another cause of cancer would be “psychic pollution,” that is, all shocking events that affect human beings’ emotions. Zago’s third cause of cancer is “physical pollution,” which
includes general air and water pollutants, pesticides and food preservatives, gas emissions and the byproducts of atomic technologies, as well as alcohol and other
drugs. The sin is considered a pollution that causes cancer to both the environment and to human beings. As Zago said in an interview, these pollutants are relatively equivalent: “Drugs, excess alcohol, tobacco, pesticides, herbicides, etc., help the
progress of cancer. Consume meat in moderation. We have been taught that eating meat is equal to being well fed. This ‘truth’ be taken cum granu salis.” Zago’s discourse reinforces the already traced connection between ecological and theological narratives.
Considering that the causes of illness are pollution and the cure is found in nature, then the appropriate cure is to tune in with nature. The notions of “psychic” and 24 Zago, Câncer Tem Cura!, 85. 25 Zago, Câncer Tem Cura!, 116. 26 Zago, Câncer Tem Cura!, 36–37. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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“spiritual” pollution underline the thesis that the cure is found in the individual. Moreover, it is important to emphasize that self-healing means taking the path of
tuning in with nature, which is also the path of God. To attune oneself to nature now means to attune oneself to the Creator Divinity. Zago starts from the principle
that God made all things, the lilies that sway in the field with the wind, the birds that roar there, and the aloe that keeps the synergy of its composites. Within Catholic cosmology, children’s lack of knowledge and innocence bring them closer to
the divine.27 They are unaware of sin and evil’s wicked tricks, which often appear in
adults’ actions.28 But what is the purity of childhood, Zago insists, if we compare it to those beings of nature that are nothing more than what God has made of them?
All the more reason, Zago believes, to bet on his own medicine, simple and even “naïve” as he admits it is.29
To make and consume the aloe formula to cure cancer is, in some measure, to
ritualize conversion. It means returning to innocence or being willing to do so, and repenting of one’s sins. Consuming Zago’s medicinal aloe is analogous to the sacrament of reconciliation. Friar Zago does not seem to offer a remedy, but an
invitation to the death of the “old man” and the birth of a “new man,” as stated in
Chapter Four of the Christian New Testament’s Epistle to the Ephesians: “Abandon the way you lived before, the old man who corrupts himself with deceptive
passions. May your mentality be renewed spiritually. Put on the new man, created according to God, in righteousness and holiness of truth.”
The most relevant aspect of this invitation is the idea that the “old man” is a pol-
luted subject. Polluted in the sense of being stained by sin, living in a polluted environment, which condemns the person to suffer in the flesh the consequences
of such a situation. On the other hand, the converted subject is also a dedicated en-
vironmentalist. Friar Zago builds a double process of conversion, from Catholicism to environmentalism and vice versa.
27 Maya Mayblin, Gender, Catholicism, and Morality in Brazil: Virtuous Husbands, Powerful Wives (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 28 Mayblin, Gender, Catholicism, and Morality in Brazil. 29 Zago, Câncer Tem Cura!, 38. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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In either situation, that of the polluted person or a converted one, human beings are their environment. By breathing polluted air, living in an environment marked by atomic accidents, eating food produced with pesticides and preservatives, the
human being reflects the landscape, reminding the anthropology of Tim Ingold.30
On the other hand, the human in search of conversion walks towards harmony with idyllic nature.
Like conversion in a general Catholic cosmology, harmonization with idyllic na-
ture involves a sacrifice whose root paradigm31 is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Other agents, however, can also be called upon, since also they can make analogous
mediations. For having the capacity to mediate the relationship with the divinity, these agents need to have some characteristics, especially perfection, the possession
of gifts and the mission given by God to his creature, attributes that Zago observes in the aloe. Witnessing the presence of a certain biblical culture in the daily life of members of the Catholic hierarchy, the friar describes his ritual of harvesting aloe
as a conversation with the plant, which he suggests is the outline of a prayer.32 In this conversation, he claims to seek not to cause harm to the plant, but to value it as the perfect creature of God:
Hello, beautiful creature! I am not here to hurt you. On the contrary, as I know
you are beneficial, I ask you to give me what our Creator gave you. I need it. All that God created is good, and He saw that it was good. You are the essence of God, perfect, beautiful, and harmonious. God has deposited rich substances within you. I wish to take advantage of them.33
In this ritual of harvesting aloe, the plant reminds the biblical parable of the wheat
kernel. According to this parable, presented in the Chapter 12 of the John’s gospel, the wheat kernel must die to produce many seeds. Similarly, according to Zago, cutting down the aloe would not mean its death or any harm to it. On the contrary, 30 Tim Ingold, Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description, Social Anthropology (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203818336. 31 Victor Turner, Dramas, Campos e Metáforas: Ação Simbólica Na Sociedade Humana (Niterói, RJ: Ed. da UFF, 2008). 32 Zago, Câncer Tem Cura!, 116. 33 Zago, Câncer Tem Cura! 116. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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it is precisely the opportunity to “[…] feel the ecstasy of fertility” and to overcome
death, like in the biblical narrative, and use the gifts that God has given to the plant: If I do not collect them, they will never be used. Just as all living beings, you were born, grew, but will die, returning to the dust that produced you. But if I
pick you, you will offer all your substances and give everything good you know. So, let me pick you as I would a beautiful rose. Only you know the wonders you possess internally and feel the ecstasy of fertility.34
Zago seems to be trying to convince the plant to follow the divine project, the mission planned by God when He created it:
[...] You will suffer a little, but I know no other way of taking you so that you
can do the job for which what you were created. Come with me, come! [...] Take the opportunity and perform the mission that the Lord planned when He created you. It is now time for ecstasy.35
In arguing that the cure is in tuning in with nature, Friar Zago constitutes, in the practices of healing cancer with aloe, a harmonious tuning between environmental
and Catholic cosmologies. These practices suggest the existence of tensions with
official medicine, whose hegemony in the field of healing practices entails that oth-
er therapies can be complementary or alternative to it. In the next topic, I analyze how these tensions between confrontation and complementarity take place in the field of Catholicism.
COMPLEMENTARY OR ALTERNATIVE PRACTICES? In Novo Hamburgo, a city in the metropolitan region of Porto Alegre, capital of Rio Grande do Sul state, it is possible to consult with Father Paulo Wendling,36 34 Zago, Câncer Tem Cura!, 116. 35 Zago, Câncer Tem Cura!, 116. 36 This description is informed by the books of the priest Paulo Wendling, A Vida Cura a Vida: O Uso de Recursos Naturais Como Terapia (Passo Fundo, RS: Berthier, 2012); Paulo Wendling, Cuidando Da Vida Com as Plantas de Deus (Passo Fundo, RS: Berthier, 2009); as well as by an interview he gave to me, Carlos Alberto Steil and Taylor Pedroso de Aguiar on September 29, 2015 at the headquarters of the Diocesan Centre of Pastoral and Life Support (Centro Diocesano de Pastoral e Apoio à Vida - CEDIPAVI), coordinated by Father Wendling. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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a Catholic diocesan priest who is also dedicated to healing the sick. He differs
from Friar Zago for not having a predilection for aloe. He seeks to spread healing
practices based on the idea that “life heals life,” an expression that appears in the title of one of his popular books.37 Regardless of this difference, the priest’s recommendations to the sick are remarkably similar to the Friar Zago’s advice in his
own book.38 In fact, the two parallel trajectories share the same horizon, marked by the environmentalization of Catholic healing practices. It is not by chance that in
the pages written by Wendling, health becomes synonymous with harmony with
nature, to the point that paradise is defined as the place where the “naturist ideal” is achieved:
The normal state of the human being is health. While they live according to the natural laws, they do not know the disease and die on completing the biological cycle. In paradise, man and woman achieve health because they fully reach the naturist ideal. But as they move away from nature and transgress its laws, they lose their health, including their life, in the middle of the road.39
A large part of one of his books is dedicated to re-educating his audience about
their daily food consumption. His main recommendation in this arena is “[...] to be attentive to the teachings of ‘MOTHER NATURE.’”40 For example, the relevance
of the consumption of milk and dairy products, which Wendling considers to be at odds with the “natural law” and therefore recommends its elimination, comes into debate:
“MOTHER NATURE” made a milk appropriate to the conditions of each species. Human milk is suitable for humans. [...] Animals respect the natural
law. No female takes and keeps the milk to give it to the ‘baby’ the other day. [...] Note well: man is the only being in nature who drinks milk from a mother who is not his own after reaching adulthood.41 37 Wendling, A Vida Cura a Vida. 38 Zago, Câncer Tem Cura! 39 Wendling, A Vida Cura a Vida, 31. 40 Wendling, A Vida Cura a Vida, 136, emphasis in original. 41 Wendling, A Vida Cura a Vida,137, emphasis in original. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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To achieve harmony with nature and therefore with health, Father Wendling suggests the practice of a holistic therapy that takes “[...] the person as a whole: physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, social, professional and ecological aspects.”42
Such a therapy seeks “[...] holistic harmony, i.e., when there is balance between the various dimensions of human life.”43
Thus, healing practices cannot be restricted to bodily remedies. They must be attentive to food, as said above, but also to different dimensions of the human be-
ing: body, mind, and soul. This has implications for their healing practices. First, Father Wendling considers that it is not possible to treat organs or even diseases
without taking care of the person: “It is not enough to look for a remedy for the disease without treating the patient. That is why I want to frame the use of plants
as therapy in the context of holistic therapy.”44 Another consequence of Wend-
ling’s understanding is a continuity or even equivalence between the physical and the spiritual, in which sickness becomes an opportunity to reflect on the way we are living: “Sickness reveals our own fragility, our human condition of being sin-
ners, imperfect.”45 Similarly to Zago’s conception of the health-disease process, for
Wendling,46 sins emerge as causes of illness. To get sick is a sign that one is not on God’s way and, at the same time, an opportunity to take up God’s way.
Wendling’s healing practices repeat the same invitation to conversion found in Za-
go’s work, a conversion capable of producing the “new man” of the New Testament, now also affected by the internalization of planet’s environmental afflictions:
Health in the NEW MILLENNIUM requires each of us to turn to nature, to God. Knowing and following the natural laws is a requirement. Without chang-
ing habits, without changing the way we think and act, it will not be possible
to breathe health in the planet […]. Indeed, without a deep conversion of all of us, we will be increasingly plunged into the darkness of sickness and death...47 42 Wendling, Cuidando Da Vida Com as Plantas de Deus, 7. 43 Wendling, Cuidando Da Vida Com as Plantas de Deus, 7. 44 Wendling, A Vida Cura a Vida, 191. 45 Wendling, A Vida Cura a Vida, 21. 46 Wendling, A Vida Cura a Vida. 47 Wendling, A Vida Cura a Vida , 25, emphasis in original. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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According to Wendling, this process of conversion, in which God’s path is also
the path of nature, must also affect the Catholic Church, which should adopt an ecological attitude, a way of promoting Life, the Creator’s work:
The Church must also be “ECOLOGICAL” ... Our evangelization needs to
lead us to the sources of nature, of life, reason why the Church must make us believe with the eyes of the heart and see with the eyes of the flesh the crucial
problems of nature, which require conversion and Christian postures from all of us, without the destructive spirit of the old “Crusades.” Our God is the God of Life, the God of Creation. Therefore, caring for his work is the task of all his
children, but especially of Christians… It is not good to use pesticides to do a
“chemical weeding” in the churchyard or Catholic cemetery and then pray with the God of Life, of Creation... 48
The holism that enables the continuity or equivalence of physical and spiritual problems refers to Romantic medicine, a current that seems to play a significant
role in healing techniques used in contemporary Brazilian Catholicism. “Romantic medicine is a medicine of the human subject, a medicine of totality,” Georges Gus-
dorf writes.49 Wendling50 insists that he follows Hippocratic teachings. He points
out that, at the time of the medicine’s founding, the sick were sent to “sanatoriums” dedicated to the god Aesculapius and the treatment they underwent involved a
change in eating habits and the use of “natural resources.” This experience was a prelude to the moment when the sick participated in mystical-religious rituals.51
“Without a detoxification of the body, there is no intervention of the god Aescu-
lapius to effect a healing at the level of the soul,” concludes the priest.52 He adds:
“[...] without changes in our lifestyle, which includes way of being, thinking, acting, and eating, no miracle will happen. There are no magic formulas that will restore health, balance.”53
48 Wendling, A Vida Cura a Vida, 25, emphasis in original. 49 Georges Gusdorf, L’homme Romantique (Paris: Les Éditions Payot, 1984), 259. 50 Wendling, A Vida Cura a Vida; Wendling, Cuidando Da Vida Com as Plantas de Deus. 51 Wendling, A Vida Cura a Vida, 33–35; Wendling, Cuidando Da Vida Com as Plantas de Deus, 10–11. 52 Wendling, Cuidando Da Vida Com as Plantas de Deus, 11. 53 Wendling, Cuidando Da Vida Com as Plantas de Deus, 11. By appealing to the origins of the biomedical scientific tradition in ancient Greek religion, Wendling suggests that official bio-scientific JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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Zago also emphasizes holism. This similarity can be noticed in the equivalence be-
tween physical, psychic, and spiritual causes for diseases, as well as when he suggests that the perfection of aloe derives from the synergy of its whole, rather than from any of its substances. Holism also provides Zago with the explanation for the lack
of success of many scientific studies about aloe: “The problem with scientific tests is that they do not analyze the whole plant, and this may not meet the expectations
of the theory, leading the conclusion that the combination is ineffective….”54 The Franciscan also demonstrates a great admiration for homeopathy, which derives
from Romantic-era efforts to reform medical science.55 Zago claimed that, “Personally, I believe that the evolution of homeopathy will soon enable the cure of diseases, even the most serious of them, only with the use of water as raw material.”56
This discussion highlights the relationship between official and medical heal-
ing practices promoted within Catholicism. The relationship between these two
fields may take the form of confrontation or complementarity. On the one hand, health practices proposed by religious leaders may constitute an alternative to offi-
cial medicine. On the other, they may advance in parallel and complement official medicine. The analysis of the relationship between medicine and religious practices has proved fruitful in diverse religious contexts, including in the Brazilian spiritu-
alistic field, which includes Spiritism, Umbanda and other religious practices,57 but also in Brazilian Catholicism.58
Wendling himself discusses that topic. However, besides using other terminology, his debate makes the discussion more complex. He questions the very notion of choice implicit in both the alternative and complementary relationship between religious practices and medicine:
medicine forgot Hippocratic teachings. He affirms these teachings took care of the whole human being, not just the body. 54 Zago, Câncer Tem Cura!, 85. 55 Madel Therezinha Luz, A Arte de Curar versus a Ciência Das Doenças: História Social Da Homeopatia No Brasil (Porto Alegre: Editora Rede UNIDA, 2014). 56 Zago, Câncer Tem Cura! 57 Cf. Emerson Giumbelli, “Espiritismo e Medicina: Introjeção, Subversão, Complementaridade,” in Orixás e Espíritos: O Debate Interdisciplinar Na Pesquisa Contemporânea, ed. Artur César Isaia (Uberlândia: EDUFU, 2006), 283–304. 58 Almeida, “Atos Dos Bons Samaritanos.” VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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Therefore, holistic therapy does not present itself as an alternative [i.e., complementary therapy] to the model of treatment that exists in current society. If it were an alternative [i.e., complementary therapy], it would be just another form. Holistic Therapy aims to balance what is unbalanced and this is not only
done through the use of herbal remedies like most people think and act, but through a profound and sometimes radical change in the way of being, thinking, living, feeding, working... It is not enough to put a pharmacy with natural
medicines next to the chemical pharmacy... Remember: if medicine and medication were enough to cure, we wouldn’t have patients or diseases...59
Wendling challenges the basic principles that underpin official medicine: the whole
rather than some organ; the person rather than the disease; prevention rather than reduction of symptoms; change of habits rather than use of medicines. However, he
does not recommend breaking with official medicine. Something similar is found in the practices spread by Friar Zago, who does not recommend the abandonment
of chemotherapy and radiation. Still, he writes that these practices are “[...] a true assault on the body!” 60 To Zago, officials who promote these methods wrongly
assume that: “[...] by extirpating the sick organ, the healing of the patient would
happen as if by magic.”61 Instead of suggesting the suppression of these therapies, he advises the sick to take aloe along with chemotherapy and radiation: “If you are treated with medicines prescribed by your doctor, or are to have radiation, chemotherapy or something similar, nothing prevents you from simultaneously treating
yourself with aloe.”62 The hegemony of official medicine, backed by the power of
the state, seems to force religious healing practices, including practices associated with Catholicism, into the position of complementary medicine. In an interview
with me, Zago ratified the dominant role of doctors in healing and ensuring bodily
health, an activity that priests take on only in a supporting or complementary role: The task of healing the body is a doctor’s responsibility. But as a priest, if I can
help someone to heal, I do this work with great pleasure and without charge. 59 Wendling, A Vida Cura a Vida, 33. 60 Zago, Câncer Tem Cura! 61 Zago, Câncer Tem Cura! 62 Zago, Câncer Tem Cura! JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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[This person] is a human being who must be helped. If I can do it! And if I know how to do it, let us work! (Interview with me, May 29, 2020.)
A tension arises between the complementary and alternative relationships: although priests question the principles of official medicine, they often recommend
that the sick adopt their healing practices alongside and as a complement to techniques favored by doctors. Such accommodation seems to be related to the ability
of Catholicism to incorporate diverse practices of different traditions, as will be detailed in the next section.
MEDICALIZATION AND CATHOLIC PRACTICES Medical professional organizations currently hold the monopoly on legitimate healing practices in Brazil.63 Several aspects of life in the country are also marked
by a process of medicalization, from human reproduction64 to hospitals.65 In the
face of this scenario, healing practices of priests or friars often affect doctors and their organizations, who believe that they are competent to address all issues relating to healing practices and technologies. And sometimes, doctors challenge mem-
bers of the Catholic hierarchy, especially if their practices assume the character of alternatives to official medicine.
That was the case of Renato Roque Barth, a Jesuit priest who promotes the
BiosHealth (Biosaúde) method in Brazil’s Central-Western state of Mato Grosso. He promotes a set of health practices that in many ways resembles those advocated
by Friar Zago and Father Wendling. In 2011, Barth was denounced by the Re-
gional Council of Medicine of Mato Grosso (CRM-MT) for illegally practicing medicine.66 The national press, historically a privileged actor in the medicalization
of diverse arenas of Brazilian social life, also denounced Barth.67 The hearing of the 63 Weber, “As Artes de Curar.” 64 Fabíola Rohden, “Histórias e Tensões Em Torno Da Medicalização Da Reprodução,” Revista Gênero 6, no. 1 (2006): 213–24. 65 Gisele Sanglard, “A Construção Dos Espaços de Cura No Brasil: Entre a Caridade e a Medicalização,” Revista Esboços 13, no. 16 (2006): 11–33. 66 The Council of Medicine is the organization responsible for regulating the exercise of medicine. 67 Almeida, “Atos Dos Bons Samaritanos; Giumbelli, “Espiritismo e Medicina.” VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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case was suspended for lack of evidence.68 The country’s leading television station released the reports denouncing Barth and made it clear that only charlatans propose alternative (not complementary) treat-
ments to official medicine: “And now a serious denunciation of healers: patients
would have died after being convinced by a priest to leave the hospital and adhere to an alternative treatment.”69 In the video, the CRM-MT vice-president, Dr. Ar-
lan de Azevedo Ferreira, affirms: “What was informed was that there was a priest offering a substitute and curative treatment for the disease.”70 The reporter gathered anonymous testimonies of patients and family members: “He spoke like this: either
you stop [the official medicine treatment] or I do not cure your son. I guarantee I will heal him, but you must stop chemotherapy. Because it is chemotherapy that is going to kill your son.”71 Barth’s lawyer was asked by the reporter precisely about his requirement that people abandon other healing practices, to which he responded: “At no time, to anyone, did the priest, or anyone who uses BiosHealth, recommend abandoning conventional treatment.”72
These denunciations were reprinted by various newspapers: In his defense, in the lawsuit filed by the CRM (Regional Council of Medicine)
of Mato Grosso, Father Renato Roque Barth maintained the conviction that the urine-based potion that he produces cures cancer and AIDS, among other illnesses. The council accuses him of medical charlatanism (curandeirismo).73
BiosHealth offers an array of alternative treatments including the ingestion of
urine to cure diabetes and promote the detoxification of the body; BiosHealth 68 João Inácio Wenzel, “Deixem o Padre Trabalhar,” Revista IHU On-Line, February 28, 2011, http:// www.ihu.unisinos.br/173-noticias/noticias-2011/41031-deixem-o-padre-trabalhar. 69 Marcelo Canellas, “E Agora Uma Denúncia Grave de Curandeirismo,” Fantástico (Rio de Janeiro, February 2011), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD1mf6huGIw&t=39s. 70 Canellas, “E Agora Uma Denúncia Grave de Curandeirismo.” 71 Canellas, “E Agora Uma Denúncia Grave de Curandeirismo.” 72 Canellas, “E Agora Uma Denúncia Grave de Curandeirismo.” 73 Paulo Pes, “Padre Continua a Defender Que Poção à Base de Urina Cura Câncer,” Paulo Pes Site, November 26, 2010, https://www.paulopes.com.br/2010/11/padre-continua-defender-que-pocao-base.html#.XsQfKzlv-Yl. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
Juliano F. Almeida | 47
also promotes special diets that involve eating clay and medicinal herbs.74 As can be seen from the above extracts, the fact that Father Barth prescribes
treatment involving the ingestion of urine seems to have intensified the polemics. Getting to know the details of this healing practice allows us to make links with
the other healing practices addressed here. The Brazilian Association of Popular Health (ABRASP), an association founded by Renato Barth to bring together
health agents who spread the BiosHealth method in all regions of Brazil, presents in its website a piece on urination therapy written by Áton Inoue, Barth’s mentor in the field of BiosHealth.75 The piece defines urine as “sacred water” and suggests that there is a similarity between urine and amniotic fluid:
Let us consider the case of the fetus, which grows inside sac of the uterus called
amniotic fluid [sic]. The fetus grows by taking a daily amount of amniotic fluid. Urine is like amniotic fluid in its contents. Furthermore, according to studies on fetuses, the last few months they are urinating 500 milliliters daily and taking almost the same amount of their own urine (amniotic fluid). This fact is
enough to argue that urine is not a dirty thing. If God prepares the healthiest and most favorable conditions for a new life to be born, how would it be pos-
sible to put fetuses in a sea of amnion urine? God already knew of course that urine is the holy water. The idea that urine is dirty is only a result of education
and culture in our modern society, which is very much linked to economic interests against it.
However, the therapeutic use of urine would entail other parallel curative actions. Inoue concludes that urine intake should be associated with a transformation of
diet and the practice of fasting: “The foundation of Urinotherapy is diet-fasting. If you do not change the diet, the urine always comes out ugly and you cannot ex-
pect the desirable effects.”76 According to the booklet of a course in Bioenergetics 74 Pollyana Araújo, “Juiz Determina Que Denúncias Do CRM Contra Padre de MT Sejam Apuradas,” G1 MT, May 23, 2011, http://g1.globo.com/mato-grosso/noticia/2011/05/juiz-determina-que-denuncias-do-crm-contra-padre-de-mt-sejam-apuradas.html. 75 ABRASP, “Biosaúde Brasil,” 2020, http://www.biosaudebrasil.org/. 76 Áton Inoue, “Urina: Uma Mestra Brilhante Para Nossa Vida!,” ABRASP Bio Saúde, n.d., http://www. biosaudebrasil.org/tratamentos/#uri. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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Figure 1: BiosHealth Mandala Source: ABRASP course booklet.
promoted by ABRASP in Rondonópolis (Mato Grosso State), in mid-May 2015, the definition of fasting is not limited to the restriction of some foods or periods without food intake. It also includes eliminating the habits of watching TV, playing video games, surfing the Internet, and gossiping. This process of transforming one’s
habits is synthesized in a figure called the “BiosHealth Mandala” (Figure 1). The
figure presents a circuit that includes five moments: 1) use of medicinal plants to
complete the “detoxification” and promote a “disinfection”; 2) use of urine through intake, applications, massages, washes and poultices, which would increase immune
defence and generate “new energy”; 3) working out; 4) “Home therapies” to control pain and illness and 5) diet with abstinence of coffee, meat, salt and an abundance
of vegetables and fruits for “detoxification.” Once again, the production of a “new man” is at stake through the transformation of his habits.
Nature is the source of healing in the practices promoted by Father Barth as well.
ABRASP booklet states: “If nature heals everything, we don’t need anything else.” Barth suggests the use of “natural treatments only”: medicinal plants, clay, natural
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Juliano F. Almeida | 49
oils, and urine, which would be reserved for “more serious cases.” The three religious
leaders denounce both the pharmaceutical industry and the system that produces medical experts and officials. They affirm that the doctors do not seek to cure but
rather to increase their laboratories' profits. Zago77 denounces: “Once the illness is
cured, the rich source of money would be lost.” Wendling78 adverts: “Remember: if medicines cured, we would not have sick people nor illnesses…”. In an inter-
view to the reporter Canellas,79 Barth prophesied the end of the pharmaceutical
industry due to the advance of alternative medicines, suggesting that the industry is not interested in the elimination of the disease: “[Doctors] will have to look for
another job, right? When there are no more sick people [their source of work ends]. The patient who keeps the pharmacy, the pharmacist, keeps the doctors, keeps the hospitals, and keeps medical universities.” Complementarily, the three religious
leaders recommend the use of elements of nature, understood as created by God and therefore efficient. These elements include Zago’s aloe, other “plants of God,”80
and human body fluids such as urine. Following the rhythm of nature, considered a source of health, requires breaking with the manufactured, artificial, and industrial-
ized products, seen as responsible for disconnecting the human animal from nature.
“Gradually, I understood that I was ordained to defend weak and oppressed people, not the bottle and medicines,” declares Wendling,81 in statement that is a pun in
Portuguese. The ABRASP website states: “The slavery in which people live is a tragedy: their whole life is tied to doctors or therapists and boxes of medicine.”82
Moreover, these religious leaders also recommended the abandonment of foods that were “invented by man,” such as ham and canned food, which the ABRASP’s booklet defines as biocides, i.e., “food that destroys life.” Zago suggests to his 77 Zago, Câncer Tem Cura!, 10. 78 Wendling, A Vida Cura a Vida, 33. 79 Canellas, “E Agora Uma Denúncia Grave de Curandeirismo.” 80 Wendling, Cuidando Da Vida Com as Plantas de Deus. 81 Wendling, A Vida Cura a Vida, 27. 82 ABRASP, “Biosaúde Brasil." The three religious leaders are formed by the Catholic liberation theology and they are committed to empowering the poor, which can be noticed by Zago’s preference for a “simple” and “poor” recipe, as well as by the fact that Wendling thinks his priesthood’s reason is to defend oppressed people. The mention of slavery in ABRASP’s website is also related to the Catholic liberation theology. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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parishioners avoiding “refined factory-made products.” He argues that they can be more elegant, but also more “damaging for health”:
[…] the more elegant-looking, refined factory in use due to the more elegantlooking, refined factory-made products, often stocked on shelves in nice
packaging, past their sell-by date, damaging for health, considered to be carcinogenic.83
This critique engenders significant tensions. Often, however, the most conflictual
part of these interactions is diminished by the ability of the Catholic Church to incorporate a disparate diversity of practices.84 Therefore, it should not be a reason for
surprise the fact that the Catholic Church enables the introjection of procedures, notions and practices.85 The trajectory of the BiosHealth method spread by Father
Barth points to this capacity of the Church to encompass diversity. The circulation of this method has crossed several distinct systems of thought. The method was
created by the Japanese doctor, Yoshiaki Omura, who lives in the USA. According to the ABRASP website, Father Barth learned this method with the above-mentioned doctor Aton Inoue, in Nicaragua.86
Zago’s relationship with medical diagnosis seems to be similar. As a critic of medicalization, the friar also undermines the relevance of this element of contemporary
official medicine. The growth of the importance of diagnostic medicine has been
highlighted by research, whether quantitative87 or qualitative.88 In some way, the
friar reflects this process by recommending tests to verify if the disease has been overcome. In doing so, Zago incorporates concepts of health, disease, and cure. He includes among the elements that urged him to spread the formula of aloe the fact that he observed cures attested to by medical examinations:
83 Zago, Câncer Tem Cura!, 49. 84 Almeida, “Atos Dos Bons Samaritanos.” 85 Almeida; Giumbelli, “Espiritismo e Medicina.” 86 ABRASP, “Biosaúde Brasil.” 87 Leandro Ortigoza Martins, “O Segmento Da Medicina Diagnóstica No Brasil,” Revista da Faculdade de Ciências Médicas de Sorocaba 16, no. 3 (2014): 139–45. 88 Almeida, “Atos Dos Bons Samaritanos.” JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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I have had the joy of seeing tangible results with my own eyes, confirmed by the patients’ families and, above all, by medical tests—definite solutions to the problem—considered a lost cause if ordinary procedures had been followed.89
When incorporating conceptions, practices or procedures, Catholicism does not
always simply introject them. In fact, sometimes Catholicism even subverts these practices.90 By pointing out that medical diagnostic examinations demonstrate the efficacy of the aloe formula, Zago makes official medicine validate its method and even highlights the action of God, creator of aloe, in the world. The incorporation
of the official medicine grammar is thus reversed as a sign of the power of God, which makes the distinction between alternative and complementary therapies more complex.
Another mechanism to accommodate this tension with the process of medicalization seems to be the so-called “inner healing,” a practice repeatedly offered by
religious leaders in Catholic courses and retreats in contemporary Brazil, especially those linked to the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. This type of healing practice
seems to define domains and relate the religious to the spiritual, mental, and psy-
chological, leaving the human bodies and their materiality to academic and official medicine. The same approach is observed in the healing practices of the medi-
umistic religions in Brazil.91 Silveira92 states that actors linked to “inner healing” delegitimize other methods with arguments from official medicine:
The most institutionalized charismatic curators (linked to groups and communities) use traditional medicine to delegitimize therapies, opposing what they
call “spiritual contamination” of healing practices linked to the New Age, Spiritism and Eastern religions (floral, regression to past lives, yoga and others).93
To some extent, the practice of “inner healing” completes a possible panorama of healing practices of contemporary Brazilian Catholicism. It is not by chance that 89 Zago, Câncer Tem Cura!, 54. 90 Almeida, “Atos Dos Bons Samaritanos"; Giumbelli, “Espiritismo e Medicina.” 91 Giumbelli, “Espiritismo e Medicina.” 92 Silveira, “A Cura Interior No Catolicismo Carismático." 93 Silveira, “A Cura Interior No Catolicismo Carismático," 53. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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its practitioners have a more daily experience of miracles.94 On the contrary, Zago,
Wendling and Barth dissociate themselves from the idea of miraculous cures. “When you understand the full potential of Aloe, you will understand that is not
a miracle in the true sense of the word, but something found in the nature, created by God,” says Zago.95 The practices of the three priests are based on actions
that are oriented toward the material world. On the other hand, both their practices and their “inner healing” are based on the cultivation of the self, even if the
consequences of their practices have taken different paths. This diversity of paths, either towards materiality or spirituality, underlines once again the porosity of the Catholic universe.
CONCLUSION This article sought to analyze the healing practices of three Catholic leaders to
draw an overview of Catholic healing practices in contemporary Brazil. The theoretical-methodological option of investigating members of the Catholic Church hierarchy was defined as a function of the growing importance of the institution in
Brazilian Catholicism, and also as a way of promoting a certain symmetry, to use
Latour’s term,96 of the literature, which usually presents ethnographies and research on popular variations of Catholicism.
With this starting point, the analyses of the phytotherapy proposed by Zago, the holistic therapy designed by Wendling, and the BiosHealth method disseminated
by Barth made it possible to perceive the crossing between environmentalization and healing practices of Catholic priests. In this way, health is identified as being in tune with “nature” and it is in the “natural” elements that cures for illnesses must be
sought. As part of the encounter of a certain self-cultivation with the cultivation of the environment, which is recurrent in the world, and particularly in contemporary Brazil, therapies populated by environmentalization propose ascetic attitudes and concerns with the environmental question.97 According to Zago, there is no point
in using aloe grown in places where there is use of pesticides or taking the formula without changing your lifestyle.
94 Silveira, “A Cura Interior No Catolicismo Carismático.” JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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This link between self-cultivation with the cultivation of the environment within Catholicism promotes a unique updating of biblical culture that affects the lives
of Catholic leaders and faithful. The New Testament narrative of the creation of a “new man” who dies to sin and is reborn with Christ, also resurfaces as the emergence of a subject concerned with the environment. According to Wendling, it
is forbidden to speak of the God of Life while poisoning the garden around the chapel. This transformation entails changes in environmentalism promoted by Catholicism and vice versa. Environmental pollution gets close to the idea of sin98 and nature becomes idyllic, a gift from God.
Medicalization is another element that characterizes healing practices of the three religious leaders here observed. The result of a long historical process, now consolidated in Brazil, implicates the medical organization in almost all healing prac-
tices.99 Barth and his BiosHealth method felt more intensely the effects of the medical hegemony.
The doctors’ conceptions of health, illness, procedures, and examinations are ac-
commodated by Catholic priests in the practices they promote. In fact, it is possible to verify a large exchange of notions and practices, which puts into question strict
divisions of realities. However, incorporation often implies a subversion, making the distinction between complementary and alternative health practices more
complex. This is what reveals Zago’s appreciation for medical examinations, which become witnesses to God’s action in the world.
Other healing practices of Brazilian Catholicism establish another relationship
with official medicine. “Inner healing,” for example, proposes a separation between spiritual and material domains and restricts its work to spiritual, mental, and psy-
chological spheres. Despite this attempt of separation, “inner healing” practices
might end up blending spiritual and material domains, which could be addressed by future studies.
98 Recently, Pope Francis addressed this topic due to the Amazon Synod and suggested the idea of “ecological sin” "A Igreja Deve Confessar Os 'Pecados Ecológicos.' Sacerdotes Sejam Santos," Vatican News, October 8, 2019, https://www.vaticannews.va/pt/vaticano/news/2019-10/sinodo-amazonico-igreja-deve-condessar-pecados-ecologicos.html. 99 Weber, “As Artes de Curar.” VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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I also highlighted that the “inner healing” and the environmentalization share the valorization of self-cultivation. The two practices show distinct developments of
the same flow. This diversity seems to reinforce the porous character of Catholicism and its ability to bring together disparate conceptions and practices.100 It should be noted that such inclusivity is not only observed when focusing on popular Catholicism, but also when investigating the practices of members of the Catholic
hierarchy. This points to the existence of official variants of religion. Such a conclusion seems to ratify the importance of the Latour’s project of symmetrizing research in anthropology.
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“Wish” or prayer ribbons left in front of the Nossa Senhora Bonfim (Our Lady of a Good Death) church in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. Photos by Thomas M. Landy.
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CECILIA L. MARIZ W Â N I A A M É L I A B E L C H I O R M E S Q U I TA MICHELLE PIRACIABA ARAÚJO
Young Brazilian Catholics Reaffiliating: A Case Study in the City of Campos, RJ, Brazil 01/03/2021
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Cecília L. Mariz is full Professor of the Department of Sociology of the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro UERJ). Her PhD in sociology is from Boston University (1989). She has been researching Catholicism and Pentecostalism in Brazil and has published several articles about these themes in academic journals in Brazil and in other countries. She published the book Coping with Poverty: Pentecostal and Base Communities in Brazil (Temple University Press, 1994) and edited books in collaboration with other authors. Recently she has been 01/03/2021
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/leomariz%40hotmail.com?projector=1
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developing research on young people's religious practices. 1/1
Wânia Amélia Belchior Mesquita is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Graduate Program in Political Sociology at the State University of the North Fluminense Darcy Ribeiro. Her PhD in sociology is from the Research Institute of Rio de Janeiro SBI (2003). She was awarded a Capes scholarship to spend a sabbatical year at ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (2015). She is the leader of the Urban and Regional Studies Research Group. With an emphasis on the sociology of religion and
01/03/2021
urban sociology, she has published on themes including: religiosity, Pentecostalism, social
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inequalities, youth and sociability. Michelle Piraciaba Araújo received her master’s degree in political sociology (2015) and her bachelor’s degree in social sciences (2013) from the Universidade Estadual do Norte
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/fotos/FMfcgxwLsScxxSvBmSHdWhQccWQtpnvZ?projector=1&messagePartId=0.2
Fluminense Darcy Ribeiro. In her master’s thesis she sought to understand the religious 1/1
practices of young Catholics in Campos dos Goytacazes who participated in the World Youth Day that took place in 2013 in Rio de Janeiro. She is currently a sociology teacher at Rio de Janeiro State public high school in the Campos of Goytacazes area.
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INTRODUCTION
A
lthough its meaning has varied throughout history within distinct cul-
tures and according to economic and social contexts, the term “youth” can be understood to be a category comprising individuals who are no
longer children but not yet fully integrated into society as adults.1 All peoples and
societies need to socialize children to maintain the social community and facilitate cultural reproduction. On the other hand, inevitably, new adults do not incorporate
everything that previous generations try to transmit. Some practices and values will be abandoned by new generations, while rising adults will also inevitably engage in
creation and innovation. Knowing more about the prevailing trends among youth
can provide some idea of their societies’ possible futures. This type of knowledge can help social scientists understand the dynamics of changing societies; in addition, this research can aid the leaders of religious movements in societies un-
dergoing rapid change, especially since these leaders increasingly state a desire to
establish relationships with the younger sections of their faith communities that are fomenting this change.
Sociological literature on contemporary European young people’s religious lives
identifies autonomy in relation to their churches’ teachings as this group’s defining
characteristic and value. Young people are described as flexible and plural in relation to religious values and practices. Social scientists have argued that a process
of deregulation or deinstitutionalization of the religious—evident in subjects’ in-
creasingly loose ties with religious institutions—is growing apace in contemporary European society, including among European young people.2 The weakening of the institutions has led to diversity in the field of religious practice, and authors such as
Danièle Hervieu-Léger, Grace Davie, and Enzo Pace have argued that individuals’ preferences determine participation in rituals.3 Describing the European religious 1 2 3
Philippe Ariès, História Social da Criança e da Família (São Paulo: LTC, 1981); Pierre Bourdieu, Questões de Sociologia (Rio de Janeiro: Marco Zero, 1983), 112-121. Danièle Hervieu-Léger, O Peregrino e o Convertido (Petrópolis: Vozes, 2008). Hervieu-Léger, O Peregrino; Grace Davie, “Believing Without Belonging: Is This the Future of Religion in Britain?” Social Compass 37, no. 4 (December 1990): 455-469; Enzo Pace, "Religião e Globalização," in Globalização e Religião, ed. Ari Pedro Oro and Carlos Alberto Steil (Petrópolis: Vozes, 1997), 25-42.
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62 | Young Brazilian Catholics Reaffiliating: A Case Study in the City of Campos, RJ, Brazil
milieu with respect to Christian churches, these authors call attention to the predominance of a so-called “religion à la carte,” arguing that individuals increasingly
choose what to believe and/or to practice independent of institutional rules and regulations.4
A growing body of research about emerging religious orientations among Brazilian young people is drawing similar conclusions.5 These authors point out that when young identify themselves as religious, they tend to have looser ties to institutions
and more diverse beliefs and practices than their parents’ or grandparents’ genera-
tions. Their conclusions were drawn mostly from qualitative research or survey data about specific groups, like university students, so they do not offer evidence that these conclusions apply to the whole population. Indeed, data on young people’s
religious identities reveals a growing group of “nones” (those with no religion). The
2010 Brazilian census indicates that the proportion of young people (15-29) without religion (9.8%) is higher than in the Brazilian population as a whole (8.0%).6 But data also shows a higher number of Protestant/Evangelical young people. A
more recent survey (2013) found that 11.5% of the young people interviewed (16-
24) said they did not have a religion, 37.6% said they were Protestant/Evangelical, 44.2% Catholic, and 6.7% said “other religions.”7 This research, however, did not provide data on young people’s religious practices. A 2016 DataFolha study is the
only to offer statistics on this topic, and revealed that people aged 16-24 attended
Church religious services the most. Since this study did not provide a table that 4 5
6 7
Davie, “Believing Without Belonging." See, among others, in Regina Novaes, "Juventude, Religião e Espaço Público: Exemplos ‘Bons para Pensar’ Tempos e Sinais,” Religião e Sociedade, no. 32 (2012): 184-208, https://www.scielo. br/pdf/rs/v32n1/a09v32n1.pdf; Solange Rodrigues, “Como a Juventude Brasileira se Relaciona com a Religião?” Observatório Jovem UFF, last modified June 12, 2007. Accessed September 1, 2020, http://www.observatoriojovem.uff.br/?q=materia/como-juventude-brasileira-se-relaciona-com-religião; Jorge Cláudio Ribeiro Jr., “Os Universitários e a Transcendência: Visão Geral, Visão Local,” REVER - Revista de Estudos da Religião, no. 2 (2004): 79-119. https://www.pucsp.br/ rever/rv2_2004/p_ribeiro.pdf; Regina Novaes, “Os Jovens ‘Sem Religião’: Ventos Secularizantes, ‘Espírito de Época’ e Novos Sincretismos: Notas Preliminares,” Estudos Avançados 18, no. 52 (2004): 321-330, https://www.scielo.br/pdf/ea/v18n52/a20v1852.pdf Regina Novaes, “Jovens Sem Religião: Sinais de Outros Tempos,” in Religiões em Movimento: O Censo de 2010, ed. Faustino Teixeira and Renata Meneze (Petrópolis: Vozes, 2013), 175-190. From Data Popular available at G1 Globo Portal, http://g1.globo.com/jornada-mundial-da-juventude/2013/noticia/2013/07/442-dos-jovens-entre-16-e-24-anos-sao-catolicos-diz-data-popular.html. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
Cecilia L. Mariz, Wânia Amélia Belchior Mesquita, and Michelle Piraciaba Araújo | 63
cross-matched age, religious practice, and religious identity, we cannot evaluate how
religious identity affected young people’s practice. This research shows that more Protestant/Evangelicals are more likely (87%) than Catholics (54%) to declare that
they attend church once a week or more. Despite being lower than Protestant/ Evangelical church attendance, this proportion of Catholic church attendance in Brazil is much higher than it used to be in the last century.8
Over the last century, data about Brazilian Catholics in general, both adults and
young people, has indicated low rates of participation in weekly Mass and the sacraments. Twentieth century socio-anthropological literature on Catholicism in
Brazil described Brazilian Catholics as more focused on devotion to the saints, making vows, and going on pilgrimages (journeys, for instance, to shrines at Apare-
cida and Juazeiro do Norte) and special occasions of festivals and processions (such as the Círio of Nazaré procession in Pará State). In contrast, they were less inter-
ested in institutionally controlled rites and practices, leading to the conclusion that Brazilian Catholicism is syncretic and flexible, especially when compared to European and North American Catholicism.9 This characteristic has been changing as
the number of Brazilian Catholics falls, with some sociologists of religion devel-
oping survey data that shows growing Mass attendance among those who identify
as Catholics.10 Our research, based on ethnographic and statistical data collected during World Youth Day (WYD) 2013 in Rio de Janeiro, not only draws similar conclusions but also provides greater texture and detail to accounts of changing attitudes among young Brazilian Catholics.11 8
From DataFolha, available at https://datafolha.folha.uol.com.br/opiniaopublica/2016/12/1845231-44-dos-evangelicos-sao-ex-catolicos.shtml 9 Faustino Teixeira discusses this literature in “Faces do Catolicismo Brasileiro Contemporâneo,” Revista USP, no. 67 (Setembro/Novembro 2005): 14-23. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.23169036.v0i67p14-23. Pierre Sanchis, “As Religiões dos Brasileiros,” Horizonte Revista de Estudos Teológicos e Ciência da Religião, 1, no. 2 (1997): 28-43, http://periodicos.pucminas.br/index.php/ horizonte/article/view/412/398 10 Cecilia Mariz, “Catolicismo No Brasil Contemporâneo, Reavivamento e Diversidade,” in As Religiões No Brasil: Continuidade e Rupturas, ed. Faustino Teixeira and Renata Menezes (Petrópolis: Vozes 2006), 53-68; Carlos Alberto Steil and Rodrigo Toniol, “Strong Church, Weakened Catholicism: Transformations in Brazilian Catholicism,” Journal of Global Catholicism 5, no. 2 (Spring 2021): 4-29.. 11 Cecília Mariz and Paulo Gracino Jr., “Novas Configurações da Religião no Século XXI: Um Inventário Sobre Jovens Participantes em Eventos Religiosos de Massa,” Final Research Report: VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
64 | Young Brazilian Catholics Reaffiliating: A Case Study in the City of Campos, RJ, Brazil
During her 11 months of participant observation among Rio 2013 WYD volunteers (people that worked organizing the event months in advance), Luciana Gonzalez observed that young Brazilian volunteers were much more attached to official
Catholic teaching, rites and doctrine than foreign WYD volunteers, mainly Europeans.12 A substantial portion of this Brazilian volunteer group claimed that they
participate in Mass every day while the foreign volunteers never made such a claim. Gonzalez interviewed both groups and noticed that foreign volunteers were older and more educated than the Brazilian group, and less attached to ritual practice.
When comparing Brazilian WYD ordinary participants, also called “pilgrims,” with foreigners, survey data revealed that 74.5% of the Brazilians stated that they go to church more than once a week.13 Among foreign participants this proportion
falls to 48.7% and it would fall even further were we to exclude the Latin American respondents. The percentage of non-Brazilian Latin American young people
that go to church two or more times in a week was lower than those of Brazilians, but higher than those from Europe, the United States, and Canada. This does
not mean that the latter do not actively practice, since most of them go to Mass weekly: indeed, when we analyzed all together the frequency of once a week and
more, the percentages are closer. Even so, Brazilians still stand out for their greater
assiduousness: 93.6%, compared to 88.3% among foreign participants. These data pointed to an opposite reality contrasting to what was described for most of the
20th century. As mentioned above, researchers on Catholicism pointed out lower
participating rates among Brazilian Catholics when comparing with Europeans
and North Americans. Also, it surprised us because previous WYD data collected, such Singleton’s study that we discuss below, revealed that host country pilgrims stated that they go to church less than those who came from abroad.
Fundação de Apoio à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro/FAPERJ, 2018 (not published); Marcelo Camurça, “Autonomia ou Identificação Orgânica Entre Juventude Católica e Instituição Igreja? Uma Comparação Entre Estudos Sobre as Juventudes Católicas no Brasil e na França,” Polifonia do Sagrado, ed. Péricles Andrade (São Cristóvão: Editora da Universidade Federal de Sergipe, 2015), 15-29. 12 Luciana Thaís Villa Gonzalez, “Estar no Mundo, Sem Ser do Mundo: Alguns Casos da Jornada Mundial da Juventude (JMJ) Rio 2013,” Doctoral Dissertation in Social Sciencies, State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) 2016. 13 Mariz and Gracino, " Novas Configurações da Religião no Século XXI." JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
Cecilia L. Mariz, Wânia Amélia Belchior Mesquita, and Michelle Piraciaba Araújo | 65
During the 2008 WYD in Sydney, Australia, Singleton observed that young Cath- World Youth Day 2013
in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
olics arriving from other countries declared that they frequented church more of- Photo by Michelle ten than those from the host country.14 Singleton’s explanation was that traveling abroad to a WYD undoubtedly requires more conviction than attending a WYD held in one’s own country. However, this hypothesis cannot explain the higher
practice among Brazilians and Latin Americans in general observed at WYD
2013. Luciana Gonzalez suggests that young people from wealthier countries have
more access to educational and leisure activities and so less time to go to church as often as those from poorer countries.15 Finke, Stark, and Iannaconne’s "religious market theory" offers another possible explanation for Brazilian Catholics’ increas-
ing frequency of Mass attendance; Catholics are now competing in a religious market with Evangelical churches in Brazil.16 According to this theory, contexts
with a higher level of religious competition result in greater religious fervor and practice among each of the competing groups. Both hypotheses above (González’s and market theory) explain only part of this phenomenon because they do not
take into account micro-sociological events that could explain individuals’ inner 14 Andrew Singleton, “The Impact of World Youth Day on Religious Practice,” Journal of Beliefs & Values 3232, no. 1 (May 2011): 57-68, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13617672. 2011.549310. 15 Gonzalez, "Estar no Mundo." 16 Lemuel Guerra, “As Influências da Lógica Mercadológica sobre as Recentes Transformações na Igreja Católica,” REVER Revista de Estudos da Religião 2, no. 3 (2003): 21-23, https://www.pucsp. br/rever/rv2_2003/p_guerra.pdf. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
Piraciaba de Araújo.
66 | Young Brazilian Catholics Reaffiliating: A Case Study in the City of Campos, RJ, Brazil
World Youth Day 2013 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photo by Michelle Piraciaba de Araújo.
motivations for being actively engaged in Catholicism. Various questions need to be answered. How did these young Catholics become so active? Could the WYD
event, including the previous years of WYD expectation and preparation in Brazil, be responsible for the young people’s inclination to declare high church attendance?
When we turn to the WYD survey data on young Brazilian Catholics’ religious
practice, several other questions arise: Do they participate at Catholic Church ac-
tivities as much as they claim? Were they always active as they are now? Surveys are not especially useful researching tool for addressing these kinds of questions. To
pursue these inquiries, we turn to qualitative data collected through a case study of a “WYD caravan” in 2013. Interviews and participant observation were conducted
with a group of young people who came from a city neighboring Rio de Janeiro
to participate in the WYD. This caravan, a term used in the different editions of WYD to refer to this type of pilgrims' traveling group, was organized in a parish
of the diocese of Campos de Goytacazes, based in the city of the same name in the north of Rio de Janeiro state. The decision to do a case study of a caravan from this
diocese was pragmatically motivated: two of the researchers involved live and work in the city of Campos. As well as traveling on this caravan and interviewing its members, one of the authors participated in and observed the distinct activities in WYD in the city of Rio de Janeiro, as well as the activities of the Days in Dioceses
(DID) in the city of Campos. Our article analyses excerpts from these interviews.17 17 At WYD time, Michelle Piraciaba de Araújo was working on her dissertation for her MA in Political JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
Cecilia L. Mariz, Wânia Amélia Belchior Mesquita, and Michelle Piraciaba Araújo | 67
CAMPOS DE GOYTACAZES: THE DIOCESE, THE CITY, AND THE WYD PARTICIPANTS As happened in practically all Catholic parishes and schools of diverse towns and cities in Brazil, the parish of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Sagrado Coração de Jesus) in the town of Campos de Goytacazes (usually known simply as Campos), organized
and sent a caravan of young people to WYD in Rio de Janeiro. According to the communication coordination team of the Campos WYD Organization Diocesan Committee, approximately 1,000 young people from this diocese participated in
WYD, and almost everyone traveled in groups or caravans, as informants from the diocese explained.18
Before we advance further into this study, it is important to highlight that the city
of Campos of Goytacazes is known in Brazil among older Catholics as the base
of operations for a traditionalist Catholic group and an ex-communicated bishop. But younger generations seem not to know this, as this case study shows: young
practicing Catholics in the dioceses of Campos were not aware of how the conflict
occurred in the 1980s. Nevertheless, there are still in Campos today two prelacies, mutually independent, each with a bishop and each guiding its clergy and worship-
ers along distinct lines of Catholicism. Though both are now obedient to the Pope, it was not always so. On the one hand, there is the diocese of Campos, which was Sociology from UENF in 2015 under the supervision of Wânia Belchior Mesquita. In Rio de Janeiro in 2013, as occurred in all the previous WYDs, a large proportion of the participants arrived in Brazil to take part in the activities of the DID that were supposedly held at all dioceses of the host country, so it happened at Campos de Goytacazes. 18 With a population of a little over 500,000 inhabitants, this city is in the north of Rio de Janeiro state, 275 km from the RJ state capital (the Rio de Janeiro city). VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
Sagrado Coração de Jesus (Sacred Heart of Jesus) in the town of Campos de Goytacazes sent a caravan of young people to World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro.
68 | Young Brazilian Catholics Reaffiliating: A Case Study in the City of Campos, RJ, Brazil
created in 1922 and whose jurisdiction is defined territorially. The group with whom we conducted field research belongs to this diocese. On the other hand, there is the
Apostolic Administration, whose jurisdiction is not linked to the geographic territory of the city of Campos. This latter group adheres to a pre-Vatican II Catholicism.
To understand this situation, it is necessary to recount the conflicts that emerged following the Second Vatican Council. Dom Antônio de Castro Mayer was bishop of Campos from 1949 to 1981, and led opposition to the aggiornamento of Vatican
II that was allied with Dom Marcel Lefebvre.19 D. Dom Mayer never accepted the changes of Vatican II and did not adopt them in his diocese. When he had to retire
in 1981 and his successor began to introduce innovations from the Second Vatican Council, a conflict broke out. Some priests and laypeople preferred traditionalism and refused to obey the new bishop. These priests, who would later have to leave
their former parishes following a court order, were supported by the emeritus bishop Dom Mayer, who founded and led the São João Maria Vianney Sacerdotal
Union. At this time, Dom Mayer was closer to French bishop Dom Marcel Lefeb-
vre and, along with him, would challenge Pope John Paul II in 1988. That year both were excommunicated.20 In 2009, when both Lefebvre and Mayer were already
dead, Pope Benedict XVI reincorporated the São João Maria Vianney Sacerdotal Union into the Catholic Church, transforming it into an Apostolic Administration
directly dependent on the Vatican and with permission to celebrate the sacraments in accordance with a liturgical rite predating the changes of Vatican II.
The 2013 WYD event preparation seems to have helped to bring the two dioces-
es closer. The Apostolic Administration engaged in WYD events together with
the Campos dioceses. During the Missionary Week, which took place in Campos
prior to WYD in Rio and was called Pré-Jornadas, or Days in the Dioceses (DID), the Apostolic Administration hosted a special program: The Administrator Bishop celebrated Mass following the Pius V rite. Through observations made during this 19 Zelia Seiblitz, "O Conflito na Diocese de Campos," in Catolicismo: Modernidade e Radição, ed. Pierre Sanchis (São Paulo: Edições Loyola, 1992), 251-303. 20 João Geraldo dos Santos Jr., “Sociedade Brasileira de Defesa da Tradição, Família e Propriedade (TFP): Um Movimento Ultramontano na Igreja Católica do Brasil?” Master's Thesis in Science of Religion, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2008, https://tede2.pucsp.br/ handle/handle/2060. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
Cecilia L. Mariz, Wânia Amélia Belchior Mesquita, and Michelle Piraciaba Araújo | 69
period, we identified that in the city there exist not just two types of Mass and two
bishops, but also two types of young people, who differ through their form of dress. For the young people of the diocese, there are no restrictions on what they wear. In the Apostolic Administration, however, men should wear jeans and T-shirts, while women should wear a skirt or dress, avoiding jeans, not just in the Masses but also day to day. Our project did not intend to get data from the traditionalist group
linked to the Apostolic Administration; nevertheless, it was important to speak
about the existence of this group in Campos because WYD preparations and DID
events in Campos created opportunities for intensive encounters between these two groups after decades during which they had moved apart.
For the 2013 WYD, the two bishops and their respective followers joined forces to
organize the Missionary Week, which took place in Campos. A program involving the two Catholic bishops seems to have been a new experience for the Catholics
of Campos. The young people from the Sagrado Coração parish, being part of the
official diocese that accepts Vatican II, knew the existence of the Apostolic Administration in the city, but not more than that. They knew almost nothing about
the conflicts nor about the traditionalist proposal. The traditionalist Catholics in
Campos are not very numerous; they have 14 parishes (including quasi-parishes), while the Campos diocese has 69 parishes.21
THE INTERVIEWS Despite being a wealthy oil-producing region, the city of Campos has various impoverished favelas (shanty towns) whose residents suffer from various structural
inequalities.22 Nevertheless, the parish to which the young people who participated in this research project belong has no favelas. Most young people in this group belonged to the Campos middle class, including the lower middle class. The majority
had white skin; none identified themselves as black. The group was composed of 21 Information taken from the site of the Apostolic Administration, accessed July 20, 2015, http:// www.adapostolica.org/historia/. 22 For more information about the city of Campos on these issues, see Vanessa Ribeiro, "Ação Social Pentecostal em uma Favela de Campos dos Goytacazes: A Parceria Entre um Projeto Social Evangélico e uma Organização Não Governamental." Phd diss., Programa de Pós- Graduação em Sociologia Política Universidade Estadual do Norte Fluminense (UENF), 2009 VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
70 | Young Brazilian Catholics Reaffiliating: A Case Study in the City of Campos, RJ, Brazil
six men and nine women between 15 and 25 years of age. They were all single and most of them were university students aged over 18, the exception being an adolescent girl of 15. The two oldest, aged 23 and 25, had already completed higher ed-
ucation and worked in a dental office and a pharmacy, respectively. The interviews that we discuss below were conducted some days after the WYD.
All members of the group declared themselves to be practicing Catholics. When
questioned about religious life in their natal families, all of them said that their
mothers and fathers were both Catholic, except for one young man, whose father did not identify as religious. Being Catholic, however, was not the same as prac-
ticing and not all the young people said that their parents practiced Catholicism. In being questioned about religion, therefore, they recognized the importance of a
Catholic family upbringing, given especially by the mother, as can be perceived in the comments of Pedro,23 Thamires, Daniel and Nina cited below:
I began to be Catholic because of my mother. Generally, people follow the religion of their parents, and my mother took me to church. [Pedro]
When I was small, I went to church because of mum. […] So, I was baptized and received first communion more because of my mother. But a little while later I began to acquire a taste for it. [Thamires]
I was presented to the Catholic Church from early on. I gradually learned about the things of the Church, the doctrine, so I was forming my faith in what I was learning. This comes from the cradle, since it was my mother who took me. [Daniel]
I came from a Catholic base. Although my parents do not frequent the church actively, participating in the movements, pastoral work, these things, my moth-
er would always go to church, to Masses, and always passed Catholic values on to me. So, these were things that were being cultivated since infancy. This shaped me as a Catholic. [Nina]
23 We have opted to refer to the interviewees by fictitious names. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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Despite the Catholic identity of the parents and consequent Catholic upbringing, the interviewees always emphasized that their religious practice and identity were the outcome of a personal choice. Those who reported experiencing a move away
from the Church emphatically emphasized this choice. One young man, Caio, states that until the age of 14 he practiced Catholicism in the same way as his parents: that is, he said he was Catholic but did not actually practice his faith and
religion. During this period, according to his recollections, he even became "in-
volved" with Spiritism, an Afro-Brazilian religious tradition with close historical
ties to Catholicism. Another young woman, Cora, reported that her parents did not practice Catholicism, and she spent time frequenting a Spiritist site. Both young people also commented that they moved closer to Catholicism after participating
in a Church-sponsored, weekend training course.24 Participation in the Adolescent
Youth on a Mission encounter ( Jovens Adolescentes em Missão or JOAM encounter), an event aimed at the 15-17 age range, was a landmark in Caio’s life, as he narrates below:25
I began to be Catholic for real, to practice Catholicism, when I took part in JOAM at 16. Before I didn’t care about going to church. It was then that I had my encounter with God. After the course, I began to frequent the youth group
and I received the Confirmation. Now I never fail to go to the Masses […]. It
was some friends from my school class, who had done the course and have "a walk (caminhada) within the church" who invited me to do the course. [Caio]
Caio was invited to attend by friends his age, a common occurrence. The moment of change for Cora occurred when she participated in what they call the Camp, a
course similar to JOAM but solely for those over the age of 18. Cora recounts that a female cousin invited her:
24 No interviewee talked about what happened on these courses, since one of the course rules is to keep secret what happens there. In this sense, these courses are similar to those run by other Catholic movements, like the international and very popular Cursillos de Cristandad (Christianity Courses) and other similar known in Brazil as Encontros de Jovens (Youth Encounters) and as Encontros de Casais (Couple Encounters), for example. 25 There is also an International Evangelical movement with a similar name: Youth with a Mission or YWAM. In Brazil they are known as Jovens com uma Missão or JOCUM. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
72 | Young Brazilian Catholics Reaffiliating: A Case Study in the City of Campos, RJ, Brazil
It was a cousin, who had done [the course] before and was beginning the
“walk,” who called on me to participate. It was in the Camp that I had a more
intimate experience with God and that I became increasingly keen on practic-
ing my religion, on doing the things that every Catholic should do. Before the course they spoke of God to me as though He were someone very distant. It
was afterwards that I had a real contact and I wanted to search and learn more.
For me God was far away. It was only afterwards that I felt who this God was. [Cora]
All of those who traveled on the researched caravan had participated on courses of the "Escola de Evangelização Santo André," or the Saint Andrew Evangelization School.26 Although few have experienced any distancing from Catholicism, most
of them reported having undergone a process of encounter with God resulting in
an intensification of the practice and what Teixeira would call "reaffiliation" to Catholicism. Their descriptions of their personal transformation are very similar to conversion accounts to a new religion.27
The objective of this youth evangelization project is, therefore, to stimulate inner
conversion and train evangelizing young people who can multiply this experience. Courses are therefore offered to distinct age groups and young people participated in several of them. The courses cited were Formação de Adolescentes Cristãos
or FAC (Formation of Christian Adolescents) for young people between 12 and 14; Jovens Adolescentes em Missão or JOAM (Adolescent Youths on a Mission)
between 15 and 17; and the Youth Camp for those over 18 years old. Despite not changing religions, these young Catholics who described experiencing an "en-
counter with God" went through in fact a conversion within their own religion. As in other conversion discourses, they narrate their religious trajectories with the
demarcation of a "before" and an "after" participating in the course. To different 26 The Escola de Evangelização Santo André (EESA) or Saint Andrew School of Evangelization is an international project that aims to train young evangelizers. For more information for this project in Brazil see https://eesabrasil.com.br/ 27 For instance, see the conversion accounts described by Clara Mafra, “Relatos Compartilhados: Experiências de Conversão ao Pentecostalismo Entre Brasileiros e Portugueses,” Mana [online] 6, no.1 (April 2000): 57-86, https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-93132000000100003. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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degrees, they comment on how
they became practicing Catholics. As well as participating in Masses
and groups for young Catholics, they are dedicated to the sacra-
ments, especially Confirmation (all of them were confirmed), and
frequently receive the Eucharist. After the short course or camp
promoted by Santo André School project, the majority would keep participating at regular encounters that stimulate the develop-
ment of affective ties that extend
to various spheres of life. These
young people begin do things
Screenshot from the
together. They go to shopping malls, beaches, and shows and do other activities website for Escola de together, becoming friends and thus mutually strengthening their faith and the Evangelização Santo connection to the Church.
As we have noted, following these courses and events that facilitated a personal en-
counter with God, those with whom we conducted research began to speak about a new life and a stronger tie to Catholicism.28
Since my birth, my mother showed me the path of God. But I was always too lazy to go to church, take part in things, but my mother always convinced me
to go. You know when your parents take you to church and you always slip outside and stay there chatting? So, that’s what I was like. Then about three 28 According to the Canadian site of the Saint Andrew School of Evangelization (https://sase.ca/ school-history-p12.php) this project , that has no connection to a specific movement of the Church, was “founded in 1980 in Chilpancingo, Mexico by José Prado Flores (a Catholic lay man), Bill Finke (a Pentecostal pastor) with Fathers Emiliano Tardiff and Ricardo Arganaraz.” The Pentecostal charismatic spirituality has an expressive importance in this group composed by a Pentecostal pastor and Tardiff who was well known in Dominican Republic and in the whole Charismatic Catholics Renewal World for his Holy Ghost healing gift. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
André, https://eesabrasil. com.br.
74 | Young Brazilian Catholics Reaffiliating: A Case Study in the City of Campos, RJ, Brazil
years ago I did JOAM, which means Adolescent Youth on a Mission. And
it was there that I had my personal encounter with God. I even spoke to my
mother: "Mum, it’s been three years that I was reborn for Christ." It was from
this personal encounter with God that I follow this life and practice my religion. [Karina]
Karina’s account, like the others we analyzed, emphasizes that her practice of Ca-
tholicism is a personal choice, although she recognizes the influence of her parents
in her dedication to Catholicism. Before JOAM led her to enter a new phase, her parents had motivated her to practice Catholicism while she was a child. This discourse of personal choice linked to an individual experience of contact with God
and conversion appears in the speech of all those interviewed, indicating that this is what is taught on the courses.
First, I began to be Catholic because my parents were and later through my
own choice. Living everything that you live, you know what is right and what is wrong. So, I chose to follow this religion. [Marcelo]
I already had something of a custom of going to Mass, those things. So, I spent some time not frequenting church because we moved to a new city. It was only
sometime later that I looked for a church and began to form part of a pastoral group, then I did a course, the FAC (…). I was confirmed [received the sacrament of Confirmation] and I went back to frequenting church, not because of my parents, as it had been before, but because I sought it. [Rafaela]
These young people claim that Catholicism ceased to be a religion in which they were raised and became a choice; their practice is an option. As children, they were
presented to the sacraments, such as baptism and first communion, and, conse-
quently, catechesis by their parents. During adolescence, through their own choice, they participated in retreats, courses and events created by the Church for young
people. Consequently, rather than being conformed to the religion of their upbringing, the young people we interviewed claim to have made their own choice
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through the encounter with God. Most of them declared they received the sacrament of Confirmation at this moment of their lives.
Among these young Catholics, we did not observe syncretic practices and beliefs, such as those linked to esotericism, Kardecist or Afro-Brazilian Spiritism. They do not accept practices that are widespread in Brazil, such as the use of shell divinization, orisha devotion, astral maps, and card reading. They also disavow com-
monplace beliefs like reincarnation. In one of the conversations among the young
caravan members while they were at the WYD, a young man said that, “Catholics don’t read horoscopes or believe in anything else other than the Bible.” In this sense, these young people diverge from a widespread tradition of synthesizing Ca-
tholicism with other religious forms, and thus they resemble Brazilian Protestants/ Evangelicals or Charismatic Renewal Catholics, an intra-Church renewal movement heavily influenced by Evangelical Christianity.
In her interview, Cora remarks: “When I was a child, I frequented Spiritism with
my grandmother, but I had no idea. I went [because my grandmother went, and I accompanied her].” In emphasizing that “I had no idea,” Cora tells us she did
not know what Spiritism was. She had not decided to go to the Spiritist Center out of any reflection on what she knew of this religious practice beforehand. This
contrasts with her adherence to Catholicism today, which is the result of a personal
decision based on study and research. Without rejecting the idea of a religious family heritage, the young people interviewed insist that they made a personal
choice. In this sense, they match contemporary religious discourses that, as Duarte
et al. (2006) have argued, valorize inner and subjective adherence, rejecting the idea of simply following a family tradition.29 This position is reinforced during the
conversion courses they participate in. Although the Catholic Church baptizes
infant children, the Church argues that this option is confirmed in adulthood, em-
phasizing conversion as an ongoing experience. This is the kind of religious identity recognized as legitimate in contemporary society.30
29 Luiz Fernando D. Duarte, et al., “Família, Reprodução e Ethos Religioso: Subjetivismo e Naturalismo Como Valores Estruturantes,” Família e Religião, ed. Luiz Fernando D. Duarte et al. (Rio de Janeiro: Contra Capa Livraria, 2006), p. 89-112. 30 Novaes, “Os Jovens ‘Sem Religião.’" VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
76 | Young Brazilian Catholics Reaffiliating: A Case Study in the City of Campos, RJ, Brazil
The repetition of the discourse on religion being a ‘personal choice and decision,’ as well as the fact that religious practice is not an obligation imposed by the insti-
tution or parents, leads us to conclude, as already highlighted above, that these are
points reaffirmed and taught by Saint Andrew’s School of Evangelization courses, camps and encounters. Indeed, the young research participants adopted almost the same account for their re-affiliation, reminding us of James Beckford's argument
that accounts of conversion are often constructed according to guidelines provided by missionaries.31 Evaldo offers a clear exposition of the important points of this narrative:
I’m Catholic due to the influence of my parents, but as I matured, I learned about the Church, about the religion and had experiences with God, in retreats, on courses and so on. Initially it was indeed because of the family ques-
tions, but after it was from personal choice. In part because I was never forced to do anything. Not before by my parents, or now. And today I am sure about my faith, the knowledge I have. [Evaldo].
The term "obligation" is rejected in his remarks: neither the family nor the institu-
tion determines anything for this young man. He is the one who decides whether
he practices his religion or not and how he will practice it. Furthermore, he declares
that he does not necessarily agree immediately to everything taught by the Church. He reads, reflects, and will get informed first.32
Evaldo argued that his certainty in his faith arises from the knowledge acquired
from courses and retreats, but he reflected on what he learned and verified its reliability before accepting it. During the courses and while reading the Bible, he en-
countered forms of verification of what the Church claims to be true. His certainty, therefore, results from “his own verification.” The fact that these courses are offered by the Catholic Church to young laypeople and leaders does not mean that they
are taught only to follow the institution blindly. According to the interviewees, 31 James Beckford, “Accounting of Conversion," The British Journal of Sociology 29, no. 2 (June 1978): 249-262. 32 At this point, his speech was similar to the young French Catholics analyzed by Danièle Hervieu-Léger. Hervieu-Léger, O Peregrino. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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they teach people to reflect and to verify by themselves what constitutes the bas-
es of the Catholic Church’s teachings, liturgy, and dogmas. Having this kind of
knowledge about what they believe comes to have an outsized importance for these young people. Wouldn't respondents realize that “verification” (whatever it means)
of Church teachings is not always possible? Or are they acknowledging that they can leave the institution? In fact, Daniel and Evaldo declared that they had ma-
tured in their faith—experienced a reaffiliation in their adolescence through Saint
Andrew School; but as the years went on, they moved away from Catholic practice. They have reported, however, that when friends invited them to volunteer prepar-
ing for the 2013 WYD, they experienced a rapprochement, their convictions were reactivated, and they returned to religious practice. For those two, the hypothesis that the preparation for WYD could stimulate Church attendance is confirmed.
For most of the young participants in the WYD caravan, going to Mass weekly was not the only indicator of Catholic practice. In addition, they declared that they engage in other activities, such as praying the rosary and reading the Bible. On the
other hand, for them, Catholic practice is also a way to broaden their knowledge
about religious affairs. In this aspect, too, they display similarities with the Protestants/Evangelicals, who distance themselves from a widespread Catholic tradition-
al tendency to prefer ritual participation to didactic inquiry into faith. Also, in this respect, they differ from most young people emerging from the Catholic Charis-
matic Renewal (CCR), that, at least in Brazil, tends to be suspicious of intellectual activities. Some of them, such as the Toca de Assis, even used to discourage pursuing a university education.33 Nevertheless, the Saint Andrew School spirituality and teachings have several similarities with the CCR, as this school project, according
to its own site already mentioned, was idealized in Mexico by CCR leaders, such as Emilio Cardiff.
In their comments, our interviewees suggest that reading the Bible is the basis of every Catholics’ faith. However, some recognize that they do not always read the Bible daily; they perceive this as a personal failing:
33 Cecília L. Mariz and Paulo Victor L. Lopes, "O Reavivamento Católico no Brasil: Ocaso da Toca de Assis," in Catolicismo Plural: Dinâmicas Contemporâneas, ed. Faustino Teixeira and Renata Menezes (Petrópolis: Vozes, 2009), 75-108. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
78 | Young Brazilian Catholics Reaffiliating: A Case Study in the City of Campos, RJ, Brazil
World Youth Day pilgrims greet the Pope with flags and rosaries. Photo by Michelle Piraciaba de Araújo.
Bible reading, for example, happens when I am more in the Church events. But this is what I am trying to review in my life, to read the Bible daily, since this is
fundamental for a practicing Catholic. Due to a lack of time, sometimes I don’t read the Bible. [Paloma]
I don’t read the Bible every day. But I try to read frequently. I’ve already had
phases in my life when I read a part every day. The Bible is one of the foun-
dations of the Catholic Church. It is the Bible, tradition and the Church’s teaching that are my foundations. [Pedro]
These young people are always wearing religious objects with a clear Catholic iden-
tity, like the cross or scapulars draped around the neck, or T-shirts with images of Jesus, saints or biblical phrases. Almost all of them say that they have a rosary in
their pocket, on the wrist, or in their rucksack. During WYD itself, there were various moments when the young caravan participants prayed using a rosary.
It is worth emphasizing that although none of the interviewees explicitly declared themselves to be Charismatic Catholics, linked to the Catholic Charismatic Renewal
(CCR), one young woman related that in the Catholic retreats and events, resting in the Holy Spirit and glossolalia, Charismatic practices par excellence, are common:
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I once went to a retreat and there I also experienced resting in the spirit. It is difficult to explain resting […] There is also speaking in tongues. These things
you feel. Those with faith experience it. Resting in the spirit, as it happens, for me is a cure. Every time there is an Adoration, I surrender myself and feel cured of past things and God gives me new things. Resting is difficult to
describe in words, only those who feel truly in the faith manage to experience resting in the spirit. This resting only happens to me when I am in the moment of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. There is always an adoration in the retreats. [Paloma]
During fieldwork, there were also moments when participants expressed praise with great emotion evoking the CCR style of worship. The fact that the CCR was
not mentioned seems to suggest that Charismatic Catholicism, in this context, is identified with Catholicism itself and is not limited to just one movement.
As already discussed, for most of the group, a true Catholic needs to do more than just go to Mass once a week. An exception was Bianca who stresses that she
never fails to go to Mass on Sundays, but “does not care about the other things.” The "other things" to which she refers are prayer groups, or taking part in some pastoral or religious group. So, in her conception, though practicing, she does not
consider herself a fervent Catholic: “Look, I’m not fervent, but I do practice. I don’t participate much in groups or other events. I try to follow the right paths.” Bianca’s
answer also shows that in the researched group, there were distinct levels of reli-
gious adherence and participation. Those who least participated were like Bianca, who said that they attend Sunday Mass, communion and confess regularly, make daily prayers, and also go to events like the WYD. Most of the group participated
more intensely and claimed to need to "serve" the Church. This they did on various fronts, as we can see in the excerpts from the following interviews:
Before I would just go to the Masses on Sundays with my mother until one day I went to a retreat during the Carnival, and since then I felt the need to act
better in church, serve, get up from the bench of the Sunday Mass and begin
to serve God better. Before I was a lukewarm Catholic, now I can say that I’m
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active. There I experienced many new things; I went to talks. I had never gone on a spiritual retreat. And I perceived that I was not practicing anything in
church. I saw how much I needed to give more, serve more. There I experienced
what it is to be a missionary in the street, to speak of God in the street. So, I felt this need to serve, to be more inside the church. So, everything contributed to
this decision. And today I don’t regret this, feeling the presence of God in my life. But we only feel this when we look for it. [Nina]
In these remarks, it is worth highlighting the idea of placing oneself in the service of
God and the Church. These young people seek a more active role in their churches, this being a notable element attributed to their religious practice. They show them-
selves willing to carry out any task so long as it serves God or the Church. These activities include participation in pastoral work, coordinating the youth group, or giving talks in retreats or courses:
Today I take part in the Confirmation pastoral work. I serve there and also form part of a mission called the Calcutta Mission, which is linked to the
church of the old convent. This mission seeks to distribute smiles. We visit
orphanages, distribute food to the homeless. It’s about helping one’s neighbor, distributing smiles. [Eloá]
I’m the secretary of a Marian congregation, I’m the coordinator of a young
people group of the São José Rectory, I’m the general youth coordinator for the Apostolic Administration, and I’m communications director of the dioce-
san center organized for the “Days in the Dioceses” (event previous to WYD). [Pedro]
I’m the deacon, the person who helps the priest in the celebrations, I belong
to the young people group, I belong to JOAM, I’m beginning to be part of the Santo André Evangelization School, which is a training school whose princi-
ple is to bring other people to Jesus, just as Andrew presented Peter to Jesus, we also train to evangelize, to take other Peters to Jesus. [Caio]
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word of God to people, and today I preach on the evangelization courses at the Santo André School. [Paloma]
Young people emphasized evangelization and the everyday search for other young
people whom they can persuade to be more active in the Catholic Church. Those
who experience a re-adherence or reaffiliation to Catholicism declared that they worked directly and indirectly in the process of evangelization and potential re-ad-
herence and/or conversion of other young people. The interviewees declared that
they performed this evangelizing role by participating in the courses at the Santo André School. They are the ones who organize and give lectures on these courses after taking part as listeners:
I say that I’m practicing my faith when I go to Masses and principally when
I announce the Gospel. When I speak of Jesus to other people, this increases
the faith. The training courses at the Santo André Evangelization School also serve for this purpose, and the Masses are very important. It is on these courses that we seek to learn more about God. These are courses founded always on
the Word and on experience in which you love everything that the Bible says. I completed my first course at the age of 18, and afterwards I wanted to partic-
ipate as a preacher and still today I do this. The courses are important for this, for you to know the Word and also have the opportunity to evangelize other young people […] The preachings are nothing other than our testimony; we
say how God transformed our lives, and it is this happiness that we try to pass on to those who still do not know God’s love. [Cora]
Nevertheless, according to the interviewed, evangelizing is not just speaking, or “tucking the Bible under your arm and knocking from house to house to speak
about Jesus,” as Caio made clear in an informal conversation.34 Also indirectly, they
seek to stimulate conversion through their conduct and everyday attitudes. Hence, young people seek to evangelize other young people through their example and way of living.
34 Field notes, August, 22, 2013. Michelle P. Araújo, “Jovens Católicos e a Jornada Mundial da Juventude: Religiosidade e o Catolicismo na Cidade de Campos dos Goytacazes-RJ” (master's thesis in political sociology, UENF). VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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This is a qualitative case study and, of course, these findings cannot be easily generalized. However, this study shows how the Santo Andre School of Evangelization
was capable of strongly affecting these young people. They began to embrace Catholicism enthusiastically and participate in a style similar to their more engaged peers from the Evangelical churches. This kind of similarity is also observed among
most Catholics who participate in groups inspired by the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, like the well-known Brazilian "new communities" of Shalom and Canção Nova (New Song) among others.35
CONCLUSIONS We began the present article recognizing that Brazilian Catholicism is changing. These changes are reflected in the surprising data that we collected in a survey of young people who participated in the 2013 Rio WYD. Survey data showed that
Brazilian Catholic WYD participants declare higher levels of attendance at Mass and other church-related activities and rituals than WYD participants from outside Brazil. Even taking into account that higher levels of declaration of attendance may be influenced by the enthusiastic years of advance preparation of the WYD
event in Brazil, the data is still surprising since it differs greatly from the trend described by the literature on Brazilian Catholicism, in general, and young Catholics
in particular. These findings prompted us to analyze data from qualitative research
with a group of WYD pilgrims from Campos, a city in the north of Rio de Janeiro state. The young people with whom we conducted research reported high levels of practice. As well as assiduously going to Mass, they also read the Bible, pray the
rosary, pray daily, confess regularly, and also participate in prayer groups, pastoral
work, retreats, and courses, as well as performing services for the church. Howev-
er, it is important to stress that all of them remark that it was not always so. This greater engagement in Catholic practice occurred, for our research subjects, after
their experience in short courses or retreats organized by a project named the Saint Andrew School of Evangelization in their parish.
35 Brenda Carranza et al., Novas Comunidades Católicas: Em Busca do Espaço Pós-Moderno (São Paulo: Ideias e Letras, 2009). JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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Their religious trajectories are divided, therefore, into two periods: before and af-
ter the encounter with God provided by the short courses they took. All of them narrate a process similar to conversion, experiencing a new form of adherence to
their church, linked to a renewal of their faith. This has led them to opt to live Catholicism in new terms. So, they are part of what Faustino Teixeira identified as a growing category of "reaffiliated Catholics."36 The accounts of these young people suggest that the course teachings create a Catholicism similar to the religious
practice of Brazilian Protestant/ Evangelicals in general. As well as personal choice, we can observe a search for knowledge through Bible reading and an emphasis on evangelizing activities toward mainly other young people.
The data analyzed in this article reinforce the hypothesis raised by Carlos Steil and Rodrigo Toniol on the formation of a new kind of Catholicism in 21st cen-
tury Brazil.37 These data also suggested that in contemporary Brazil, the number of young Catholics is declining, but those people that remain at the start of the
21st century seem to be more integrated with the global Church and the Vatican’s
official doctrine than past generations were. The young people whom we studied had their faith reinforced and enhanced their ties to Catholic Church through
a global project (Saint Andrew School of Evangelization). According to Marco Marzano, several other global lay movements (such as Comunione and Liberazione, Neocatecumenals, Charismatic Renewals) have also revitalized Catholicism
in Italy and elsewhere, and were perceived by the two last popes as a way to over-
come Europe’s growing secularism.38 Due to the limits of our data, we cannot say if the Saint Andrew School would have similar or different results from those
mentioned above. The group from the city of Campos emphasized the autonomy
of their decision to engage more with Catholicism. Though from Catholic families, they insist that their current practice is the result of a personal decision and many
claim to practice more than their parents. They also underline the fact that they feel the need to learn about, study and reflect on their faith, and read the Bible so 36 Teixeira, “Faces do Catolicismo Brasileiro Contemporâneo.” 37 Steil and Toniol, "Strong Church, Weakened Catholicism." 38 Marco Marzano, "The ‘Sectarian’ Church: Catholicism in Italy Since John Paul II," Social Compass 60, no. 3 (September 2013), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0037768613492401.
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that they can make their positions clear. Nevertheless, the importance of the personal dimension, individual conviction, and responsibility for one's own decisions
are a mark of contemporary society, which also seems to have been presented and
reinforced in these Catholic encounters and retreats. Undoubtedly, these are values that reinforce the faithful’s commitment to the institution, but they also stimulate
reflection, a critical spirit, the continuation of studies and readings that can, in turn, generate a diversity of views and ruptures and potentially resulting, in medium or
long term, either in a move away from the rules of their original institution, in what
Daniele Hervieu-Léger calls a “deregulation of the religious,” as has happened with
Protestant and Pentecostal churches. This is, however, a qualitative study with a very small group of young people who study (or plan to study) at University. Probably young people with another profile would not value as much their own reflections and learnings.
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JOSÉ ROGÉRIO LOPES A N D R É L U I Z D A S I LV A
Religious Mega-Events and Their Assemblages in Devotional Pilgrimages: The Case of Círio de Nazaré in Belém, Pará State, Brazil José Rogério Lopes holds a PhD in Social Sciences from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo. He completed a Postdoctoral Internship in Anthropology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil, and a Senior Researcher Internship in Social Sciences at the University of Cape Verde, Africa. He is currently a Professor at the Federal University of Tocantins State, Brazil and a Coordinator of the Laboratory of Cultural and Environmental Policies in Brazil. He conducted research on popular religiosity in Brazil and Africa with approaches to religious festivals, Catholic pilgrimages, and use of images in popular devotions. He is the author of the books The Imagetics of Devotion (Ed UFRGS, 2010) and Festivals and Popular Religiosity (Ed. Cirkula, 2013). André Luiz da Silva, PhD in Social Sciences, is a teacher at the Human Development Graduate Program at Universidade de Taubaté (UNITAU) and Faculdade Santo Antonio (FSA). He is Vice Coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Research Center of Contemporary Practices and Research Collaborator of the Contemporary Cultural Practices Study Group of Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo and member of the Laboratory of Cultural and Environmental Policies in Brazil. He conducts inquiries in the field of Urban Anthropology and Cultural Sociology using the following themes: symbolic conflict and development, religiosity, identity and cultural diversity, popular culture, cultural mediation, human rights, and social and cultural policies.
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INTRODUCTION
T
his article analyzes some of the contemporary assemblages of Catholic
sectors in traditional devotional pilgrimages and how the latter have been transformed into mega-events. At the epicenter of our inquiry is Círio de
Nazaré Festival (listed by UNESCO as the Taper of Our Lady of Nazareth), a
mass gathering held in the city of Belém, capital of Pará state in the northern region of Brazil. As one of the country’s most traditional religious festivities, with its
origin dating back to 1886, its rituals include numerous circuits of urban and rural
pilgrimages that spread throughout the Amazon area. The central rituals of Círio, which take place yearly on the second weekend of October, are a series of parades that gather more than two million people each year and have become renowned as one of largest Catholic processions in the Western hemisphere.
The article’s situational approach to these assemblages adopts Steil’s time frame
for social scientific studies on Brazilian Catholic pilgrimages.1 Steil presents four tendencies that “orient current academic production on Catholicism and pilgrimage” in Brazil.2 The first highlights a convergence between pilgrimages and Marian
apparitions as a long-term tradition in Catholicism, promoted by the Charismatic Renewal movement; the second emphasizes the alignment between the pilgrimages and the New Age movement, resulting in pilgrimages that connect participants
to spiritual and ecological values, inner knowledge, and indigenous origins with a focus on corporality and journeying; the third tendency emerges from the previous
one, empowering walks in nature, “associated with environmental values and care of the body […] frequently incorporated in the sphere of public policies in the field
of health and tourism;”3 finally, the fourth tendency refers to the fluid boundaries
between pilgrimage and tourism that generate complementary influences: either traditional pilgrimages transform into religious tourism, or the religious sphere 1 2 3
Carlos A. Steil, “Percursos das Peregrinações Católicas no Brasil: Gênese e Desenvolvimento do Tema na Ótica das Ciências Sociais,” Estudos de Religião 33, no. 2 (May-August 2019): 221-42, https://www.metodista.br/revistas/revistas-metodista/index.php/ER/article/view/9522. Steil, “Peregrinações Católicas,” 238. Note by the authors: you’ll notice that we disposed some translated sections of works of well-known authors along all the paper. We took the liberty to translate them into English for better understanding. Steil, “Peregrinações Católicas,” 239.
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sacralizes tourist events. In the case examined here, Círio de Nazaré, we propose that its realization con-
stitutes a hybrid form of these earlier tendencies, while its constitutive hybridism
can also be recognized through the contours of a fifth tendency, as an emergent
synthesis of those listed by Steil. This proposal is based on the recognition that the hybrid or synthetic form of the aforementioned tendencies is manifested in the
formation of the kind of unity projected in religious mega-events. Adopting the approach pursued by Steil in his analysis of the studies of Catholic pilgrimages, we argue that recognition of the emergence of this tendency implies an expansion of the field of knowledge defined in this approach.
In exploring studies of religious tourism in the human sciences, therefore, it can be
noted that they tend to privilege events like World Youth Day (WYD), promoted by the Vatican, as an object of study. Niedźwiedź, for example, invites us to imagine
how WYD, inaugurated by Pope John Paul II in 1985, can be seen as the Catholic
archetype of this “mega-eventization” of faith, inspiring and shaping innovations made to the older events of pilgrimage and religious tourism.4 In the field of mar-
keting, meanwhile, where interest in the theme exceeds that of anthropology, the emphasis is on the voluntary work involved in religious mega-events.5
Following the presentation of reference works in this expanding field of research, we present a categorization of contemporary mega-events, aiming to highlight characterizations and typifications that enable us to recognize the operations of hybrid assemblages in the realization of Círio de Nazaré. 4 5
Anna Niedźwiedź, “Global Catholicism, Urban Heritage, National Politics: The 2016 World Youth Day in Kraków,” Etnografia Polska 63, no. 1-2 (2019): 185-204, https://doi.org/10.23858/ EP63.2019.012. See Martina G. Gallarza et al., “La Dimensionalidad de Valor en la Experiencia de Voluntario en un Mega-Evento Turístico,” Revista Europea de Dirección y Economía de la Empresa 19, no. 4 (2010): 149-70; Michaela Pfadenhauer, “The Eventization of Faith as a Marketing Strategy: World Youth Day as an Innovative Response of the Catholic Church to Pluralization,” International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing 15, no. 4 (November 2010): 382-94, https://doi. org/10.1002/nvsm.396; and Elena F. Imízcoz et al., “Value, Satisfaction and Loyalty in Volunteerism: Application to a Religious Megaevent,” Esic Market Economics and Business Journal 44, no. 3 (September-December 2013): 109-31, https://www.esic.edu/documentos/revistas/esicmk/130912_130429_I.pdf. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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CONTEMPORARY MEGA-EVENTS: CHARACTERISTICS AND CATEGORIZATION Contemporary mega-events, held in various spheres of social life, have become
commonplace and acquired a prominent space in the media. In the field of sports, for instance, some mega-events have already established themselves as global rituals
with a strong economic appeal. Focusing on the Olympics, for example, Burkank, Andranovich and Heying examined the experiences of three US cities hosting the Olympic Games (Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Salt Lake City) and analyzed the re-
alization of these mega-events as high-risk political strategies for stimulating local economic growth, responding to the scenario of competition for jobs and capital in
the quest to obtain federal subsidies among US cities looking to become more integrated into global economic competition.6 For the authors, this strategy entails the
search for a high-level event that can stimulate and justify local development. Also
from a sports perspective, Gastaldo, analyzing the staging of the FIFA World Cup, highlighted the production of interstitial scales in its promotion, preceding and selecting the participation of countries, football confederations, players and fans.7
In the cultural sphere, Palmer explored the ethnographic possibilities offered by
the involvement of anthropologists in significant domains of global popular culture, reflecting the increasing presence of mega-events in contemporary social life.8
Adopting a situational approach to the Tour de France mega-event, the author analyzes the key ways in which local populations are attracted to the process of producing global culture, and emphasizes anthropology’s contribution to the analysis of spectacular dimensions of postmodern popular culture. 6 7
8
Matthew J. Burbank, Greg Andranovich, and Charles H. Heying, “Mega-Events, Urban Development, and Public Policy,” Review of Policy Research 19, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 179-202, https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1541-1338.2002.tb00301.x. Édison L. Gastaldo, “O ‘País do Futebol’ Mediatizado: Mídia e Copa do Mundo no Brasil,” Sociologias, no. 22 (July-December 2009): 352-69, https://doi.org/10.1590/S151745222009000200013; and Gastaldo, “Copa do Mundo no Brasil: A Dimensão Histórica de um Produto Midiático,” Comunicação & Sociedade 25, no. 41 (2004): 115-33, https://doi. org/10.15603/2175-7755/cs.v25n41p115-133. Catherine Palmer, “Le Tour du Monde: Towards an Anthropology of the Global Mega-Event,” The Australian Journal of the Anthropology 9, no. 3 (December 1998): 265-73, https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1835-9310.1998.tb00196.x.
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From the political, economic or organizational viewpoints, mega-events like the
United Nations conferences on environment and sustainable development are still
minimally ritualized, though they have been gradually acquiring something of a
ritual dimension owing to the importance of the issues covered and the recursivity with which their resolutions are ignored in international relations. Over recent
decades, the gaps in these mega-events organized by multilateral agencies have stimulated and favored another sphere of mega-event production: the music or
record industry, promoting or sponsoring major musical concerts by famous artists, as well as shows that feature musicians from the same genre and festival revivals like Rock in Rio—which has become a brand outsourced to other countries beyond Brazil.9 In this sense, Lipovetsky’s analysis of musical mega-events points to
the configuration of a new scale of global solidarity, spectacularized and centered on the convergence of resources to support a local cause but of planetary interest.10 Finally, traversing these diverse spheres involved in the promotion and production of mega-events, the assemblages of global urban tourism sectors have proven to
be one of the most active global forces shaping these contemporary phenomena. Indeed, the study by Fainstein and Judd shows that these global forces assemble diverse resources through the redefinition or resignification of local strategies.11
The study of such assemblages in the sphere of cultural productions, as analyzed
by Yúdice, complements the comprehension of the procedures mobilized by these global flows, which produce a field of “performative forces” conditioning the strat-
egies of social actors.12 Agencies involve actors who assembly identity resources retrieved from a “reserve” available in the common trajectories of their cultural
formations, in dialogue with cultural models prevalent in globalized society. This prevalence is expressed in the configuration of a field of performative forces that 9
On major musical concerts by famous artists see Gilles Lipovetsky, El Crepúsculo del Deber: La Ética Indolora de los Nuevos Tiempos Democráticos [The Twilight of Duty], trans. by Juana Bignozzi (Barcelona: Anagrama, 2000). 10 Lipovetsky, Crepúsculo del Deber. 11 Susan S. Fainstein and Dennis R. Judd, “Global Forces, Local Strategies, and Urban Tourism,” in The Tourist City, ed. by Susan S. Fainstein and Dennis R. Judd (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 1-17. 12 Here we use the notion of agency (assemblage) outlined by George Yúdice, The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 2. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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condition the action of actors who sometimes impress a dynamic of mobilizing assemblages in the intervals of these models.13
These and other studies of mega-events have made explicit some important characteristics involved in their realization: they are global events, insofar as they possess
the capacity to attract crowds from diverse areas of the planet, regardless of the
places where they are held; they are events with a defined temporality, often short in duration, but with the capacity to produce intensive and contrastive interactions between their participants; they are events increasingly organized as a unity
through the interaction of their participants (according to Simmel “unity in an empirical sense is nothing more than the interaction of elements,” as a whole or via social spheres)14 in social networks at international, regional and local scales; they
are events that produce reverberations of their central proceedings in other similar
or imitative proceedings, at interstitial scales; and they are events that, as given by their previous characteristics, are realized in a space/place, but in which their participants constitute communities of time.15
Diverse assemblages are projected in these communities of time, arising from the diversity of actors involved in them, whose absence of organization and control
assures a reciprocal perspective on the relations existing among participants of mega-events. Reinforcing this situational perspective, here it is also worth recalling 13 Yúdice, Expediency of Culture, 1-8 and chapter 1. 14 Georg Simmel, Sociology: Inquiries into the Construction of Social Forms, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 22. 15 Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers: 1. The Problem of Social Reality (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962). According to the author: “In the dimension of time there are with reference to me in my actual biographical moment ‘contemporaries,’ with whom a mutual interplay of action and reaction can be established; ‘predecessors,’ upon whom I cannot act, but whose past actions and their outcome are open to my interpretation and may influence my own actions; and ‘successors,’ of whom no experience is possible but toward whom I may orient my actions in a more or less empty anticipation.” Schutz, Social Reality, 15-16. It’s important to highlight that these characteristics have been elaborated in consonance with a typification designed to analyze religious mega-events. Another typification, developed by Muller, for instance, takes into consideration four constitutive dimensions of mega-events (visitor attractiveness, mediated reach, costs and transformative impact) that, applied to the analysis of nine contemporary large-scale events, enabled the author to separate them into three classes distinguished according to size: large events, mega-events and giga-events. See Martin Muller, “What Makes an Event a Mega-Event? Definitions and Sizes,” Leisure Studies 34, no. 6, (2015): 634-38, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0261 4367.2014.993333. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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the definition of the notion of event proposed by Damico, drawing from Foucault. The event is a singular situation that comes into effect in the context of everyday
practices and that actualizes the present through movements of experimentation. Every event expresses a permanent reactivation of a practice still to be instituted and implies an actualization and questioning of the reality produced in a singular place and moment; it is always a possibility and an experimentation; it is provisional and non-linear; it is constituted in a sequence of superimposed discontinuities.16 Setting out from these initial descriptors, therefore, a question surfaces: given the
characteristics identified in the promotion of mega-events, in the diverse perspectives and spheres reviewed above, what emerges from these events as a possibility and experimentation in terms of their sequences of superimposed discontinuities?
At the end of the 1990s, announcing the twilight of duty in contemporary life and
the inauguration of a painless ethics, Lipovetsky analyzed the promotion of certain mega-events as proceedings that replace the principle of systemic solidarity found
in earlier times.17 Moreover, according to the author, these mega-events promote global and regional connections of multitudes of individuals around planetary
causes, such as famine in Africa, destruction of the environment, or opposition to racism, among other issues.
The central question in Lipovetsky’s analysis of the importance of mega-events
resides in how moving beyond a collective ethics, based on absolute duties over and above individuals, favors the rupturing of social ties and interactions that previously enabled the configuration of discursive contexts that worked to define the rele-
vance of social problems. As the author tells us, the new painless ethics, constituted on the basis of pragmatic and experimental valuations and reasons, is
[…] less demanding for the individual but more socially effective, less categor-
ical for individuals but more pressing for organizations, less sublime but more 16 José G. S. Damico, “Juventudes Governadas: Dispositivos de Segurança e Participação no Guajuviras (Canoas-RS) e Grigny Centre (França),” PhD diss., Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, 2011, 40. Based on Michel Foucault, “The Discourse on Language,” in Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. by Alan S. Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1972), 231. 17 Lipovetsky, Crepúsculo del Deber. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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capable of holding men accountable, less pure but capable of more quickly correcting the various excesses or indignities of democracies.18
From this viewpoint, mega-events are happenings characteristic of a post-moralist
society, where the field of accountability shifts from problems and the solidarity involved in working to resolve them to the sphere of a private ethical accountability.
What interests us here about this process are the shifts taking place between public
and private spheres since they should impose discontinuities on social phenomena, which we presume to be perceptible in religious mega-events too. Especially inasmuch as the contemporary promotion of these religious mega-events has diversified and accelerated, they become phenomena important for analysis.
CÍRIO DE NAZARÉ: A RELIGIOUS MEGA-EVENT AND ITS HYBRID ASSEMBLAGES Describing Círio de Nazaré as a mega-event is not a difficult task. The central rituals have a fixed duration of two weeks, attract a large number of visitors from
all over Brazil and abroad; have an enormous spatial and temporal range; involve high financial costs and exert a huge influence on the tourism and services sector of the city and the Amazon area; and cause large impacts on urban space, the local
population. In addition, the number of actors and the multiplicity of procedures
for organizing the Círio de Nazaré reveal the event’s complexity and amplitude, meeting the classification criteria to classify the Círio de Nazaré as a mega-event.19 Any spectator coming into contact with the huge volume of people participating
in the festival,20 held in the first fortnight in October every year, is unlikely not to 18 Lipovetsky, Crepúsculo del Deber, 20. 19 Muller, “Mega-Event?”; Pietro Valentino, “A Definition Mega Event,” Paper presented at the V Congresso dell’Associazione Italiana di Storia Urbana, Rome, September 10-12, 2011, https://www. researchgate.net/profile/Pietro_Valentino/publication/284157518_A_Definition_Mega_Event/ links/564c961708ae3374e5e05025.pdf. 20 Despite the complexity of estimating the size of a multitude in movement, distributed through the streets of the city, for the last ten years the Dieese-PA and the Nazaré Festival Directorate have maintained the estimate that around two million people participate in each edition of the Círio de Nazaré Pilgrimage on the second Sunday of October alone. Meanwhile the Pará State Public Security Office (Segup), in this same period, informed the media that more than a million people participated in the procession on the second Sunday of the festival. The more than 83,000 tourists VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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feel part of an apparently confused “multitude.”21 This experience of forming part
of the multitude becomes stronger the more the spectator becomes interested in taking part of the diverse celebrations and manifestations of Círio de Nazaré, in “coevalness” with its actors.22
and around 15,000 volunteers announced yearly over the last decade also reveal the huge scale of the event. See Victor Furtado, “Dieese-PA Mantém Estimativa de 2 Milhões de Pessoas para o Círio,” Oliberal.com, October 10, 2019, https://www.oliberal.com/cirio/dieese-pa-mantem-estimativa-de-2-milhoes-de-pessoas-para-o-cirio-1.200612; Roberta Paraense, “Círio de Nazaré Reúne 2 Milhões em Belém,” O Estado de São Paulo, October 14, 2018, https://brasil.estadao.com.br/noticias/geral,cirio-de-nazare-reune-2-milhoes-em-belem,70002547313; “Procissão Número 225 do Círio de Nazaré Leva 2 Milhões de Pessoas às Ruas de Belém,” G1 Pará, October 8, 2017, https:// g1.globo.com/pa/para/cirio-de-nazare/2017/noticia/procissao-numero-225-do-cirio-de-nazareleva-2-milhoes-de-pessoas-as-ruas-de-belem.ghtml; “Círio de Nazaré Leva 2 milhões em Procissão de Mais de 5h em Belém,” G1 Pará, October 9, 2016, http://g1.globo.com/pa/para/cirio-de-nazare/2016/noticia/2016/10/cirio-de-nazare-leva-2-milhoes-em-procissao-de-mais-de-5h-em-belem. html; “Círio de Nazaré 2015 Reúne Mais de 2 Milhões de Fiéis Pelas Ruas de Belém,” G1 Pará, October 11, 2015, http://g1.globo.com/pa/para/cirio-de-nazare/2015/noticia/2015/10/cirio-denazare-2015-reune-mais-de-2-milhoes-pelas-ruas-de-belem.html; Thais Rezende and Natália Mello, “Devotos Louvam a Padroeira no Círio de Nazaré em Belém,” G1 Pará, October 12, 2014, http://g1.globo.com/pa/para/cirio-de-nazare/2014/noticia/2014/10/devotos-louvam-padroeira-no-cirio-de-nazare-em-belem.html; “Círio de Nazaré 2013 Reúne Número Recorde de Fiéis, Aponta Dieese,” G1 Pará, October 13, 2013, http://g1.globo.com/pa/para/cirio-de-nazare/2013/noticia/2013/10/cirio-de-nazare-2013-reune-numero-recorde-de-fieis-aponta-dieese.html; Nathália Mello, “Tradição do Círio Marca 220 Anos de Devoção Mariana em Belém,” G1 Pará, October 14, 2012, http://g1.globo.com/pa/para/cirio-de-nazare/2012/noticia/2012/10/tradicao-do-cirio-marca-220-anos-de-devocao-mariana-em-belem.html; Glauco Araújo, “Círio de Nazaré Deve Reunir 2 Milhões de Pessoas Neste Domingo,” G1 São Paulo, October 9, 2011, http://g1.globo.com/ brasil/noticia/2011/10/cirio-de-nazare-deve-reunir-2-milhoes-de-pessoas-neste-domingo.html; and “Círio Bate Recorde e Atrai 2,2 mi de Fiéis em Belém,” Gazeta do Povo, October 10, 2010, https://www.gazetadopovo.com.br/vida-e-cidadania/cirio-bate-recorde-e-atrai-22-mi-de-fieis-embelem-0v31qdgaaurcmuko0vpgnkymm/. On the organizational dimension of Círio de Nazaré, see “Roteiros da fé,” O Diário do Pará, October 10, 2010 and Diretoria da Festa de Nazaré, “Diretoria do Círio de Nazaré. Organização,” The Nazaré Festival Directorate official website, 2020, https:// ciriodenazare.com.br/site/organizacao/. 21 The central events of Círio (Candle/Taper) and the Festival of Our Lady of Nazareth had taken place on the last Saturday and Sunday of October since 1886. However, “in 1901, the bishop [of Belem] established the second Sunday as the official date of Círio de Nazaré.” Rita Amaral, “O Círio de Nazaré em Belém do Pará,” in Festa à Brasileira: Sentidos do Festejar no País que “Não é Eério” (São Paulo: eBooksBrasil.org, 2001). It should be pointed out that the citations referring to the work of Amaral, available on the web as a hypertext, do not include page numbering. José R. Lopes, “Círio de Nazaré: Agenciamentos, Conflitos e Negociação da Identidade Amazônica,” Religião e Sociedade 31, no. 1 (June 2011): 155-81, https://doi.org/10.1590/S0100-85872011000100007. 22 Fabian defines coevalness in ethnographic experience as the sharing of the space and time of the manifestations produced and lived by research subjects, enabling the researcher to objectify the shared lived experience. Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 25-35. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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In this sense, the spectator or participant of Círio de Nazaré can readily perceive
that the celebration’s religious motif assumes a central role in the event, orienting
the diverse circuits that compose it.23 Thus, beyond the huge processions involving around two million people during the period of its realization, Círio de Nazaré is
also formed by a set of religious and profane manifestations that burst with the po-
tential for investigation and analysis, as can be apprehended from reading previous studies.24
Backed by these readings, we conducted further investigation—using individu-
al ethnographies as our main strategy—on the subsequent editions from 2009, 2010 and 2011 of Círio de Nazaré. Due to its ritual complexity, our goal was to
interpret the diverse meanings associated both with the religious and profane
participation of the actors (seen, during this observation, as a collective entity) in several events throughout the duration of the Círio, especially during the second weekend, when the main pilgrimage (“Romaria”) takes place. Our efforts to penetrate these symbolic structures and social circuits that constitute the mega-event
Círio de Nazaré resulted in impressions that are shared in this paper as a narrative aimed at interpreting the sociocultural forces of this phenomenon as assemblages
of interconnected multivocal purposes and actions. Therefore, our understanding and impressions—created by the ethnographies—manifest as “meaningful textual 23 By circuit we refer to a specific route demarcated by the movements of significant actors in the production of the festive event. This circuit demarcating the processional rituals that occur during the festival is related to the original events that compose the imaginary of the finding of the saint and its historical, or mythological, developments. On this point, see Isidoro M. S. Alves, O Carnaval Devoto: Um Estudo Sobre a Festa de Nazaré, em Belém (Petropolis: Vozes, 1980); Amaral, “Círio de Nazaré;” Raymundo H. Maués, O Homem que Achou a Santa: Plácido José de Souza e a Devoção à Virgem de Nazaré (Belem, PA: Alves Gráfica e Editora, 2009); and Lucília da S. Matos, “Belém em Festa: A Economia Lúdica da Fé no Círio de Nazaré,” PhD diss., Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, 2010. 24 Vanda Pantoja, “Negócios Sagrados: Notas Sobre o Círio de Nazaré em Belém-Pará,” Novos Cadernos NAEA 15, no. 2, (December 2012): 261-78, http://dx.doi.org/10.5801/ncn.v15i2.682; Vanda Pantoja, “Negócios Sagrados: Reciprocidade e Mercado no Círio de Nazaré,” Master’s thesis, Universidade Federal do Pará, 2006; Matos, “Belém em Festa;” Amaral, “Círio de Nazaré;” Larissa L. P. Sare, “A Serpente no Asfalto: Estudo Compreensivo do Espetáculo da Corda dos Promesseiros no Círio de Nazaré em Belém do Pará,” PhD diss., Universidade Federal da Bahia, 2005; Regina Alves, “Círio de Nazaré: Da Taba Marajoara a Aldeia Global,” Master’s thesis, Universidade Federal do Pará, 2002; Silvio L. Figueiredo, ed., Círio de Nazaré: Festa e Paixão (Belem, PA: EDUFPA, 2005); and Mary L. Del Priore, Festas e Utopias no Brasil Colonial (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 2000). VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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Figure 1. Saturday, Oct. 10, 2009, 4:45 p.m.: Basilica Sanctuary of Our Lady of Nazareth. Photo by José Lopes.
undertaking,” situated both historically and culturally by the readings and the indi-
vidual net of relationships arranged by the authors during the observation of three editions of this religious mega-event.25
The initial terms used to describe Círio de Nazaré—multitude, intensity, emotion, apparent confusion—project the perceptions registered in the fieldworks undertaken under the influence of the intense stimuli to which a popular religious celebration of this magnitude exposes the anthropologist.
The preliminary research involved learning about the procession of Círio de Nazaré and observing the preparations on its eve. The routes of these processions have
remained the same for several years and the streets through which the processions
pass are always lined with festival posters, displayed like flags on the street posts. Along the various routes taken to immerse ourselves in the ritual, walking from
the Gentil Bittencourt School, in the city center to the Docks and the Ver o Peso Market on the shores of the Guajará river, passing by the Basilica (Figure 1) as
far as the Sé Cathedral (and some distance beyond this circuit), we see that the 25 The idea of a meaningful textual undertaking as a “textualization” of the fieldwork experience was appropriated from James Clifford’s reading, “On Ethnographic Authority,” Representations, no. 2 (Spring 1983). https://doi.org/10.2307/2928386. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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city of Belém is adorned with enormous banners in homage to the image of the
Lady of Nazareth, simply called “Saint” by many worshipers. On the same routes, residential and commercial buildings are decorated with small altars or replicas
of the Berlinda (a shrine on a carriage surrounded with flowers) that protects the sacred image, and small printed or hand painted banners are displayed in stores
and houses, almost all of them decorated with colorful balloons, woven like ropes. This “devotional attire” projects an atmosphere of the affective intensity generated by the Círio de Nazaré processions, by the city’s worshipers and by the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who visit Belém during the festival.
The impression obtained from walking these routes is of an exteriorization of devo-
tional motifs that contribute to the relational appropriation of the representations
of the Senhora de Nazaré (Lady of Nazareth) in the processions. The idea that, in the festival, relational appropriations occur with the representations of the Virgin
of Nazareth are already found in the book by Alves.26 However, these are described
by the author as tense and circular appropriations of the production of the festival, mobilized either by the popular and devout sectors, or by ecclesiastical control, or by sectors of the political elite or local economy. Here we seek to broaden the meaning of these appropriations by arguing that it produces an urban ambiance.
This includes both the most common type of appropriation mobilized by the devotional nature of the representations through proximity to the image of the Lady of Nazareth during the parades, and another less common but readily apparent
type of appropriation mobilized by the association between devotional representations and the identificatory or socio-political representations usually present in the
phrases on the displayed banners. Common themes of Círio de Nazaré like faith, grace, peace, harmony, celebration and communitarianism are associated with oth-
ers like ethics, cures, Mother Amazon, ethnic diversity, work and prosperity, in an atmosphere that blends into mysticism during the parades.
Almost all the activities of Círio de Nazaré are surrounded by the effects of spec-
tacularization. At the beginning of the parades it is common to see helicopters 26 Alves, Carnaval Devoto. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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hovering over the festival sites, sirens announcing the approach of the image in the
parades, fireworks exploding in their thousands and forming artificial gray clouds in the city sky, restless pilgrims toasting under the sun as it scalds the asphalt. Everywhere you look during these activities, an anxious multitude can be seen, trying
to catch a glimpse of the central motif of the event: the image of Nossa Senhora de Nazaré (Our Lady of Nazareth). A moving centrality, suggesting the search for a
religious meaning amid the immanence of the fascination exerted by the spectac-
ularized ritual, sacrifice and sacred image—the meaning immanent to the urgency of earthly life and the mystical.27
Between the Saturdays and Sundays of the festival fortnight, people jostle for a space closer to the path of the image. On the final Saturday, after the River Pil-
grimage, departing from the pier on the Guajará river shortly before midday, tens of thousands of motorcyclists on the motorbike pilgrimage lead the image to the Gentil Bittencourt School. The motorcyclists wear T-shirts printed with festival
motifs, displaying the various uniforms of the groups with which they are iden-
tified. Wherever the image passes, thousands of devotees take out their mobile phones, cameras and digital camcorders, competing for the best angle to capture images of the Imagem Peregrina (“Pilgrim Mother” is another name for Our Lady of Nazareth’s image). Whether in the Masses or during the transfer processions
held on the final weekend of the festival, the multitude swarms around the image, trying to touch it.
The image remains close to the worshipers throughout the festival, whether during the processions, in the Masses, or at the sites where it is displayed, highlighting
a sense of belonging open to touch and affection, characteristic of the devotion’s history.28 This, as Amaral writes, is singularized as an encounter in which the sacred and the devotees are objectified:
In this context, the presence of the saint is fundamental, insofar as it is “willing” 27 Jean Baudrillard, In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities, trans. by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and John Johnston (New York: Semiotext(e), 1983). 28 See Alves, Carnaval Devoto; Amaral, “Círio de Nazaré;” Maués, Plácido Jose; and Carlos Rocque, História do Círio de Nazaré (Belem, PA: Mitograph, 1981). JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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to take part in the festival at the same level as the people. The latter, for their Figure 2. Saturday,
Oct. 10, 2009, 12:26 p.m.:
part, at the ritual moment, are able to grasp a deeper dimension, that is, the di- Arrastão do Boi da mension of life itself […]. Approaching the saint closely during the procession Pavulagem through the streets of Belém. The
also implies a simplification of the relationship with the sacred, which becomes participants wear straw more direct.29
And more ritualistic, we would add. After the departure of the motorbike pilgrimage, the Arrastão do Pavulagem (literally translated as Presumption Trawling) leaves the Praça dos Estivadores (Stevedore Plaza) on an alternative circuit, leading thousands more people (Figure
2). This parade is led by a group of local artists dressed as traditional pilgrims, some using stilts, others appearing as Pierrots with their face painted white, and a lively
band playing music and songs exalting the festival, popular worship, the miriti toys and Amazonian culture in general.30
29 See Amaral, “Círio de Nazaré.” 30 The name Arrastão da Pavulagem is a reference to the Arrastão do Boi (Ox) da Pavulagem, which VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
hats with colorful satin ribbons, the traditional procession prop. Photo by José Lopes.
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This parade continues to the Largo do Carmo, in the Old Town, close to the Sé Cathedral. After arriving at this destination, following some exaltations and more music played by the Arraial do Pavulagem (Presumption Village) band, many parade participants scatter through the streets to the bars of the Old Town, while others return to the Docks or the city center.
This assemblage around the festival makes explicit an organization of artists and
cultural agents from Belém dedicated to researching and disseminating aspects of the popular culture of Pará and the Amazon area:
The Arraial do Pavulagem Institute is an autonomous, nonprofitmaking civil
society organization, founded in 2003. Over its existence, the Institute has developed cultural education projects in Amazonia that contribute to transmitting and strengthening traditional oral knowledge, pursuing a contemporary reading through languages like dance, music and theatrical visuality. In
almost a decade of activities, the Institute has seen its main projects take to the streets: the popular culture parades “Arrastão do Pavulagem,” “Arrastão do Círio,” “Cordão do Galo” and “Cordão do Peixe-Boi.” These parades are
complemented by workshops, lectures, seminars, research, extension projects, singing circles, essays, exhibitions and shows that valorise and propagate Amazonia’s artistic manifestations.31
Although the route of the Arrastão takes a different direction to the motorbike
procession, it is complementary precisely because it suggests an opposition of popular participation within the festival, as Amaral observes: “effective popular
participation in the festival takes place […] in the opposite direction to order and is a traditional Brazilian folkloric parade of the city of Belém do Pará, during the June festivities in praise of Catholic saints. In turn, the expression arrastão is related to fishing with a trawl, referring to the fishing activity, one of the traditional forms of income in the Amazon area. Miriti toys are traditional toys produced by craft makers from riverside areas of the state, like those in the town of Abatetuba, which use the fiber of the miriti palm as a raw material. The term usually refers to Mauritia flexuosa (Mauritia vinifera Mart.), a very tall palm native to Trinidad and Tobago and the central and northern regions of South America, especially Venezuela and Brazil. 31 Instituto Arraial do Pavulagem, “Arraial do Pavulagem,” Arraial do Pavulagem Institute website, 2018, https://arraialdopavulagem.wordpress.com/instituto/. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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control.”32 Walking in the opposite direction to the motorbike procession, but Figure 3. Sunday, Oct. 9, 2010, 11:53 a.m.: Boi da
within the circuit of the festival’s main processions, the Arrastão do Pavulagem Tarja Preta de Ourém complements and demarcates the limits of the festival’s territoriality (Figure 3). PA, are invited to attend Arrastão do Boi da
In this way, it comprises a supplementary element to the complex circuit of this Pavulagem (literally mega-event, configuring it as a diffuse ritual.33
At the end of the afternoon on the final Saturday of the festival a Mass is held at Gentil Bittencourt School. After the Mass, a crowd gathers in front of the school
to accompany the departure of the shrine with the image and the forming of the rope, which then proceeds along various avenues (Magalhães Barata, Nazaré
and Presidente Vargas), Castilho França Boulevard, Praça do Relógio to the Sé Cathedral in the Old Town district (Figure 4). In this procession, called
Transladação (The Transfer), those holding the rope are mainly young people who 32 See Amaral, “Círio de Nazaré.” 33 The argument that Círio de Nazaré is a diffuse ritual was developed in an earlier study by Lopes, “Agenciamentos, Conflitos e Negociação.” This expands on Alves’s idea that it involves a complex ritual, based on the perception that Círio de Nazaré incorporates these and other manifestations in its festive-devotional circuits, which traverse each other in overlapping flows, despite the fact that the Programação do Círio, the official program distributed by the Círio de Nazaré Festival Directorate, describes only the religious events taking place in the city over the period. See Alves, Carnaval Devoto. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
translated as Presumption Trawling) Photo by André Silva.
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Figure 4. Saturday, Oct. 9, 2010, 10:43 p.m.: Trasladação, the nightime pilgrimage. The devotees strive to take hold of the rope tied down to the Berlinda, at least at some part of the route. Photo by André Silva.
perform the slow walk and the “centipede-like” or “serpentine” choreography configured by this sacrificial parade through Belém’s streets.34 These youthful devotees
and pilgrims are fulfilling vows for requests made for work, health, success in university, entrance exams and so on—a fact we were able to observe in our conversations with some of the young people in the parade or when they deposited ex-votos and prayers in the urns storing the missives of the pilgrims and devotees in the churches and pilgrimage sites.
Another important aspect of this parade, repeated in the Sunday morning proces-
sion, is the large number of volunteers working in these manifestations. We had
already observed this surplus of volunteers when we accompanied the processions, but were only able to understand its magnitude when the Diário do Pará newspaper published the festival figures in a booklet with the poster of the saint:
25,353 people involved in the organization (volunteers, health workers, security and support); DIEESE and the Festival Director estimate that 2.1
million people would participate in the festival. After [the event] this figure was determined as 2.2 million; 69,000 tourists are expected in Belém; US$ 25 mil-
lion is estimated to be earned from tourism; the festival turnover this year is
expected to be worth R$ 700 million. A 30% growth in the informal market; R$ 2 million is set to be spent on holding the Círio 2010 (the most expensive Círio in history). This amount is 10% higher than last year.35 34 See Sare, “A serpente no asfalto.” 35 See “Roteiros da Fé.” JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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It is on the Sunday of the festival, however, that the true dimension of the me-
ga-event becomes clear. From 5 a.m. on, the main parade of Círio de Nazaré can be watched on public and private TV channels, which broadcast the procession until
its conclusion, around midday, at the Basilica of Nazareth. This media assemblage focuses intensively on Círio de Nazaré with dozens of cameras set up at strategic points of the processions and of the circulation of visitors throughout the city. It
first began to make itself more present in the festivals held in the mid-1990s, as Amaral observes:
[...] everyone [...] has noted that the real force that has been emerging and “messing” with the Círio is television, which, to transmit the festival, occupies too many places, bothers the participants and generates an exhibitionist character, whether in the fair of Nazaré, or in the big procession. Everyone also
acknowledges that the TV coverage helped bring awareness not just about the festival but, through it, about Pará and, especially, Belém, which previously had not been “part of Brazil.”36
Although we recognize the importance of the media for certain apprehensions of
the real in contemporary life, including its establishment of virtual interlocutions,
it is necessary to stress that the media only ever establishes cross-sections of reality, defined by the technology being used, the framing concepts, the display of images
and the timing that it imprints on the flows of imagery. These procedures create
a product and type of knowledge that, according to Bettanini, is always partial knowledge of what happens at a distance.37
Thus, the TV productions explore various angles in their coverage of the event, placing cameras (fixed and mobile) along the routes or inviting guests into their studios to comment on aspects of the festival and what is happening. Watching the
broadcast reveals many other facets of the festival and its assemblages, displayed by
the commentators, generally reinforcing Alves’s definition of them as components 36 Amaral, “Círio de Nazaré.” 37 See Tonino Bettanini, Espaço e Ciências Humanas, trans. by Liliana L. Fernandes (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1982). VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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of a complex ritual,38 but also describing various innovations produced over recent
years. This assemblage is so important that during the 2010 festival, a year when elections were being held across the country, the TSE (Supreme Electoral Court)
and the local TRE (Regional Electoral Court), in agreement with the candidates, suspended television broadcasting of presidential election propaganda on the Sunday of Círio de Nazaré, complying with a request made by the festival directorate.39
These commentators, including Barnabite priests, laypersons helping coordinate
the festival, cultural agents and researchers from Pará Federal University, express many shared ideas and some more occult divergences. Whether commenting on images from the festival coverage, providing information on the event’s organization, or interpreting historical and contemporary aspects of this huge religious production, the expositors configure a media field of reflexivity, which helps synthesize aspects convergent with the principle informing its elaboration.40
This media field of reflexivity introduced us to an important sphere of realization of the Círio de Nazaré festival, namely the flows produced at the interstitial scales of
its promotion, which select and prepare the participation of pilgrims, devotees and
tourists. Thus, the commentaries of local researchers, heard in the TV programs, help integrate the meanings of these flows by simply and concisely describing the festival’s elements as they circulate between people’s houses (as an expression of
family ties and the extended community) and the festival itself (marked by the
presence and actions of the pilgrims in the processions, and the image of Our Lady of Nazareth).41
38 Alves, Carnaval Devoto. 39 “No Pará, Propaganda Eleitoral na TV é Suspensa pelo Círio de Nazaré,” G1 Globo, October 10, 2010, http://g1.globo.com/especiais/eleicoes-2010/noticia/2010/10/no-para-propaganda-eleitoral-na-tv-e-suspensa-pelo-cirio-de-nazare.html. 40 Eduardo A. Vizer, A Trama (in)visível da Vida Social: Comunicação,Sentido e Realidade (Porto Alegre: Sulina, 2011). 41 These elements are verified in the study by Alves, Carnaval Devoto, and developed further by Raymundo H. Maués and Maria A. M. Maués, “‘Feliz Círio!’ Relatos, Interpretações e Memórias Afetivas de um Casal de Antropólogos,” in Círio de Nazaré: Festa e Paixão, ed. Silvio L. Figueiredo (Belem, PA: EDUFPA, 2005), 41-63, and Raymundo H. Maués and Vanda Pantoja, “O Círio de Nazaré na Constituição e Expressão de uma Identidade Regional Amazônica,” Espaço e Cultura, no. 24 (July-December 2008): 57-68. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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One of these flows, regularly remarked upon, concerns the networks of little cha- Figure 5. Sunday,
Oct. 9, 2011, 11:30 a.m.:
pels of Our Lady of Nazareth, whose members make pilgrimages from the towns The faithful jostle for a and communities of inland Pará to Belém throughout the year.42 Here it is a ques- space to complete the
procession holding the
tion of an institutionally controlled assemblage directly related to the central event enormous rope tied
down to the Berlinda.
of Círio de Nazaré, reproduced at diverse scales of worship that organize, stimu- Photo by José Lopes. late and dynamize the devotional cycles and pilgrims for the festival. The annual duration of these cycles of pilgrimages from chapels, organized among groups of devotee family members, constantly renews the flows of elements from the festival
and diffuses its meanings among families of worshipers and their territorialities throughout the Amazon area.
Beyond the reality transmitted by the TV stations, during the main Sunday of the
festival, in the streets of Belém, the ethnographic records on the procession of the 42 These small chapels are similar in terms of the form and organization of their devotional networks to the community worship model of the networks of chapels of Our Lady of Shoenstatt, or of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which form part of family networks in urban districts throughout large regions of the south and southeast of Brazil. See André L. da Silva, “Faces de Maria. Catolicismo, Conflito Simbólico e Identidade: Um Estudo Sobre a Devoção a Nossa Senhora de Shoenstatt na Cidade de Ubatuba,” Master’s thesis, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, 2003, and Marta R. Borin, “Por um Brasil Católico: Tensão e Conflito no Campo Religioso da República (Rio Grande do Sul, 1900-1930),” PhD diss., Universidade do Vale dos Sinos, 2010. Based on data from postgraduate students at Pará Federal University, who have studied these networks and their pilgrimages to Círio de Nazaré in 2009, one researcher stated in an interview transmitted live by TV RBA: “this year a total of 4,200 chapels were registered by the Festival’s staff.” (Field notes, October 10, 2009). VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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night before multiplying in intensity and volume in contact with the manifestation.
Many more pilgrims pulling the rope (Figure 5), many more tourists watching, much more water being served to pilgrims or poured over them, packed stands
along the procession route, showers of flowers and confetti dropped from buildings and helicopters following the Berlinda de Nossa Senhora de Nazaré (Shrine of Our
Lady of Nazareth), produce the atmosphere of the festival’s climax, accompanied
by religious music, songs and prayers played one after the other over the loudspeaker system.
Moving about during the pilgrimage becomes extremely difficult due to the size of the procession and the sheer number of people packing the avenues, sidewalks and buildings. Even outside the space delimited for the procession, the volume of
people circulating along the parade route discourages any idea of moving around. Very often it is necessary to circle around entire blocks to either approach or move
away from the stations that form part of the rope and the pilgrims going to the Shrine of the “Saint.”
Everywhere pilgrims can be seen carrying replicas of the images of Our Lady of
Nazareth on their head or chest, or miniatures of houses, chapels and boats, and other icons forming part of the mythological narrative of the “finding” of the sacred image and the development of her devotion. Personal assemblages that blend into
the multitude, composing a setting of devotional offerings, reflecting the system of gifts and obligations that characterize the relations based on vows in popular
religiosity43 (Figure 6). However, in alignment with the production of diversity typical of mega-events, in the Círio Festival, these assemblages merge with the
introduction of modern religious music in the sound system that surrounds and
mobilizes the processions, by the followers of the Charismatic movement who are slowly occupying more and more important spaces in the festival’s organization or in the support team. The intensity of the music of the charismatic artists from
the religious movement can be heard during the festival’s main days and are very
often criticized by local actors who complain that it decontextualizes the regional 43 Etienne Higuet, “O Misticismo na Experiência Católica,” in Religiosidade Popular e Misticismo no Brasil, ed. Etienne Higuet et al. (São Paulo: Paulinas, 1984), 21-62. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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identity. Involved here is an assemblage that extends beyond the regional context of Figure 6. Sunday, Oct. 10, 2010, 9:40 a.m.:
Amazonia, since these changes are mobilized by the charismatics in their activities During the Círio proas promoters or organizers of various other festivities across the country.44
On the arrival at the Basilica of Nazareth, after fireworks and firecrackers bursting
for several minutes, the Shrine of Our Lady is taken down from the pickup truck
and transferred to an altar in the plaza in front of the building where a Mass is held. After the Mass, the streets of the city empty, literally, with people moving indoors to celebrate at home with family and friends.
THE SPHERES OF CONTROL AND NORMALIZATION OF THE RELIGIOUS MEGA-EVENT Other festive circuits of the Círio, recognized during the process of listing this manifestation as intangible cultural heritage, are also important assemblages of
this mega-event, though they generate debates and divergences among its actors and the festival directorate.45 The most controversial occurs on the final Saturday of 44 Steil, “Peregrinações Católicas.” 45 Márcio C. Henrique, “Do Ponto de Vista do Pesquisador: O Processo de Registro do Círio de Nazaré Como Patrimônio Cultural Brasileiro,” Amazônica 3, no. 2 (2011): 324-46, http://dx.doi. org/10.18542/amazonica.v3i2.771. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
cession, many devouts cover the route walking on their knees. Photo by André Silva.
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the festival. After the passage of the Transfer Procession through the Plaza of the
Republic, the actors from Belém’s GLBTI movements and organizations hold the Chiquita Festival in front of the Teatro da Paz.46 In Souza’s description:
The Chiquita Festival gathers around 40,000 people each year in a parade that gathers in the Bar do Parque in the Plaza of the Republic and begins short-
ly after the Transfer, continuing until the beginning of the procession of the Círio. There is just one objective: paying homage to the Virgin Mary. The fact is
that this homage involves a lavish spectacle filled with color, plumes and glitter. The climax of the festival is the crowning of the “Golden Queer,” a prize given by the organizers to someone who caught the attention due to the Drag Queen
costume during the event. The manifestation has been an “official” popular tradition of the Nazaré festival since 1976, when it was called the “Maria Chikita Festival,” created by the Pará singer Eloy Iglesias.47
This assemblage dialogues objectively with the realization of the festival, assuming
an important role in the configuration of the tradition, as explained by one of its coordinators to Souza:
“Whatever is pertinent and, therefore, finds a correspondence transform into a tradition and is assimilated since it converges with the central objective, which is to praise the Saint. Whatever is not pertinent, does not flourish,” Zélia Amador continues. It is in this interim that, from the aesthetic point of view, we can
see, in the Nazaré context, manifestations that range from the sublime to the grotesque—that is, moments that involve everything from the purest form of
the sacred, like the solemn celebration of the Eucharist in Catholic worship to the Chiquita Festival promoted by the GLBTI community.48
46 See Pedro A. Sanches, “Paradoxo do Círio de Nazaré, Gays da Festa da Chiquita Roubam Cena nas Ruas de Belém,” Uol Notícias, October 11, 2009, https://noticias.uol.com.br/cotidiano/2009/10/11/ult5772u5648.jhtm. 47 Jéssica Souza, “Manifestações Profanas Dividem Espaço no Calendário,” Jornal da Universidade Federal do Pará, no. 65 (October 2008). http://www.jornalbeiradorio.ufpa.br/novo/index. php/2008/13-edicao-65/129--manifestacoes-profanas-dividem-espaco-no-calendario-. 48 Souza, “Manifestações profanas.” JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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Another assemblage, more legitimized by the festival coordinators, is the Auto do
Círio (Tapper Play), a manifestation made by university students that dramatizes historic and contemporary elements of the Círio de Nazaré, combining components of Amazonian identities in dialogue with artistic, theatrical and circus expressions. The Auto do Círio occurs on a Friday preceding the final Sunday of the Círio, at night, in the historic center of Belém.
Alves had already described the presence of theatre and circus groups, but not recognized, or established, how these presences are projected or connected as assemblages in the flows of the festival.49 The study by Matos, which reassesses the degree
of involvement of these groups in the circuits of the festival, after the listing of the Círio de Nazaré as intangible cultural heritage by IPHAN (National Historical
and Artistic Heritage Institute), indicates that the Auto do Círio forms part of the goods listed in this process and transcribes the testimony given by its organizer:50
The recognition was particularly important since it provided a national projec-
tion to the Auto do Círio. This seal from IPHAN was created in 2003. I recall that, beside Círio, three other manifestations were apparently included. When
Círio was listed it created a huge commotion, since in the interviews we always
spoke about the manifestations that were studied and that formed part of the
book and Auto do Círio is there. Whenever we give interviews, we say that the Auto do Círio is a manifestation recognized along with Círio as the Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Brazilian people.
We began to feel a very large responsibility, a responsibility to maintain this
tradition, a tradition not from the kind of traditionalist viewpoint from which the Festival Directorate and the TV divulge the Círio, but as something an-
cient, very correct. Círio is not like that, Círio has a lot of carnivalization, which is different from carnival. The Círio has a lot of carnivalization because it is colorful, it is festive.51 49 Alves, Carnaval Devoto. 50 Matos, “Belém em Festa.” 51 Matos, 159-60. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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The testimony of Santa Brígida, as well as that of Zélia Amador transcribed by
Souza, evokes a view of tradition distinct from the view “which the Festival Direc-
torate and the TV reveal,” suggesting that the manifestations that they coordinate form part of Círio, but impress their own meanings on their contributions, as in
the assertion by Amaral that popular participation in the festival is in the opposite direction to order and control.52
Here it becomes perceptible that the Festival of the Círio de Nazaré is composed and reproduced from the synthesis of various mediations. In this sense, the previous
emphases on the negotiation of the traditional character imbuing the legitimacy of the Círio were possible because the process of cultural heritage recognition— despite the bias evident in its technical dossier—shifted the perspective from a
religious good that founded the Festival and its devotional cycle to the wider dimension of an “expressive [cultural] manifestation,” as elaborated by Martins.53
52 Amaral, “Círio de Nazaré.” It should be recognized that this model of oscillation of appropriations operated by actors vis-à-vis the meaning of the religious festivals is not limited to the manifestations of Círio de Nazaré. Analyses undertaken by Del Priore on festivals in colonial Brazil, by Braga on the pilgrimages to Juazeiro do Norte, and by Brandão on the reciprocal meanings of participation among popular devotees in other religious festivals have already made clear this appropriation of tangible and intangible goods that converge in devotional cycles. See Del Priore, Festas e Utopias; Antônio M. da C. Braga, Padre Cícero: Sociologia de um Padre, Antropologia de um Santo (Bauru, SP: EDUSC, 2008); and Carlos R. Brandão, Prece e Folia, Festa e Romaria (Aparecida, SP: Ideias e Letras, 2010). One of the most fruitful interpretations of this model of oscillation is presented by Steil in his analysis of the pilgrimages to the Sanctuary of the Good Jesus of Lapa, which, making use of the notion of a "religious void" described by Eade and Sallnow, explains how the dynamic of the pilgrimages constitutes a game “capable of adapting meanings and diverse practices […] within which are defined religious belongings and social identities. In this sense, the ritual of the pilgrimage mobilizes a kind of union of opposites in which the two logics are articulated without one excluding the other.” Carlos A. Steil, “Romeiros e Turistas no Santuário de Bom Jesus da Lapa,” Horizontes Antropológicos 9, no. 20 (October 2003): 259. 53 Pedro Martins, “Cabo-verdianos em Lisboa: Manifestações Expressivas e Reconstrução Identitária,” Horizontes Antropológicos 15, no. 31 (January-June 2009): 241-62. https://doi.org/10.1590/ S0104-71832009000100010. According to the author, “expressive manifestations” serve as a “category of analysis that encompasses all the manifestations capable of expressing a form or aesthetic content allied to any identity content.” Martins, “Cabo-verdianos em Lisboa,” 243. Convergent with this notion in the configuration of these expressions are the ideas of invented tradition (E. Hobsbawn), imagined community (B. Anderson) and aesthetic attitudes (J. Duvignaud). Reviewing the contributions of these authors, Martins argues that “aesthetic attitudes vary according to social frameworks and, therefore, only convey an original meaning in the context from which they emerge. The aesthetic attitude or the product of it acquire new meaning when observed outside the social framework that gave rise to it.” (Martins, 244). This contribution is important since it JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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Continuing in this direction, Graburn, when analyzing the ethnic tourism projects in China and Japan, adds the idea of “expressive manifestations” in affirming that
such projects are assembled by diffuse investments that resolve into a regional version of the global “theory of convergence,” producing “veritable simulacra of com-
munities […] not only for the tourist faze, but also for interactive performances” that reinforce community relations through the reconstruction of their traditions.54
In this sense, the notion of “expressive [cultural] manifestations” exposes the tension generated between conceptions of authenticity and reproduction in religious
mega-events, as collective and idealized projections of the assemblages and identity flows operating within them, simultaneously complementing the ritual circuits of these devotional cycles and contributing to their symbolic capital. Diverse actors operate in these manifestations—not exclusively religious—that assemble narra-
tives, identities and memories concerning the cultural heritage registration process of the manifestation, without necessarily demanding religious recognition of their
agencies. For these actors, the cultural heritage process serves as a reference to a collective good, which processes relevant cultural logics within a determined context.55
In sum, the Círio de Nazaré Festival is composed as a religious mega-event that should be conceived via the logic through which it establishes a network with other
contiguous events in singular spatial and temporal cycles, all of them centered on the Belém festival. This centrality is organized by tense and conflicting internal
flows, arising from the assemblage strategies of local actors, and these assemblages seek to superimpose themselves on others.
emphasizes the influence of exogenous actors on the events in terms of attributing new meanings to the aesthetic attitudes produced in the social framework from which they originated. On the technical dossier’s bias, see Henrique, “Processo registro do Círio.” 54 Nelson Graburn, “Reconstruindo a Tradição: Turismo e Modernidade na China e no Japão,” Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais 23, no. 68 (October 2008): 12, http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S010269092008000300002. 55 A character strengthened by the title of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, declared by UNESCO in October 2014. Organização das Nações Unidas – ONU, “Círio de Nazaré é Declarado Patrimônio Imaterial da Humanidade da UNESCO,” Nações Unidas Brasil, October 8, 2014. https:// nacoesunidas.org/cirio-de-nazare-e-declarado-patrimonio-imaterial-da-humanidade-da-unesco/. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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While it is evident that the Círio de Nazaré Festival today produces a gravitational field attracting the other commemorations, the latter also clearly either copy its characteristics, reproducing its events and modes of organization in miniature, or
innovate or actualize their elements in new ritual combinations. Examples of the projection of these flows outside their context can be observed in the passage of the “Pilgrim Mother” (Our Lady of Nazareth’s image) through Rio de Janeiro, an
event repeated since 2009, when the former archbishop of Belém, Dom Orani João Tempesta, became the archbishop of Rio de Janeiro and promoted an encounter
between the Our Lady of Nazareth and Christ the Redeemer.56 In 2011, this visit occurred in other capitals of the country, like Porto Alegre, where a set of specific activities from the ritual circuits of the Belém festival was reproduced.57
Thus, the diffuse rituals that inform Círio de Nazaré operate with and through the
exteriorization of religious-heritage goods, reaching broader scales in which inter-
sections with other goods of the same kind occur. The broader character of these strategic assemblages is that of an inclusive formation that, by agglutinating the diversity making up this mega-event, implies the need to produce a “negotiation of reality.”58
The context of this negotiation began to develop in the mid-2000s, especially following the huge upsurge in TV broadcasters transmitting the event, combined
with the official recognition of Círio de Nazaré Festival as intangible heritage. Simultaneous or subsequent to these two contexts we can identify the emergence of a series of perceptions concerning the way in which these flows are projected and
frequently superimposed.59 In other words, we argue that the television broadcasts 56 “Católicos Fazem Festa para Receber Imagem de Nossa Senhora de Nazaré,” G1 Rio, September 19, 2009, http://g1.globo.com/Noticias/Rio/0,,MUL1310684-5606,00-CATOLICOS+FAZEM+FESTA+PARA+RECEBER+IMAGEM+DE+NOSSA+SENHORA+DE+NAZARE.html. 57 For an updated list of Círio de Nazaré Festivals in Brazil and elsewhere in the world, consult Ronaldo G. Hühn, ed., Círios de Nazaré 24 (Belem, PA: Editora Círios, 2019), https://issuu.com/ revistaamazonia/docs/cirios2019. 58 Schutz, Social Reality; Gilberto Velho, Projeto e Metamorfose: Antropologia das Sociedades Complexas (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar Editores, 1994); and Luiz F. D. Duarte, “Ethos Privado e Justificação Religiosa: Negociações da Reprodução na Sociedade Brasileira,” in Sexualidade, Família e Ethos Religioso, ed. by Maria L. Heilborn et al. (Rio de Janeiro: Garamond, 2005), 137-76. 59 Alves, “Taba Marajoara Aldeia Global,” and Regina Alves, “O Manto, a Mitra e o Microfone: A Midiatização do Círio de Nazaré em Belém do Pará,” PhD diss., Universidade Federal do Pará, 2012; JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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of the festival, at national level, and the legitimization of the goods (manifestations) that compose it, officially recognized by IPHAN and the title of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity declared by UNESCO in 2014, have had a marked
influence on the tense interplay of projections mobilized by the actors, in this model of oscillation of appropriations, modifying their valuation meaning.
In response to the constant expansion of these flows, the Festival Directorate has become professionalized over recent years, instituting a bureaucratic organizational logic that oscillates between religious and commercial promotion.60
Simultaneous to this perception, observing the changes to the Official Program of the Círio de Nazaré over the last few years it is clear that the reflexivity operating
between the convergences and divergences of the actors in the event also enables
the festival management to create strategies to control internal tensions of the
event through the inclusion or separation of the diverse expressive manifestations that make themselves present in this devotional cycle. Examples of such changes can be perceived, among other strategies, in the gradual incorporation of some
activities into the Official Program of the Círio over the last few years: both the introduction of competitions that regulate and award prizes for the decorations of
houses and buildings on the route of the processions, or appropriate photos and
videos produced by participants in the festival and turn them into cultural heritage, and the realization of seminars that gather social scientists to reflect on the char-
acter of the changes in contemporary religious festivals, which provide important inputs for the festival coordinators themselves. As we could ascertain from our observations from 2009 to 2011, this reflexivity is constantly mobilized by the actors involved in the event, but their syntheses are multiple. In some cases, it is located
Pantoja, “Reciprocidade e Mercado no Círio;” and Matos, “Belém em Festa.” 60 Pantoja, “Notas Sobre o Círio,” and “Reciprocidade e Mercado no Círio;” and Matos, “Belém em festa.” The process of this professionalization and bureaucratization, described by Pantoja “Notas Sobre o Círio,” and “Reciprocidade e Mercado no Círio,” involved the conducting of a Catholic census in the Belém region in 2005, the subsequent hiring of Catholic marketers, the elaboration of the PPOCN (Official Sponsorship Project for the Círio de Nazaré), the creation of ADENAZA (Association of Devotees of Our Lady of Nazareth), and the application to register the trademark Círio. This process is a characteristic that affects every festive mega-event, as analyzed by Farias in studies of Brazilian North-eastern popular festivals. See Edson S. Farias, Ócio e Negócio: Festas Populares e Entretenimento-turismo no Brasil (Curitiba: Appris, 2011). VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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Figure 7. Friday, Oct. 8, 2010, 7:55 p.m.: A cluster of people at Auto do Círio, in front of the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Featuring the characters of the play and the banner related to that year’s chosen theme. Photo by André Silva.
more explicitly in some manifestation of circuit of the festival. This occurred in 2010, in the Auto do Círio, whose theme was “All paths lead to you, Lady.” The
theme was represented by diverse banners alluding to the paths that lead to the
Virgin of Nazareth, during the Círio: “We have come to you on the path of Faith,” “We have come to you on the path of Art,” “We have come to you on the path of
Theatre,” “We have come to you on the path of Music,” “We have come to you on the path of Culture,” and so on (Figure 7). These diverse paths comprising the movement of the actors in the Círio are justified in the Auto.61
In this sense, another type of appropriation that has become more visible recent-
ly stems from the correspondence between the investments needed to realize the event and its sponsors, attracting large national and multinational companies, who
associate their brands with the “Círio trademark.”62 And while recognizing that
these types of appropriation are not mutually exclusive, in the ambientation that produces and imbues the city, in this manifestation, this latter type supplements its
relational character with an institutional strategy common in contemporary religious tourism.
61 Mentions according to the field notes. 62 The “Círio trademark” is a trademark that was applied for and registered by the Directorate of the Círio Festival at the INPI (National Intellectual Property Institute) in 2000. According to Pantoja, “Notas sobre o Círio,” as a registered trademark, as one of the Círio’s directors stated, the Directorate already has a number of privileges in terms of making some money on this good, or more precisely, on all the symbolic goods related to the event. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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In the framework of typifications of this latter mode of appropriation, we can perceive the occurrence of a circularity of influences promoted by the actors of religious
tourism. On one hand, the tourists appropriate the traditional attire of devotees and
pilgrims, like the straw hat (with or without the draped ribbons), the festival T-shirt and the candle (círio), in order to take part in the parades, mingling with the same.63 On the other hand, the availability of various types of T-shirts, hats and baseball
caps, sold with a large diversity of printed designs, in stalls lining the parades or
by the hundreds of street vendors milling around them, attract many devotees and
pilgrims, who, in turn, appear more and more like tourists. Consequently, our recognition of these types of participants needs to be re-examined.64
The Círio de Nazaré also receives assemblages of public agencies and para-state entities stimulating entrepreneurialism, like SEBRAE (Brazilian Micro and Small
Business Support Service), which sponsors the Miriti Craftworkers Fair with their
“naive” and beautiful works and motifs ranging from children’s toys to the tradi-
tional little boats made from balsa wood, as well as icons of the Círio de Nazaré Festival.65 Located on the “margins of the events,” very close to the Docks, the fair
is part of the activities of the festival, as announced regularly on its sound system, “displaying the Amazonian art of those who are also devotees of Nazareth.”66
63 The círio is a wooden allegory that copies the format of a large and well-adorned candle about a meter and a half in height. 64 Here an approximation is also made between the commercial character impressed on these manifestations—and exploited in the local economic dynamic—and the tangible and intangible appropriations that local people and tourists effect in this market, as elaborated by Farias and also studied in the Círio de Nazaré Festival by Pantoja. See Farias, Ócio e Negócio; and Pantoja, “Reciprocidade e Mercado no Círio.” 65 It would be more appropriate perhaps to consider these material productions as an example of what Prokop defines as a spontaneous art that expresses distinctions vis-à-vis the productions of mass culture. See Dieter Prokop, “Ensaio Sobre Cultura de Massa e Espontaneidade,” in Prokop: Sociologia, ed. Ciro Marcondes Filho (São Paulo: Ática, 1986), 114-48. 66 This assemblage is important insofar as the motifs from Pará’s craftwork form part of circular appropriations with the icons of Círio de Nazaré, present in the processions and offerings made to the Virgin of Nazareth, in this festive cycle. These profane motifs become recognized as heritage in the interlocution with the sacred and generate an Amazonian identity that synthesize natural elements (characterized by the use of “caranã, the pulp from the branches of a palm tree, known as miriti or buritie,” according to Amaral, “Círio de Nazaré”) and socioreligious elements. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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Figure 8. Sunday, Oct. 10, 2010, 10:55 a.m.: After the end of the procession, many devotees take home a small piece of the rope as an amulet. Photo by André Silva.
FINAL REMARKS Our analysis here has argued that the assemblages mobilized in the Círio de Nazaré open a field of possibilities for institutional religious reproduction and generate
concentric flows of manifestations involving diverse actors, strengthening iden-
tity dynamics through complex and diffuse rituals, in its composition (Figure 8). Meanwhile the organizational control, more or less centralized, and the territorial
delimitation of the rituals of the religious festival, as a mega-event, reinforce the complex character of the supposed relations that are shared as reciprocal perspectives in this manifestation, either in a community of time (the festival in itself ), or in a community of space (the festival for itself ).67
In the first case, the manifestation presents typicalities for comprehending the real, which define the relations between the participating actors as distinct alterities in a common-sense situation, perceiving each other as contemporaries: the relation 67 Schutz, Social Reality, 10-25. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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between an “I” and an “us” in this context presumes the emergence of third parties
as a “them.” Hence, the internal tension that appears in the event, as a possibility, but not a determination.
In the second case, the typicalities on the line extend beyond the common-sense situation of the contemporaries to a more associative relation of recognition.
Sharing a community of space implies that a certain sector of the outer world is equally within the reach of each partner and contains objects of common interest and relevance. For each partner the other’s body, their gestures, their gait and facial expressions, are immediately observable, not merely as things or events of the
outer world but in their physiognomical significance, that is, as symptoms of the
other’s thoughts. Sharing a community of time—and this means not only of outer
(chronological) time, but of inner time—implies that each partner participates in the on-rolling life of the other, can grasp in a vivid present the other’s thoughts as they are built up step by step.68
This distinction between meanings and structures of significance, given in the forms of participation of actors in the Círio Festival, produce alternating individual
and collectives relevance, “which determine their behavior, define the goal of their action, the means available for attaining them—in brief, which help them to find their bearings within their natural and socio-cultural environment and to come to terms with it.”69 Through the distinction recognized in this manifestation, models of projects and assemblages become evident that set in play social roles and func-
tions whose typicality finds a correspondence in the norms of conduct but also in
the search for a mutual recognition whose typicality finds a correspondence in an association constituted by an “idealization of the reciprocity of motives.”70 While in the former case an anonymity regularly prevails between the actors, which the or-
ganizational control of the festival does not attempt to rupture, in the latter mutual
recognition between the actors is essential to produce the identity effect sought in its organization.
68 Schutz, Social Reality, 16. 69 Schutz, Social Reality, 6. 70 Schutz, Social Reality, 23. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2021
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On the line in this mega-event, therefore, is what Schutz calls the “construction of models of rational behavior,” which enable the transition from latent propositions and actions to manifest propositions and actions.71 While latent propositions and
actions seek to mentally resolve a problem, the manifest propositions and actions insert it in the outside world.72 This amounts to a conception of agency, whose
premises the author elaborates in terms of a conception of rational deliberation, in Dewey, in which the propositions and actions established in the construction of models of behavior are already defined in an external hierarchy—usually, institutional—that imposes itself on the actors, or in a hierarchical order established by
the actors’ courses of action themselves—that is, the relation between the ends that they want to achieve and other ends, “the compatibility of one with the other, and the possible repercussions of one upon another.”73
This hierarchical definition normalizes and explains the biographical situation of the actors, in relation to a physical and sociocultural environment, as well as the
knowledge and resources that they have available for materializing their projects. But logically, in the broader scope of a religious mega-event, the hierarchical definition that acts as a control and normalization of the festival and its pilgrimages
creates many interstices through which the projects of these actors leak. Thus, the
unity that the institutional hierarchy emphasizes on the festival and its manifestations “nothing other than the interaction of elements.”74
71 Schutz, Social Reality, 44. 72 Schutz, Social Reality, 19-20. 73 Schutz, Social Reality, 31. 74 Simmel, Sociology, 22. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM
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