CEDLA Lecture: ‘Popular, Catholic and National: Our Lady of Aparecida and the making of a Brazilian Devotion’

João Rickli van de Katholieke Universiteit in Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS – Pontifícia Universidade do Rio Grande do Sul) houdt vrijdag 8 juni een lezing op het Cedla in Amsterdam over de relatie tussen politiek en religie in Brazilie.

During the Brazilian presidential elections of 2010, the two most voted candidates visited the so-called National Shrine, a huge Catholic Basilica in the state São Paulo, dedicated to Our Lady of Aparecida, the patron saint of Brazil. These visits could be understood as the most recent chapter of a century-long history of the cult of Aparecida as a critical junction linking the Catholic Church, Brazilian national politics and popular Catholic devotional practices.

This lecture will address the relationships between politics and religion in different moment of the history of the devotion to Our Lady of Aparecida. It will analyse the transformations occurred in the iconography of Aparecida as a way to access the complex relationships between the Catholic Church and the State in Brazil. It will also analyse how Aparecida’s transitional identity – from a white European depiction of the Immaculate Conception to a black Brazilian manifestation of the Virgin Mary – reflects the forging of a Brazilian national identity, under the auspices of the Catholic Church and the Brazilian State