Nossa Senhora Aparecida no discurso da igreja católica no Brasil (1854 – 1904)

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to analyze how Catholic Church in Brazil interpreted and disclosed the image of Nossa Senhora da Conceição Aparecida between 1854 and 1904. The former year was the date of the visit of the Bishop of São Paulo, D. Antônio Joaquim de Mello, to the chapel of virgin in the city of Aparecida. The year of 1904 concerning to the crowning of the virgin as ―Queen of Brazil‖, a period when the memory proposed by Church was consolidated. In his visit to the city in 1854, the bishop D. Antônio proposed to brazilian people a more sacramental devotion, replacing from the Sanctuary the images considered as improper. In the same year, images representing Aparecida as a white virgin appeared, a Project altered in 1870, when the image started being represented as a mestiza. This process of mestizaje of the image is the focus of this work. It is demonstrated the hypothesis that the image presented in 1870 was in line with the new social dynamic found in the country: blacks being considered as a part of ―brazilian people‖ and the wide contingent of immigrants arriving into the country. The changes in ecclesiastic institution were also important in this new discource assumed by the Church; the needing of a nacionality symbol at the end of the XIX century; the relations between ecclesiastics and the members of the State; besides the necessity of the Church to assert a position in this period of new religious and political conceptions that emerged in the national scene. To sum up, Aparecida has to be understood as a result of negociations and not as a imposition.