Igreja Católica e as práticas da religiosidade popular: territorialidades religiosas na Festa de Nossa Senhora da Conceição, Recife/PE

Abstract

Institutions, individuals and socio-religious groups weave territorialities in the process of symbolic appropriation/appreciation of sacred spaces instituted in the context of religious festivals, through the performance of religious practices. At the festivals of popular Catholicism, the different territorial agents share and dispute these spaces, causing the encounter between diverse territorialities whose interests, values and beliefs may coincide or diverge, resulting in moments of tension, conflicts and/or common understanding involving the Roman Catholic Church, as an institution that uses actions and control strategies and domination in order to preserve its hegemony over the celebration, and the manifestations of popular religiosity. The power relations that circumscribe the religious territories in which this phenomenon occurs, object of interest in this investigation. In this regard, based on a symbolic- cultural approach of Geography, this study aims to analyze a territoriality of the Catholic Church, exerted in the context at hand, by leaders of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Conception, and its relation with the practices of popular religiosity at the Feast of Our Lady of the Conception, Recife / PE, in addition to identifying and analyzing a spatial dimension of these practices and the symbolic values attributed to the areas in which they are carried. For this purpose, a qualitative methodological approach was adopted and the case study as a research outline, using multiple sources of data and information such as direct observation, semi-structured interviews and question forms, whose results were analyzed and interpreted from the source triangulation strategy. The results obtained demonstrate that the territorial actions and strategies adopted by the Catholic Church directly influence most of the religious rituals and practices held in sacred spaces that compose the feast, unleashing tensions between the religious institutions and the manifestations of popular religiosity. It was also found that, despite exercising hegemonic power at the Feast, the Church also seeks to meet the diverse demands of the participating individuals and/or socio-religious groups, causing consensual negotiations, however, maintaining the ecclesiastical authority over the event and, more specifically, concerning religious practices.