Abstract

Founded in 1732 in Scala by Afonso Maria de Liguori, the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer became one of the most important Catholic missionary congregations to work in Europe in the 19th century, both in the consolidation of ideals ultramontanos, as in the religious action with the faithful Catholics of the peripheries and rural areas. In Germany the Redemptorists experienced until the 1860s an intense moment of missionary activity and parochial care, especially in Bavaria, whereby they became especially known for their rigorous confessionals activities. From the 1860s to the 1870s, however, some transformations in the national and international political context led the Catholicism to be linked, especially by some groups linked to Protestant liberalism, to an image of backwardness and superstition, something necessary to be overcome by a newly forged nation that wished to align itself on the paths of progress and modernity in consolidation in Europe. In addition to these imagery constantly reinforced by the liberal press, the Redemptorists and Jesuits were accused of threatening national sovereignty in favor of the papacy and, from the so-called Kulturkampf, were expelled from the German empire in 1873. However, one of the direct consequences of these 21 years of exile imposed on the German Redemptorists was the acceptance by them of the founding of a vice-province in Brazil, specifically in the states of Goiás and São Paulo. There, the same congregation that had once been a sign of backwardness and superstition in Germany, at the beginning of the 20th century became the main promoter of the progress and modernization of Goias, legitimating itself in the Brazilian religious field through the construction of the self-image of Catholicism as a rational, national and modern religion, much in contrast to the ultramontane discourse of the previous century. In view of this discussion and context, this dissertation aims to investigate the Bavarian Redemptorist who migrated as missionaries from Germany to Brazil between 1894 and 1930. Our central objective is to investigate how the experiences of the Redemptorist congregation in Germany in the 19th century conditioned the expectations of the missionaries who belonged to it on the future and progress in Goias in the 20th century, and how such expectations influenced the strategies adopted for Catholic legitimacy in the modernity under construction in Brazil.