O imaginário da libertação pela caridade: Ibiapina e as Missões de Santa Fé na Paraíba

Abstract

Ibiapina raised a new religious praxis for the rescue and promotion of the dignity and valorization of human experiences through the Houses of Charity and other missionary works developed in the provinces of Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte, Pernambuco, Ceará and Alagoas between the years of 1856 and 1883. It establishes, therefore, a new religious culture that will influence a new Christianity in Latin America, specifically in Brazil through the works and missions that realized; the ideal environment to present the religious phenomenon as a cultural and disaffecting element contrasting with the pre-republican political environment and subserviently Romanized, and thus demonstrate that its principles remain and are updated generating followers who foment new Christian practices for the contemporary through the promotion of charity. This research was developed through participant and ethnographic observation in the Ibiapina Santa Fe - Arara - Paraíba Sanctuary, from bibliographical and documentary exploration. Through charitable works he promoted the liberation of the poorest and most marginalized of his time and so we consider that the priest Jose Antonio de Maria Ibiapina was the inducer of a new Catholic Christianity in the northeast of Brazil, fomented through his sermons, spiritual maxims, missionary works and by a renewed catechetical practice inserted in the real needs of the most needy people.