International circulation, politicization, and changes in the religious role

Abstract

This article examines the changes in the patterns of public action
of an Italian religious institute settled in Northeastern Brazil
since the 1950s - the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of
Jesus. Those missionaries became major agents of the political
and cultural history of contemporary Catholicism as they acted
in the frontiers of the Catholic territories and were committed to
multiple issues. This approach allows us taking the evolution of
the missionary perspective as a fruitful observatory to understand
some processes such as the transformation of the relationship
between the political and the religious spheres in Brazil, the
redefinitions of the religious role, and its connections with the
work of missionaries abroad.