O santuário de São Severino do Ramos: características de uma devoção da diocese de Nazaré

Abstract

This abstract aims at describing the structure of the pilgrimages taking place to the sanctuary of São Severino do Ramos situated in the city of Paudalho in the diocese of Nazaré in Pernambuco, Brazil, and trying to understand their characteristics. It parts from the four districts that compose the diocese and accentuates the reasons and strategies used by the transportation contractors who perform these constant pilgrimages to the Santuário do Engenho Ramos. Pilgrimage being a universally known religious practice, the Santuário de São Severino answers to the necessity the pilgrims feel to go to certain hierophanic places in order to deepen their experience of the Holy. In the Northeast of Brazil, this sanctuary has considerable importance because of the thousands of devotees who visit it (yearly) and identify it as a place capable of conceding the blessings most necessary to human life through the mediation of São Severino. To reach the aim we have set ourselves, there were realized twenty semi-structured interviews with the transportation coordinators of the pilgrimage five in each of the four sectors of the diocese of Nazaré. To get more information about the phenomena of the pilgrimages in the vicinity of the old Engenho Ramos, we also interviewed another nineteen people who know facts about the relationship between the pilgrimages and the sanctuary of São Severino. From a theoretical point of view, this research sought dialogue with the contributions of Carlos Alberto Steil, Annette Dumoulin, Mircea Eliade and Aldo Natale Terrin, among others. This essay is divided into three chapters: the first one introduces the genesis of the sanctuary in question; the second brings out the result of the interviews realized in the four sectors of the diocese; and the third analyses some of the characteristics that are common to pilgrimages. The essay aims at being not only a contribution in the field of Religious Sciences, but also a compass that wants to give direction to the pastoral initiatives of the diocese of Nazaré where popular religiosity is concerned.