A participação da Igreja Católica em Goiás na transferência da capital federal do Brasil

Abstract

For geopolitical reasons, since the historical period of Brazil empire there was the expectation to transfer the Federal Capital from the coastal region to the central Brazilian plateau. With the establishment of the republican regime, what was expectation became a legal disposition in the Brazilian constitutions. Therefore, several technical committees were appointed by successive governments, to establish the geographical location of the new territory to the Federal District. Among the various regional political disputes to obtain the construction of Brasilia, the protagonism of the state of Goiás and its various historical subjects emerged. It was in this context that the Catholic Church in Goiás took the political leadership to persuade the transfer of the Federal Capital. For this purpose, it provided both its theological-political discourse and acted through the members of his local ecclesiastical hierarchy. Its ecclesiological conception of restorationist and militant Christianity provided it with the justification for participating politically in the dispute for the conquest of the new Federal Capital. In its favor, there was the receptivity of a Christian imaginary in Brazil, the oneiric narrative of Don Bosco, the millennial religious phenomenon, and the miraculous occurrences; in addition, it was circumstantiated by the immense country's interior, under increasing migratory wave to western Brazil, with low population density, socioeconomic retardation and vast tracts of farmland. Due to the intense participation of the Catholic Church in Goiás for the transfer of the Federal Capital to the Central Plateau, it was possible for the Catholic Church to interfere in the design of the Pilot Plan for the construction of Brasilia, to insert itself in the urban space of the new city, to ensure its public presence at the heart of the country's powers, and to restore its political importance in the secular-republican state. Once installed in the Federal Capital, in the years following the inauguration of Brasilia, the Catholic Church undergoes a profound conciliar transformation, overcomes its conception of Christianity and establishes an unprecedented relationship with the State