Romaria virtual do Muquém: religião tradicional na plataforma digital

Abstract

FRANZIN, Aldemir. Muquém Virtual Pilgrimage: traditional religion on the digital platform. Thesis (Doctorate in Sciences of Religion) – Pontifical Catholic University of Goiás – PUC/GO, 2022. 211 p. This research seeks to describe and analyze the passage of a pilgrimage of expression of traditional and popular Catholicism rooted in the history, customs and culture of society in the interior of Goiás, to the digital environment in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reality confronted the leaders of the Nossa Senhora d'Abadia do Muquém Sanctuary with an absolutely extraordinary challenge: to carry out a virtual pilgrimage from a distance. They were faced with the challenge of passing an expression of traditional and popular Catholicism, almost three hundred years old and with a strong body connotation, to the digital medium. The only way to maintain the continuity of the pilgrimage and to maintain contact with the pilgrims would be to carry out it through the digital platform. The central question of the research is to analyze what happens to the pilgrimage when it became a virtual pilgrimage, that is, to analyze the process of virtualization of a collective religious phenomenon. We are also interested in knowing what kind of religious experience virtual pilgrims have, to what extent the virtual experience affects their religiosity. We assume as a hypothesis that the process of virtualization causes changes in the religious expression of the pilgrimage and in the religiosity of the pilgrims. The methodological procedure adopted consisted of content analysis for the theoretical frameworks Campbell (2020), Sbardoletto (2019) and Hoover (2014); Critical, comparative, qualitative and quantitative analysis is also applied to texts, graphics, narratives, testimonials and interviews. The results indicate that a virtual pilgrimage is possible, but that the virtual pilgrimage does not replace the face-to-face pilgrimage. The virtualization of the collective religious experience changed the profile of the pilgrim and their religious practices and impacted the religious experience itself. The pilgrimage did not diminish, it did not disappear or it was not structured as such on the digital platform. It became dynamic and was welcomed by an expressive number of pilgrims who connected, got involved, enjoyed and “negotiated” their participation in the virtual devotion. Even with the changes that took place in the daily religious practices of pilgrims, they returned to the pilgrimage in person with various practices that they did not have in the phase before the pandemic. It seems that such practices were incorporated by them in the virtual pilgrimage tend to remain in the face-to-face pilgrimage.