Brazil's First Saint

A few weeks ago I wrote about St. Anthony and how young ladies here in Brazil bury images of him upside down in order to get a husband. This week I learned of something else that honestly seems stranger than that.

Brazil is getting it's first official saint, São Galvão. Antônio Galvão de França born in 1739, in Guaratinguetá, in the interior of the state of São Paulo. In 1774 he founded the Monastery of Light and worked the next 28 years as its pricipal architect and builder. He died in 1822 and was buried in the monastery's chapel.

Now for the strange part of the story. For some reason, many years ago nuns at the Monastery of Light began to print small pictures of São Galvão on tiny pieces of paper. On the back is printed a short prayer that is attributed to the new saint.

These tiny "prayer cards" are then neatly folded and placed into capsules. These capsules are then swallowed by the faithful who believe they have healing power. There have been two claims of miraculous healing after taking the capsules those were enough to get Galvão his sainthood.

The nuns normally produce 90,000 capsules a day but are now doubling production to meet the demand now that Galvão is being canonized.

I find it difficult to understand how people can honestly believe this but somebody is swalling 100k pills.

Please understand that I am not catholic bashing, just sharing some interesting cultural things that sound strange to me. I have many wonderful friends and family members who are Roman Catholic and love the Lord but this is just beyond comprehension to me.

I will be posting about some ridiculous things that evangelicals are doing here as well (you probably won't believe me).

Somewhere out there is probably somebody selling Billy Graham's used napkins.