Integralism and the Brazilian Catholic Church

Abstract

M I OST SCHOLARS HAVE APPROACHED THE SUBJECT of Brazilian Integralism either comparatively-as a hybrid of Continental Fascism-or ideologically-as Brazil's first right-wing, radical movement. Generally, however, neither approach has emphasized its intellectual and spiritual affinity to the Brazilian Catholic Church of the 1930s or noted the nature of its connection with the Church. The more dramatic aspects of Integralism, such as its violence and its fascist trappings (green shirts, salutes, goose-stepping marches), have obscured the fact that Integralism often acted, although implicitly, as a arm of the Catholic Church. It is the contention of this essay that attention to the symbiotic relationship obtaining between the Integralist movement and the Catholic Church between 1932 and 1937 sheds light on some frequently disregarded characteristics of Brazilian fascism and the nature of political Catholicism in this period. The Integralists' philosophical dependence on Catholic doctrine and the significant sphere of influence it offered the Church coincided with the Church's search for means to aggrandize its power in the state within the context of an elitist strategy. The fact that the Brazilian Catholic Church of the 1930s pursued a multi-pronged approach to power, utilizing diversified groups and tactics to attain its ends, has dimmed historians' awareness of the Church-Integralist accord. Such a shotgun approach to power was developed by Sebastiao Cardinal Leme, authoritative leader of the Church from 1928 until his death in 1942. Leme long had perceived the Church as an institution beleaguered by the growth of competitive value systems and by the position of inferiority imposed on it by the Constitution of 1891.1 His choice of an essentially elitist