The Pilgrims to Madrinha Dodô (Penitence and Pilgrimages)

Abstract

Much has been said about the Beata Madrinha Dodô and her power of persuasion over the young women who joined her to be ordained as pilgrims. As the personal assistant to Padre Cícero, Dodô stayed at his side until his death. Upon meeting the beato Pedro Batista in the 1940, she became his personal assistant and moved to Santa Brígida, BA, where she cared for the beato and received the penitents. The emblematic figure of Madrinha Dodô, her relationship with Padre Cícero and Pedro Batista, who she watched die, her re-incarnation as Our Lady of Health and Our Lady of Pain, the popular Catholicism, the messianic movements of the region, the life of Dodô in the greater sertão, the faith, the trance at the curing sessions and her pilgrims are the issues addressed in this article. Theoretically and methodologically, the study uses parameters of visual ethnography and ethnography of performance to address the practice of the pilgrimage and penitence in the region where Madrinha Dodô traveled. Upon her death in 1998, she left a following of pilgrims who worship her in the region between Água Branca, Alagoas, Santa Brígida, Bahia and Juazeiro do Norte in Ceará.