CHARLOTTE and HIGH POINT — A growing community of Brazilian Catholics celebrated the Feast Day of Our Lady of Aparecida Oct. 12.
At Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in High Point, the day marked the first Mass said in Portuguese, while at St. John Neumann Church in Charlotte, Brazilian parishioners celebrated six months of weekly Sunday Masses.
Although the church does not track parishioners by ethnicity, leaders say the Brazilian population is growing as more companies rooted in Brazil – including Volvo and TSEA Energy – expand in the state.
To serve the demographic, Father Patrick O’Connor, OSFS, pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary, practiced daily for two weeks to memorize the liturgy in Portuguese.
“Parishioners made tapes of the Mass for me, and I just listened to them over and over again,” Father O’Connor said. “It was a lot of work, but I just wanted to do something for our growing number of Portuguese-speaking parishioners."
The Mass drew more than 200 parishioners, surprising organizer Giuliana Koch.
“I wrote on my Facebook page that this Mass is a seed we just planted that will give us wonderful fruits of love in the future,” Koch said.
In Charlotte, Paula Simoncello also noticed a recent influx of Brazilian Catholics.
Simoncello, who arranged the first Brazilian Mass at St. John Neumann in 2008, said almost 200 people attended Oct. 12 – their largest crowd to date.
“There are…local Christian denominations with Catholic Brazilians, because we didn’t have a Mass or Church to go to. But now, many are coming back,” Simoncello said. “Since April, we have been able to offer Mass weekly. The small group we started with is now around each Sunday.”
Father Adilso Coelho, a native Brazilian who presides over the Mass, travels from the Diocese of Charleston. He is pastor of Divine Saviour in York and parochial administrator of St. Anne in Rock Hill.
He and Simoncello pray for the day he won’t have to make so many trips.
“Our big dream is to have a Brazilian priest assigned to us in the Diocese of Charlotte,” Simoncello said, “so we can have all the other things, not only the Mass.”
— Lisa M. Geraci
Catholicism in Brazil
Patroness
Our Lady of Aparecida, Feast Day Oct. 12
Our Lady of Aparecida is 14-inch terracotta statue found in 1717 during a fishing voyage that started out as a total failure. The fishermen threw out their nets, but instead of fish they caught a headless, dark-skinned Blessed Mother statue. They threw the nets a second time and retrieved the statue’s head. When they connected the two pieces and tried again, their nets were overfilled with fish.
Larger than life
- The Basilica of Our Lady of Aparecida is the second-largest church in the world – second only to St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. The interior covers nearly 130,000 square feet and can accommodate approximately up to 70,000 worshippers
- Brazil’s iconic 98-foot statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro may be the most well-known, but Christ the Protector in Encantada, Rio Grande do Sol, completed in 2024, is about 18 feet taller.
- Although Brazil is the largest Catholic nation in the world with more than 110 million residents claiming the faith, the percentage of the population has declined dramatically – shrinking from 93% in 1963 to 56% today.
A saint for the single
In Brazil, Saint Anthony finds more than lost keys – he is known to find a spouse for his single devotees. Singles often take the infant Jesus from St. Anthony statues and vow to return Him once their mate is found.