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Related: About this forumFollowers of Brazil’s Umbanda religion worship despite discrimination
Rita Coccaro, a medium of the Umbanda religion, speaks in her Rio de Janeiro home with an altar in the background. (Chloe Elmer/Penn State University/MCT)
Posted on Monday, July 2, 2012
By Somer Wiggins | McClatchy Newspapers
RIO DE JANEIRO Rita Coccaro is the high priestess of the Umbanda Temple of Caboclo Virgin Forest, if temple is not too grand a word for the small room in the modest house Coccaro shares with her mother and dog on the outskirts of one of Rio de Janeiros slums.
Once a week, Coccaro and a dozen followers gather here to sing prayers, beat drums and burn incense in the hope of connecting with the spirits of long-dead African slaves, and of the indigenous people who populated Brazil before the Europeans came.
Connecting with the spirits is like going to school to develop a deeper knowledge of Umbanda and the world, said Coccaro, whos 41.
Contacting spirits is at the center of Umbanda, a uniquely Brazilian religion that blends African slave traditions and strains of spiritism with the more familiar shapes and symbols of Roman Catholicism.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/07/02/154710/followers-of-brazils-umbanda-religion.html
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Followers of Brazil’s Umbanda religion worship despite discrimination (Original Post)
rug
Jul 2012
OP
2ndAmForComputers
(3,527 posts)1. Surprise, surprise...
From the article:
Four years ago, an Italian tourist was robbed at Rios famed Copacabana Beach. Days later, the leader of one of Brazils growing [font size=+2]evangelical Christian[/font] sects told the police that the man whod committed the crime was an Umbanda follower whod been possessed by a devil-like spirit that made him rob the tourist.
The unsubstantiated claim offended practitioners of Umbanda and Candomble, another Afro-Brazilian religion, bringing to light the discrimination that many face.
The unsubstantiated claim offended practitioners of Umbanda and Candomble, another Afro-Brazilian religion, bringing to light the discrimination that many face.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)6. I don't get your point here.
humblebum
(5,881 posts)2. Brazil also has a church dedicated to humanism.
rug
(82,333 posts)3. Surprise, surprise...
2ndAmForComputers
(3,527 posts)4. Are any of these two posts supposed to mean something?
rug
(82,333 posts)5. I ask the same for all four.