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In 2019 the world was faced with a challenging scenario, with the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19) and the implementation of public policies aimed at secluding the population. In view of this, a reorientation of service provision and sociability practices emerged, including, with a strong impact in the religious sphere. This article aims to use the social network Facebook in the process of informing and transmitting celebrations in Catholic shrines. The contents of 92 sanctuaries in the Philippines, Poland, the Vatican, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil were analyzed. The mapping large number of virtual sanctuaries results in varied uses of social networks in broadcasting celebrations, with the construction of new religious practices and redefinition of sacred displacements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looking to understand religiosity as a social factor, contributory of constructions of meaning and omnipresent in diverse historical and cultural universes, this article focuses on the ritualistic dimension of religiosity. Adopting as a research problem the religious pilgrimages, take particular note of the shrines as symbolic markers towards the supernatural. This work has a double aim: to carry out a review and critical analysis of the religious pilgrimages and to study the specificity of the pilgrimages to the Shrine of Fatima, located in Portugal. After a brief mention of the dialectic dissidence-coexistence of ancient religious practices in secularized societies, the concepts of worship, rites and sacrifices are revisited. There follows a more in-depth analysis of the theme of pilgrimages to shrines, from the concept and historical review to the particularity of pilgrimages to the Shrine of Fatima, the latter viewed as a geo-symbol of religious tourism in Portugal. The results of a survey of 784 pilgrims to the Shrine of Fátima are presented, focusing on the beliefs, experiences, perceptions, purposes and expectations regarding the pilgrimage, as well as the nature of the requests addressed to the Lady of Fatima and promises fulfilled. Throughout the article the pilgrim character is emphasized, not neglecting the analysis of the active, voluntary and sacrificial behavioral implication as legitimating the benefits already granted or to be granted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For centuries pilgrimages are present in Christianity. For Catholics, the importance of devotions and visits to the Marian sanctuaries is indisputable. The number of visitors and pilgrims to these temples make the local economy an important destination of religious tourism. In order to understand the economic determinants of religious tourism, two sanctuaries were studied, namely, Aparecida (Brazil) and Fatima (Portugal). Given the large collection of statistical information of the Portuguese Sanctuary, it was verified through the Vector Autoregressive model that Gross Domestic Product and Unemployment have a causal unidirectional relation with the pilgrimages. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag model revealed that an increase in Gross Domestic Product and international arrivals in the short term positively impacts the number of pilgrims. Through the Ordinary Least Squares regression, significant statistical relationships between climatic factors (rain volume and average temperature) and visitors in the Sanctuary of Fatima were found. The Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average forecast method was applied to the number of monthly visitors to the Sanctuary of Aparecida and tox the number of pilgrims in the Sanctuary of Fatima, the results show a strong seasonality and that the first and last months of the year are periods of low demand. The results of this study allow a new look at religious tourism in the Marian context, the empirical results allow those responsible for establishing public policies, tourism agents and the administration of the Sanctuaries to direct their actions. Measures planned and executed jointly between the various agents can benefit residents, visitors, pilgrims, the tourism sector, the local economy and the Sanctuaries themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is about the devotion to Father Libério, religious phenomenon present in many towns in Minas Gerais. This devotion started during his priestly life which intensified after his death and with the miracles attributed to him. Father Libério was born on 30 June 1884 in Lagoa Santa, MG, and died on 21 December 1980 in Divinópolis, MG. The methodology used to analyze the devotion to Father Libério was the study of the biographical material about him, collected in the field, especially in Leandro Ferreira, MG, as well as interviews connecting this information to theoretical assumptions of the Geography of Religion. The theoretical framework of geographical works that use religion in Brazil is divided into two great areas: the first one refers to the sacred as something inherent in a religious man that, as he moves around, transfers this sacredness to the place where he lives spatializing religion. The second area refers to the duality between sacred and unholy, that creates sacred spaces and unholy ones in cities with great religious association. These spaces differentiate and relate themselves more profoundly in religious dates and pilgrimages. The proposal to analyze the devotion to Father Libério from structuring concepts of the Geography of Religion intended to show how contemporary religious practices can serve as a basis to the application of the knowledge related to the subject geography. Reaching this objective, it was possible to find that the religious man, in this case Father Libério's devotee, living the sacred and/or searching for it, creates spaces that are geographically and hierarchically different, but not necessarily opposite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]