Blogs

By Giovanna Sarto

In June and July, I had the honor of being awarded a Marian Fellowship as a graduate student fellow, a significant milestone in my academic journey as a doctoral candidate. During my research, I focused on literature on Black Madonnas, specifically Our Lady of Aparecida, whose iconography and devotion offer a rich backdrop for exploring social justice, liberation and related themes.

Access to Marian Library Collections

The fellowship provided immediate access to Marian Library collections, including books such as Black Madonna: a Womanist Look at Mary of Nazareth, by Courtney Hall Lee (2017); The Cult of the Black Virgin, by Ean Begg (2006); and The Black Madonna in Latin America and Europe, by Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba (2007). Other resources included the article “Black Madonnas: Origin, History, Controversy” (n.d.), by Michael Duricy, and special collections such as the Sutton File. In reading them, I observed that the historical-sociological foundation places Our Lady of Aparecida, the patron saint of Brazil, in the broader field of representations of Black Virgins, in terms of identity, hope and the struggle for social justice. All these academic contributions give a brief history of the origins, differences, similarities and contexts of different Black Madonnas. Although not all of them mention Our Lady of Aparecida, they reveal common themes in the tradition of Black Virgins.

In general, Black Madonnas are of significant importance in religious contexts and in the construction of black women’s identities, which have been historically marginalized or made invisible. They also bear powerful subtexts:

• Social justice — because Black Madonnas usually appear to the poor and vulnerable to bring hope.
• Economy — because it tells of a community that was economically deprived of resources and, thanks to its devotion, prospered.
• Community — because deeper meanings of life, respect, protection and care are also forged among the groups of devotees, creating qualitative bonds between people.
• The body — because it is in the body that the devotees elaborate, live and experience this devotion.
• Race — because in a context that is still strongly marked by the ideology of the racial and cultural inferiority of Black, Indigenous and mestizo populations, a legacy of the colonial and slave-owning process, Black Madonnas represent an interpretative turn in the sphere of Christianity, which acts as an example of resistance.
• Gender — because it is a primary way of giving meaning to power relations.
• Sex — because it maintains the tradition of sexual storytelling,  especially in the case of Our Lady of Aparecida, in the context of impoverished people in Latin America.

In this sense, the Marian Library is a rich treasure for lay people who are interested in delving deeper into this important field of research, and a must-see for academics who want to enter the debate and reflect on its possible effects, especially from a pragmatically less restrictive perspective.

Faith, Social Justice, and Cultural Identity

During my Marian Fellowship, I had the opportunity to deepen my understanding of the intersection between faith, social justice and cultural identity through the manifestation of Our Lady of Aparecida. This was a significant opportunity that allowed me to explore Our Lady of Aparecida as a “strange” (or queer) manifestation that offers a rich opportunity for studies in religion in general and the field of Mariology specifically because it can reveal innovative and profound ways of experiencing and understanding the Christian faith that resonate with the experiences and challenges of the contemporary world. Perhaps the greatest contribution and challenge of this exercise is to think about the limits and possible interconnections between Mary and the dimensions of faith, culture, gender, sexuality, resistance and social transformation.

Learn More

Read Giovanna’s full report, Black Madonna and It’s “Strange History” in Brazil: A Feminist Contribution to the Studies on Our Lady of Aparecida in eCommons. 

— Giovanna Sarto is a PhD candidate in religious studies at Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil, researching under the supervision of Professor André S. Musskopf. She is the recipient of the 2024 Graduate Student Fellowship.