Power in the Village by Maíra Ines Vendrame

Author:Maíra Ines Vendrame [Vendrame, Maíra Ines]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Latin America, General, Social History, Europe, Italy
ISBN: 9780429678196
Google: K-bkDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-05-12T03:41:48+00:00

5 Don Antonio Sorio and his authority

A turbulent farewell

In 1881, Fathers Antonio Sorio and Vitor Arnoffi arrived in southern Brazil to set themselves up among the Italian immigrants of the Silveira Martins Colony. The priests carried with them some personal objects, but had no financial resources. Not long thereafter, they became the owners of small plots of land, and moved to the forefront of the religious administration of two of the major communities of the colonial region. Antonio Sorio remained in Vale Veneto, the site founded by aforementioned immigrant Paulo Bortoluzzi; Vitor Arnoffi was designated to head the colony headquarters in Silveira Martins. The two locales were a mere six kilometers apart. With Vitor Arnoffi’s unexpected death in 1884, his peer, Antonio Sorio, was named by the bishop of the diocese to take his place in Silveira Martins. Sorio’s transfer to the new parish in Silveira Martins stirred discontent among the residents of Vale Veneto, the place he had resided since his arrival in 1881.

Sorio’s transfer bred resentment among the Vale Veneto population as the community responsible for the financial investment that had made it possible bring the two priests over from Italy. Unhappy with the fact that they no longer had a resident priest in the community, the settlers stopped allowing Antonio Sorio to attend to them, arguing that he had “abandoned them” to move to Silveira Martins. In protest, they refused to pay for the religious services he provided, and did what they could to impede him from entering their community chapel.1 This behavior was based on the idea, shared by Vale Veneto immigrants, that they held full rights over matters regarding the management of the local church.

In a letter signed by 110 heads of families who belonged the St. Francis of Assis chapel in Vale Veneto, residents declared that they would neither maintain nor make compulsory payment to any priest not holding fixed residence within their community.2 They were thereby demonstrating their vehement opposition to Antonio Sorio’s attempts to continue activities of religious leadership after his transfer to the Silveira Martins parish. In another letter, sent to the bishop, the immigrants argued that Sorio, disregarding their need to have a priest residing in their community, continued to burden “the people with a salary that had to be paid him annually, for the rest of his life, in his status as parish priest”. The missive ended with their assertion that they would no longer recognize him as their “legitimate shepherd”.3

Protests addressed to the bishop of Rio Grande do Sul were related to the pretentions held by the Vale Veneto leadership to consolidate a project of community autonomy. Recognition of the priest as their “legitimate shepherd” meant to accept the administrative dependence of the colony headquarters, the village of Silveira Martins, and this was not amenable to the families who had founded the settlement. The leader of the immigrants was Paulo Bortoluzzi. As I explained in Chapter 2, Bortoluzzi had left Italy accompanied by an extended kin group and with both the intentions and financial resources to found a colony.

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