The Catholic press in the service of ultramontane reform: the case of the Messenger of the Heart of Jesus

Abstract

This article analyzes the periodical Jesuit Messenger of the Heart of Jesus, between 1896 and 1900. In the context of ultramontane reforms, clerical normalization, the affirmation of papal infallibility and the defense of the subordination of the Church to the Vatican, began to be spread by various actors, both lay and clergy. At that moment the Jesuits return to Brazil, establishing themselves in the Village of Itú, in 1856. By elaborating strategies of fixation in the local society, such clerics acted beyond the religious sphere. In this perspective, one of the fields of his action was the press, through the Messenger of the Heart of Jesus, a journal whose analysis allows us to understand the relations between press, ultramontanism and Jesuit action in Brazil in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through the analysis of this source, the present article seeks to identify the nature of the project of modernity elaborated by these clerics, in articulation with other projects in vogue: like the liberal and the project of the Church, of tridentine molds. As a general contribution, he collaborates in the understanding of the ultramontane reforms in Brazil during the analyzed period, which resulted in a singular process of secularization.