The striking modern design of Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Rosarrio de Fátima (Church of Our Lady of the Rosary of Fátima) in Lisbon, with its plain, mostly white exterior, single geometrically shaped tower and horizontal roof, caused a stir and heated public debate when it was built. Unlike older churches it is surrounded by a plaza, setting it back from its surroundings. Some critics argued that it resembled a factory more than a place of worship. On the eve of its consecration, the newspaper Diário de Notícias (the unofficial voice of the regime), published an interview with architect Porfírio Pardal Monteiro, which focused on the theme of national regeneration. One that was regularly employed by the Salazar regime to strengthen its appeal for national unity.

This project was one of the most important projects commissioned by the SPN during its first years of existence. Inaugurated twenty-one years after the miracle of the sun was witnessed by an estimated crowd of between 50,000 and 70,000 people in October 1917 near the small village of Fátima, where witnesses reported seeing the sun, not only lose its heat and light, but also danced from one horizon to the other. Of the three shepherd children, who first reported seeing the Virgin Mary on 13 May 1917, it was only Lúcia who was able to see, hear, and speak to the Virgin, and who asked for a miracle to occur. This miracle came at a time when the church and state did not have a good relationship.

During the constitutional monarchy (1820-1910) the rights and property of religious orders were severely curtailed, but there was no move to separate church and state until 1911, shortly after the proclamation of the Republic. A series of anticlerical measures followed the change in government, which included the nationalisation of church property, the elimination of religious holidays, and closing Catholic schools and seminaries. This resulted in a strong pushback from the people, one which Salazar took advantage of by siding with the Catholic opposition groups. Despite the fact that he never reunited the church and state during his rule, he did defend its values and spoke out against the forces of evil that threatened to destabilize Portuguese society.

Pilgrimages to the site began in 1923, even though it took the Vatican more than a decade to officially recognise the apparitions as legitimate. With Salazar’s rise to power the site and miracle gained government support.

During the rule of the First Republic, anticlerical sentiment was the strongest among Lisbon’s middle and working classes, and as no new churches had been consecrated in the city since the turn of the century, the time was right to build a new church in line with the current mood of the time. It was decided to build it on the city’s expanding northern border to the west of Avenida da República in a parish whose residents were from Lisbon’s privileged classes.

Just like the contest to find the most Portuguese village in Portugal, this project presented itself as an opportunity for Portugal’s leaders to address various issues at the same time. One of which was to help mend the damage that was done by the previous government’s anticlerical policies, as well as trying to bridge the urban-rural divide prevalent at the time. As the figure of Our Lady of Fátima was most revered by rural people, the church dedicated to her was an attempt to stand as a symbol to unite the various segments of the population through their shared devotion to the Virgin. 

The views and ideals of the future regeneration of the nation was often closely linked with the Fátima miracle. Books at the time carried titles like Fátima e o Ressurgimento de Portugal in 1938 (Fátima and the Resurgence of Portugal) and Fátima e a Redenção de Portugal in 1939 (Fátima and the Redemption of Portugal).

It was the first of many collaborations between architect Porfírio Pardal Monteiro and the artist and writer José de Almada Negreiros. They were both recommended to Salazar by António Ferro in 1932. Trained before the formation of the Estado Novo, their creative intentions were not always in line with the views and ideals of the conservative factions that were taking over the artistic direction of the regime, but they were eager to participate in the government’s public works projects to benefit financially. Despite this, they did not hesitate to push their artistic independence, even though it meant that they, as a result, were sometimes forced to modify certain design elements to suit the conservative aesthetic.

Monteiro’s design included frescos and stained-glass windows depicting allegorical scenes, as well as organizing the central nave around a diagonal pointed arch. In doing so he confirmed his willingness to accommodate some aspects of traditional religious structures, while at the same time reimagining these traditional religious elements. He chose José de Almada Negreiros to design the stained-glass windows, who at the time was known as a provocateur. When designing the windows he softened the lines of his more radical modernist experiments from before, and reworked and invoked traditional images forming part of Portuguese collective memory into the religious designs.

The inclusion of interesting details like an anchor, prow, nets and oar of a typical Portuguese fishing boat, as well as an image of a caravel enriched the religious encounter with a culturally specific view of the Portuguese experience. The inclusion of three contemporary secular figures at the bottom of another window – a woman harvesting wheat; a male factory worker; and a male writer – not only illustrates the artist’s sense of individual creativity, but the images demonstrated that the hardworking povo would receive the Virgin’s divine protection, an idea that was strongly promoted by the Estado Novo’s conservative social values.

In accordance with Monteiro’s regenerative theme, Almada reworked medieval themes and techniques into his designs, despite the windows being modernist in their composition. Their content was in line with the Estado Novo’s ideological ideas, and consistent with the state’s inclination to promote folkloric images of religious practice.

During the consecration ceremony Cardinal Cerejeira praised the church’s “eternal beauty in the artistic language of our time”, but it appears that some of the stained glass designs were changed by the Cardinal to, as the newspaper Díario de Notícias put it, “. . . correcting less than beautiful lines, diminishing harsh shadows, impressing more spirituality on the design and representation of biblical figures, modifying the tone of the colours, tempering their intensity . . .”

The Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Rosarrio de Fátima set a precedent in the design of religious structures, which meant that other modernist-inspired churches were built throughout Portugal and its colonies as a result.

Notes:
# The church was concecrated on 13 October 1938.
# Cardinal Cerejeira, the bishop of Lisbon at the time when the church was built, was a close friend and adviser of Salazar.
# Lúcia became a Carmelite nun, and passed away at the age of 97 in February 2005. The other two children who witnessed the miracle, Francisco and Marta, died shortly after the sightings in 1919 and 1920 respectively.
# Porfírio Pardal Monteiro received the prestigious Valmor Prize for the best building constructed in 1938 for his design of the church.
# Portugal’s monarchy came to an end in 1910 with the 5 October Revolution, when it was overthrown, and became a republic. This period, known as the First Republic was a chaotic and unstable time, and lasted from 1910 -1926, when on 28 May a coup d’état brought it to an end. The transition period, referred to as Ditadura Militar (Military Dictatorship: 1926-1928), saw several coup attempts, and was followed by the Ditadura Nacional (National Dictatorship) from 1928-1933. In 1933 it changed its name to Estado Novo (New State), and together these three are referred to as the Second Republic, which lasted from 1926-1974, the longest ruling authoritarian regime in Western Europe, when on 25 April the Carnation Revolution brought democracy to the country.  

Reference:
Consensus and Debate in Salazar’s Portugal: Visual and Literary Negotiations of the National Text, 1933–1948  by Ellen W. Sapega

Portuguese Words:
igreja – church
arquiteto (m) / arquiteta (f) – architect
artista – artist
escritor (m) / escritora (f) – writer

Written by: Jolandi