Followers of Brazil’s Umbanda religion worship despite discrimination

[rug]

Rita Coccaro, a medium of the Umbanda religion, speaks in her Rio de Janeiro home with an altar in the background. (Chloe Elmer/Penn State University/MCT)

Posted on Monday, July 2, 2012
By Somer Wiggins | McClatchy Newspapers

RIO DE JANEIRO — Rita Coccaro is the high priestess of the Umbanda Temple of Caboclo Virgin Forest, if “temple” is not too grand a word for the small room in the modest house Coccaro shares with her mother and dog on the outskirts of one of Rio de Janeiro’s slums.

Once a week, Coccaro and a dozen followers gather here to sing prayers, beat drums and burn incense in the hope of connecting with the spirits of long-dead African slaves, and of the indigenous people who populated Brazil before the Europeans came.

“Connecting with the spirits is like going to school to develop a deeper knowledge of Umbanda and the world,” said Coccaro, who’s 41.

Contacting spirits is at the center of Umbanda, a uniquely Brazilian religion that blends African slave traditions and strains of spiritism with the more familiar shapes and symbols of Roman Catholicism.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/07/02/154710/followers-of-brazils-umbanda-religion.html

[2ndAmForComputers]

1. Surprise, surprise...

From the article:

Four years ago, an Italian tourist was robbed at Rio’s famed Copacabana Beach. Days later, the leader of one of Brazil’s growing [font size=+2]evangelical Christian[/font] sects told the police that the man who’d committed the crime was an Umbanda follower who’d been possessed by a devil-like spirit that made him rob the tourist.

The unsubstantiated claim offended practitioners of Umbanda and Candomble, another Afro-Brazilian religion, bringing to light the discrimination that many face.

[cbayer]

6. I don't get your point here.

[humblebum]

2. Brazil also has a church dedicated to humanism.

http://www.igrejapositivistabrasil.org.br/english/

[rug]

3. Surprise, surprise...

[2ndAmForComputers]

4. Are any of these two posts supposed to mean something?

[rug]

5. I ask the same for all four.