Catholic Church, Spanish Flu and Poverty in Recife – PE (1918)

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on the actions of members of the Catholic Church in Recife during the “Spanish Influenza” epidemic. I will analyze some specific scenarios, especially the role of religious men and women in poor areas of the city and how their territorial circulation related to a broader scenario of action of the Roman Curia. Thus, I used as documentary sources two apparently different supports. On the one hand, documents about and produced by members of the Catholic Church, from books of chronicles and diaries to official periodicals of the Archdiocese of Olinda and Recife. On the other hand, the public hygiene department and the statistics directorate issued a set of documents. With this, I try to establish a link between the Spanish flu pandemic that may have been a link to the process of expansion of the Catholic Church towards the peripheral areas of the urban center of Recife. As a result, I seek to expand the connections between the Catholic Church, poverty, and social assistance with attention to the social transformations that operated in that period. I start from the assumption that the frontiers of action of these institutions are shared by mutual transformations that reveal flagrant social inequalities.