The Church of Our Lady of Navigators () is a

Roman Catholic Marian church Catholic Marian churches are religious buildings dedicated to the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary. These churches were built throughout the history of the Catholic Church, and today they can be found on every continent including Antarctica. ...

located in the city of

Porto Alegre Porto Alegre (, , Brazilian ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. Its population of 1,488,252 inhabitants (2020) makes it the List of largest cities in Brazil, twelfth most populous city in the country ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. It is one of the most popular

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

churches in the city and is the focus of one of the largest processions in the city each year on February 2. The current church was built in 1919 and is devoted to

Our Lady of Navigators Our Lady of Navigators also known as Our Lady of Seafarers (''Nossa Senhora dos Navegantes'' in Portuguese) is a devotional title given to the Virgin Mary by Roman Catholics. It is a widespread devotion in South America, especially in Brazil, wher ...

. The devotion to

started in Porto Alegre in 1869 by Bishop Sebastião Dias Laranjeira who commissioned the sculptor João Afonseca Lapa to build a statue of the Virgin Mary. The statue was first installed in 1871 in another church and was carried in processions. In 1875 Margarida Teixeira de Paiva donated land for the construction of a church devoted to Our Lady of Navigators and city volunteers built the first church in wood. This first chapel was destroyed by fire, and in 1896 another was erected in the same place, but also caught fire in 1910. Community volunteers again built a new church which was completed in 1912 and formally inaugurated on 23 March 1913, with a new statue of the Blessed Virgin again made by João Afonseca Lapa similar to the one lost in the fire. The building has been renovated and expanded over the years. It has a Gothic style, with one central tower and two aisles with a series of buttresses, pinnacles and small pillars highlighted abroad. Over the doorway is a bas-relief with the image of the

Blessed Virgin Mary Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jews, Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Saint Joseph, Jose ...

saving the shipwrecked.

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See also