Looking for a Miracle

Deep in the interior of Brazil's state of Bahia last week, the population of the town of Bom Jesus de Lapa was swollen from its usual 4,500 to a teeming 500,000 --sweltering, brawling, praying through fetid nights and sun-baked days. Beggars chanted their off-key songs and picked their scabs till the blood ran, priests dashed about performing ten-minute marriages and baptisms, police struggled unsuccessfully to keep the number of arrests in some ratio to the number of crimes, and hucksters had a field day. A man could buy a wedding ring or an aphrodisiac at the same stand; statuettes of Christ and the Virgin competed with jaguar skins, dice tables and 275 prostitutes.

The summer-long festival of the Good Jesus was drawing to a close. And with more than $40,000 in the coffers of the local church, it was clearly the most successful in the festival's 250 years.

Playboy to Hermit. The Festival of the Good Jesus began with a rich young Lisbon playboy, born in 1657, who left Portugal and lit out for Brazil at the age of 22--just ahead of an irate husband. Francisco de Mendonga Mar settled in the bustling port city of Bahia and carried on in the manner to which he was accustomed until a row with the governor landed him in jail. When prisoners were released to help defend the city against Dutch pirates, Francisco dodged conscription by dressing as a monk and carrying a small crucifix. He slipped out of the beleaguered city and started walking inland.

For two parched and half-starved months he walked, and somewhere along the line he found his faith. One day he came to a high sugarloaf mountain honeycombed with passages and caves. In one of these caves Francisco began to live the life of a hermit. Within a few years, however, the discovery of gold brought prospectors into the area, and word soon spread of the miracles performed by the young holy man "with long blond hair to his waist and jet-black eyes." After a while all Brazil seemed to be beating a path to Francisco's door.

"A Miracle!" Today Francisco's Shrine of the Good Jesus is constantly being filled by home-carved ex -votes (tokens commemorating miraculous cures and deliverances) as well as crutches, canes and hanks of hair (beards grown to secure a special blessing). As fast as they accumulate, priests remove these offerings to a nearby grotto, which is a kind of museum of so-called miracles.

The five priests assigned to the shrine do their best to discourage superstition, but without much success. Despite the fact that the church takes no official notice of the "miracles," Brazilian peasants still claim divine intervention almost daily during the festival. One day last week word came that a man had dropped dead in the grotto, and one of the priests hurried inside. The corpse of a hulking farmer lay on his face before the shrine, his dry-eyed wife standing over him. "Serves him right," she said to the padre. "He never was any good--always fighting and abusing me and the kids. I told him before we left home that he was too mean to look at the Good Jesus." Suddenly a cry rose in the crowd: "A miracle! Evil struck down by a miracle!"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.