Profile of New Priests in Brazil

Questioning the Results of a Field Research

Abstract

The text reflects some results of a field research in search of the profile of the «new priests» in Brazil, carried out in the five regions of the country, in three dioceses of each one of them, having as samples priests, laymen/women, young people, seminarians and religious women. The data reveal the configuration of two socio-pastoral perspectives at the heart of Brazilian Catholicism - the «evangelization/liberation» perspective, in line with the renewal of Vatican II and with the liberating ecclesial tradition of the Church in Latin America, and - the «institutional/charismatic» perspective which takes distance from them, reflecting the gradual process of ecclesial involution which has taken place in the Church in the three decades preceding the current pontificate.