

Pedagogical identity for religious education in catholic schools
a Brazilian case study
pp. 537-547
in: Adrián M. Gellel (ed), Global perspectives on catholic religious education in schools II, Berlin, Springer, 2019Abstract
In 1500, in the first text about the Brazilian territory, the fleet clerk told the King of Portugal that the best fruit that could be produced in the territory is to save "these people", this being the main seed to be thrown upon this land. Brazil is therefore a country with a long Christian tradition as a result of the arrival of Franciscans, Mercedarians, Jesuits and many other religious congregations between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries. This was a period when Catholic schools were established right from the Amazon region in the north to southernmost Brazil, largely aided by Black slave labour, and later by new European and Asian groups that contributed not only to the ethnic and racial plurality but also to the religious diversity of the Brazilian people.