The Vatican is financing the first “indigenous cathedral” in the Brazilian Amazon, GazetaDoPovo.com.br (September 9) wrote.
Built for the Yanomami tribe, it will be finished in 2022. The 35,000 Yanomami live in some 200 villages on the border between Venezuela and Brazil.
The “indigenous” church is realized by Creatos Arquitetura, a Curitiba office and national reference for building churches in Brazil.
One of the architects, Tobias Bonk Machado, who has no clue about Yanomamis, immersed himself “for a few days in their culture” (GazetaDoPovo.com.br).
Bonk wants to produce an “inculturated project” and a “fusion of Yanomami culture with Christianity” – as if Christianity were a “culture”. He asks to respect the “two beliefs.”
The new church imitates the shape of a circular Yanomami villages (shabonos) with a central courtyard surrounded by an arena of connected huts. The [Catholic?] Yanomami believe that during their shaman rituals “the spirits” come to communicate with them in the courtyard.
The diameter of the circular church will be 32 meters. It will also have an open roof “to respect the element of connection with the spiritual world.”
It is claimed that the idea of having an “indigenous cathedral” came from the tribes. But the tribes asked only for two things: for a church and that it be “high”.
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