Brazil’s Patroness, Nossa Senhora do Aparecida (Our Lady of Aparecida), has become a talking point in the nation’s 2026 presidential campaign in recent days after a fake news campaign claimed that conservative Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, an Evangelical Christian, planned to formally eliminate the Catholic patron saint title.
For nearly 100 years, Our Lady of Aparecida, a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary, has been the patron saint of Brazil since the late Pope St. Pius X officially declared it so in 1930. Her history spans over 300 years of faith and veneration in Brazil — an overwhelmingly Christian country where over 56 percent of its over 213 million people identify...
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