"Mostrai-nos vossa santa face e seremos salvos": cultura política e construção dos espaços na Igreja Palmariana (1978-2005)

Abstract

The Christian Palmarian Church of the Carmelites of the Holy Face, also called the Palmarian Catholic and Apostolic Church, is a dissent church from Roman Catholicism that emerged in the Spanish village of El Palmar de Troya as a religious order in 1975. Three years later, in 1978, its founder, Clemente Domínguez y Gómez, who was blind and claimed to have heavenly visions, proclaimed himself as the legitimate Catholic Pope with the name of Gregory XVII. From this event, the Palmarian Church began to propagate a series of self-produced documents, whereby it standardized all its doctrinal and liturgical principles, utterly breaking up with its Roman Catholic roots and becoming a new religion. Through the political culture present in the religious narratives of this Church, it has been analyzed how it built a sacred space with clear links to the Traditionalist Catholic thinking, but with deep divergences and additions regarding the latter, resulting in the new religion system elaboration. In this one, some eccentric factors, such as the occurrence of extraterrestrial life, the establishment of a new mass rite and the canonization of controversial personalities from Spanish history, started a complex religious spatialization project. Based on these and other elements, the establishment of the Palmarian Church as a religion completely separate from the Catholic Church became evident.