Cristina Trindade, researcher, university professor, historian address the interest of the producing of this work by stressing that "is the summary of a subject that is as old as human history. The history of the religious power of the relationship with humanity and political power since man exists. The necessity of a reminder of the divine and the supernatural that cannot be explain arises with humanity and therefore there is the creation of a body of priests who are intermediaries between this world and the next, are the people who are entrusted to justify the unjustifiable in it's inexplicable. This political and religious duality runs through the history of mankind and cristianity, church and political power. "
Why the choice of this theme in particular?
Gabriel Pita Jesus: Because it is a topic that has been covered in several books, especially after the April 25th, is a complex and controversial issue and likely sometimes to drive cross in the opposite direction. Relations between church and state, in this case of this book it is about the relationship of the Catholic Church with European dictatorships of the world, especially the Portuguese and Salazar. But focusing on New State ideological design theme that is nationalism. The book comes to address this connection of the church with these dictatorships, but specifically the Portuguese case.
Is there any point where it is referred to Madeira in this investigation?
GJP: The island is not addressed specifically, there is one day a reference that is 17th of July of 1944 as Cardinal Cerejeira passes through in a route to Mozambique as papal delegate for the consecration of the cathedral of this African country. I approach this passage to exemplify the political and religious importance that the Cardinal had and how society, the media, regarded this trip from the nationalist point of view, patriotic and religious. President Carmona had visited the colony in 1928, the Cardinal Cerejeira was in 1944 and the Daily News of the time said that this last trip was the complement of the first, within that nationalist spirit in which the Catholic Church had always accompanied the history of Portugal .
This ambivalence Church of powers / State there is a lesson to be taken at last? There is still some legacy to the modern history?
GJP: Well, after April 25th the church is accused of being connected to the New State and to have agreed with some atrocities committed . This book come to address this sensitive issue, but my concern is that it was not to be used as a crusade to the anti-clerical, even for those who understand to make the apology of the Portuguese Catholic Church as if nothing bad had happened. Therefore, I sought with objectivity that was possible for me within the documentation available for the matter to be addressed without aligning not pro or against. The book proves contrary to what is sometimes publishes, even from the state and society, that the bosom of the church does not allow certain statements, that nothing has changed and that is very conservative. Anyone who reads this book will find positions of the church today are by no means accepted by the pope, or by the curia, or by bishops or priests.
So we can say that very little has changed?
GJP: No, in the church somethings changed and the book shows it. You have to take what happened between 1937 and 1945, are the goals of the study, the two pontificates in the light of that time in those circumstances, that Pius XI is a person different from Pius XII. The first died before the war, the second pope lives this period of the Second World War and still following the Cold War, but the study aims to separate these two views and explain the position of the church serving personality and cirscuntances of both pontiffs.
During this study you carried out, you had to consult many documents. Found barriers of some sort during this study?
GJP: I found no barriers. Incidentally, I have to praise the library of the Portuguese Catholic University (PCU) that provided me so much documentation and such a non-bureaucratic way that I praise, but at the time of my study had all possible assistance. Then it is also based on a magazine, which is released by the clergy itself, mandatory subscription to all the dioceses, the lumen. That is, it is done by the clergy to the clergy, only that this publication did not have sufficient documents to analyze the thinking of the Roman Church and Portugal, so I had to move to the PCU library.
How long it took from the beginning the idea for the thesis by the end?
GJP: You know this issue of time is relative. I can say that I wrote the book over ten years, but only dedicated myself to it five minutes a day. This book reproduces in general my master's thesis once championed for 20 years and this was the third attempt to be published.
You have addressed an important date in the context of this book. There are however some other relevant data that would you like to highlight?
GJP: There is an essential date and that marks the attitude of the Portuguese church in relation to the New State which is 1940 because this date celebrating the regime, who was born and raised and presented to the general public with a large exhibition of the Portuguese world in Lisboa. Second, it is the date of the bankruptcy of the Catholic Church to the New State, trying to end the divorce between this ecclesiastical institution and the state that it was secular and republican.
