The Parish Church of Trindade (Portuguese: Igreja Matriz de Trindade), also known as the Parish Church of the Divine Eternal Father (Portuguese: Igreja Matriz do Divino Pai Eterno), is a Catholic church located in the Brazilian city of Trindade, in Goiás. It was inaugurated on September 8, 1912, by the Redemptorist missionary Antão Jorge and has been considered a Cultural Heritage of Brazil by the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage since September 24, 2014.
The temple is related to population growth and the formal establishment of the city, which occurred eight years later, in 1920, due to the attraction of numerous believers who wished to worship the Eternal Father. The Parish Church of Trindade is one of the tourist attractions of the city, especially during the Feast of the Eternal Father, a revered religious event that takes place annually in late June and early July.
Its current configuration dates from the last restoration, executed and supervised by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Goiânia in 2013, which highlighted the baroque style and the blue tone of the facade. The nave, the high altar and the side aisles show the simplicity and rusticity of the objects used in the construction of the church.
History
The beginning
The inauguration of the Parish Church of Trindade is directly related to the formal establishment of the city. Built in the territory of the former municipality of Campinas, the church was planned by the Austro-Brazilian Father Antão Jorge in 1912, who was also responsible for organizing the materials that would constitute the church. In the region, around 1848, the gold prospectors Ana Rosa and Constantino Xavier built a chapel covered with buriti leaves, in order to expose the medallion with an illustration of the Holy Trinity crowning the Virgin Mary, that they found on the banks of the Barro Preto stream. From then on, countless people immigrated to the village of Barro Preto to venerate the image in devotion to the Divine Eternal Father.
The gold prospectors asked the sculptor José Joaquim da Veiga Vale to produce a larger replica of the image found, contributing to the population growth of the place. With the arrival of the Redemptorist priests, a religious pilgrimage to the chapel began, but the space became too small to accommodate all the tourists, so the church authorities of the Archdiocese of Goiânia organized, along with Father Antão Jorge, the inauguration of the Parish Church of Trindade in 1912, in the baroque style, with the first mass being held on September 8. The church became the main tourist center of the city until the construction of the Basilica of the Eternal Father in 1943.
Iconography
In a photograph from 1920, it is possible to see the church as the main point of the city, at the time the picture was taken. Due to its construction, the church is centralized in the urban area and its style was maintained in the following decades, characterized by the main entrance and the two prominent towers.
Besides the symbols explicit in the photograph, the materials carved in the masonry by the Redemptorist priests involved in the construction of the temple were seen and kept. There are also the bells and clocks that were imported from Bavaria, Germany. The rustic brick, the dome of the tower and the altar represent the little technique used in the construction and the simplicity of the church.
Restorations
Since its inauguration to its current configuration, the Parish Church of Trindade has undergone numerous reforms; most of them without significant changes in its structure. The clearest modification was the removal of the walls surrounding the chancel and the pulpit inside. In 1958, the first restoration began, managed and supervised by Father Renato de Ferreira. In this renovation, the windows were replaced by stained glass windows, the parquet flooring was replaced by granite, and the facade was also altered. The place lost some of its original features and was reopened in December 1960.
As a result of being listed as Historical Heritage of Goiás on October 13, 1980, it was constitutionally guaranteed that the church could be compensated by the State due to any need for structural changes. Therefore, in 1984, a restoration was carried out in order to highlight the original features of 1912, but also to avoid the collapse, notified as a threat to occur at any time.