A Biography of Carlos Duarte Costa.
Another Biography of Carlos Duarte Costa.
Chronological Biography of Carlos Duarte Costa.
Photograph of Carlos Duarte Costa.
A Critical Survey of the Costa Succession.
History of Catholic Apostolic Church in North America (founded
in 1949),
Later in 19xx renamed the Old Catholic Church in America,
One of the Denominations with Bishops
Claiming Apostolic Succession through Carlos Duarte Costa.
History of the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church (founded in
1973),
Later in 1977 renamed the National Catholic Apostolic Church of
America
and in 1980 renamed the Western
Orthodox Church in America
Another of the Denominations with Bishops
Claiming Apostolic Succession through Calos Duarte Costa.
History of the
Later called the
Another of the Denominations with Bishops
Claiming Apostolic Succession through Calos Duarte Costa.
Chronological History of the Above Denomination.
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**A New York Times article:
A BRAZILIAN BISHOP IS EXCOMMUNICATED
RIO DE JANEIRO, July 6
.
The Most Rev. Don Carlos Duarte da Costa, Catholic Bishop of Maura in Sao Paulo State, was excommunicated today, the Vatican asserting that he had violated canon law tenets by raising the pennon of rebellion and preaching discord to the faithful.
The Most Rev. Jaime de Barros Camara, Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, authorized by the Vatican, circularized the excommunication in all the Brazilian churches.
Bishop Duarte has been regularly advocating the molding of the present Catholic Church under more liberal foundations and doing away with practices which he said, worked when the church was founded but which had no part in the modern world.
He has been called Communist and was once questioned by the police. He has been championing the abolition of celibacy. Priests, he has said, should be married and raise families. He has been condemning the present status of priests as immoral.
The revision of the Brazilian laws on divorce, which the Catholic Church has fought regularly everytime in the past when some lawmaker in Congress here brought up the matter for the Government to enact laws making divorce legal, was one of his favorite topics.
Apparently realizing that he was fighting a losing battle, he recently launched a campaign calling on priests to marry, leave the church and form a "national Christian church" in which all priests would have wives and in which divorce would be allowed.
To a correspondent on the newspaper Globo in Sao Paulo, Bishop Duarte declared that today was founded the "Brazilian Catholic Church." He added that it had many followers and would continue to fight "Roman church fascism."
He also said that he would continue to use priestly cassock and all his episcopal insignia, but would no longer use the title Bishop of Maura, "because now I am the Bishop of Rio de Janeiro."
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**A New York Times article:
BISHOP URGES WEEDING OUT
RIO DE JANEIRO, September 21 (U.P.)
.
The Bishop of Sao Paulo, Mgr. Carlos Duarte Costa, in a telegram to President Getulio Vargas today, urged that priests with Fascist and Falangist tendencies be forced to retire "in order to prevent in Brazil what happened in France."
The message urged spiritual mobilization as well as military mobilization in Brazil.
Several German priests and nuns, who have been operating clandestine radio transmitters hidden under altars and in cemetery chapels, were arrested in five different localities, dispatches from the State of Santa Catalina reported today.
Santa Catalina has the largest German population of any State in Brazil.
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**A New York Times article:
CARLOS DUARTE, 72
LED BRAZIL CHURCH
RIO DE JANEIRO, March 27
.
Carlos Duarte Costa, the self-styled Bishop of Maura, [1] who founded the schismatic Brazilian Apostolic Catholic Church, died here yesterday [2] of a liver ailment. He was 72 years old.
The Bishop of Maura, who was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1911, rose to a high place in the Brazilian hierarchy, becoming the Diocesan Bishop of Botucatu in 1924. But in 1939, he broke with the Catholic Church, was excommunicated, and founded the Brazilian Apostolic Catholic Church.
That church now has Bishops in eleven Brazilian states and in Brasilia, the capital.
But Bishop Duarte died without naming a successor, who is to be chosen by a conclave of Bishops of the church.
Characteristics of the church founded by the Bishop of Maura were that its priests could marry and that mass, which follows Roman Catholic doctrine, is said in Portuguese.
The church's activities are semisecret, however, and masses are said usually in private homes. The membership in not known.
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**A New York Times article:
20,000 MEMBERS CLAIMED
RIO DE JANEIRO, July 27
.
The young Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church is said to have a total of 20,000 believers, 34 bishops and 200 priests. The church is growing rapidly in the Sao Paulo area and in Brasilia and has branches in most of the country. But until now it has been weak in the northeast.
"What they hope to do is to replace the Roman Catholic hierarchy with a national hierarchy, taking advantage of the current trend of nationalism in Latin America," a Roman Catholic sociologist said in an interview.
The Roman Catholic Church does not recognize the Brazilian church because it was founded by Carlos Duarte Costa, former Bishop of Botucatu, Sao Paulo, who had been excommunicated for his pro-Communist views.
A revolutionary, he favored agrarian reform and state control of the oil industry, and he disputed the Vatican's set ideas on priestly celibacy, divorce, the taxation of sacraments and traditional dress and rituals. He was canonized by the Brazilian church in 1970.
The Brazilian church adopted a much more conservative line after Duarte Costa's death in 1961.
Today it is ardently anti-Communist and accuses the Roman Catholics of leftist leanings.
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