Michael Amoruso, "Moved by the Dead: Haunting and Devotion in São Paulo, Brazil" (UNC Press, 2025)

Jul 6, 2025

Michael Amoruso, an assistant professor of religious studies at Occidental College, explores haunting and devotion in São Paulo. He discusses the city's unique ritual of devotion to souls, blending Catholic and Afro-Brazilian traditions. Amoruso introduces the concept of 'mnemonic repair,' illustrating how these practices connect the living to the dead amidst urban violence. He also highlights the significance of community activism in preserving cultural heritage, revealing São Paulo's hidden histories and the impact of diverse spiritual beliefs on social identity.

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ANECDOTE

Serendipitous Discovery of Devotion

Michael Amoruso fell into studying devotion to souls serendipitously during a language grant year in São Paulo.
He followed the practice for 10 years after discovering its intriguing mixture of Catholic and Afro-Brazilian elements.

INSIGHT

Devotion to Souls Explained

Devotion to souls is rooted in centuries-old Catholic purgatorial devotionalism and occurs mostly on Mondays.
It involves lighting candles and petitions for souls seen as suffering, connecting the living and dead emotionally and spiritually.

INSIGHT

Devotion as Mnemonic Repair

Devotion to souls acts as mnemonic repair, maintaining memory against erasure and sustaining connections amid urban violence.
Amoruso links the practice to memory studies and urban maintenance, showing religion as continuous care rather than static tradition.

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In the sprawling city of São Paulo, a weekly practice known as devotion to souls (devoção às almas) draws devotees to Catholic churches, cemeteries, and other sites associated with tragic or unjust deaths. The living pray and light candles for the souls of the dead, remembering events and circumstances in a rite of collective suffering. Yet contemporary devotion to souls is not confined to Catholic adherents or fixed to specific locations. The practice is also linked to popular tours of haunted sites in the city, and it moves within an urban environment routinely marked by violence and death. While based in Catholic traditions, devotion to souls is as complex and multifaceted as religion itself in Brazil, where African, Portuguese, and other cultural forms have blended and evolved over centuries.

Michael Amoruso's insightful work, Moved By The Dead: Haunting and Devotion in São Paulo, Brazil (University of North Carolina Press, 2025) uses the methods of ethnography, religious studies, and urban studies to consider how devotion to souls embodies, adapts, and challenges conventional ideas of religion as tethered to specific sites and practices. Examining devotees' varied ways of ascribing meaning to their actions, Amoruso argues that devotion to souls acts as a form of what he calls "mnemonic repair," tying the living to the dead in a struggle against the forces of forgetting.

Michael Amoruso is assistant professor of religious studies at Occidental College.

Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press).

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