The Returns of Faith: Notes on the Sri Lankan Catholic Chaplaincy in Italy

IIAS Lunch Lecture by Bernardo Brown.

With the inflow of nearly five million migrants to Italy, the Catholic Church makes special efforts to attend the pastoral and cultural needs of Christian transnational workers from the southern hemisphere who live in that country. Ethnic chaplaincies in different Italian cities celebrate mass in a variety of languages and encourage migrants to replicate national traditions, festivities and devotions. The Sri Lankan Catholic Chaplaincy in Italy coordinates the work of fifteen Sinhalese and Tamil speaking priests who travel to Italy to serve the needs of the more than 150,000 Sri Lankans working in the country.

Doing this, the church seeks to protect the vibrant Catholic traditions that come from the southern hemisphere from the secular logics that immigrants encounter in Italy. While this approach shows a particular sensibility towards immigrant communities and the difficulties of living Sri Lankan religiosity faraway from home, it also reproduces power dynamics that characterize the relationship between laity and clergy in South Asia. However, some suggest that the faith and devotion of Catholic immigrants should not be insulated from European influences but channeled towards inspiring a religious reawakening in the secular North. In this process, South Asian Christians can also learn from European secularism to approach questions of privilege, authority and gender relations in a more critical way.

Through an ethnographic examination of the Sri Lankan Chaplaincy in Rome, Dr Brown discusses how these two approaches are manifested within the Sinhalese migrant community living in Italy, and how its ramifications are played out in Sri Lankan hometowns.

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About IIAS Lunch Lectures

Every third Tuesday of the month (and temporarily also every first Tuesday), one of the IIAS researchers will present his or her work-in-progress in an informal setting to colleagues and other interested attendees. IIAS organises these lunch lectures to give the research community the opportunity to freely discuss ongoing research and exchange thoughts and ideas. Lunch is provided by IIAS.