Qualla: Statue of Father Cícero https://qualla.com/statue-of-father-cicero en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 14 Sep 2026 09:25:05 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/7/n/s/p/statue-of-father-cicero-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Statue of Father Cícero https://qualla.com/statue-of-father-cicero Statue of Father Cícero: Introduction https://qualla.com/statue-of-father-cicero/ Photo credit Kabesaomat, Public domain. The statue kept growing while it was being built. Armando Lacerda's first design called for a figure seven metres tall. Working on the prototype, he decided on twelve — which meant the moulds could no longer be made in one piece, so they were built in sections in a shed and hauled up the hill for assembly. Partway through the modelling he changed his mind again and went to seventeen metres, which was tall enough that somebody now had to design a proper base, and the engineer Rômulo Ayres Montenegro was brought in to run the calculations. The original project had promised twenty-seven metres overall. What was finally unveiled on the Colina do Horto above Juazeiro do Norte on 1 November 1969 stands about thirty metres with its pedestal: Padre Cícero in a cassock and a broad hat, one hand raised, looking out over the city and the long red wall of the Chapada do Araripe.

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Image: Kabesaomat | Public domain

]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/7/n/s/p/statue-of-father-cicero-wp/7nsp-statue-of-father-c-cero-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Statue of Father Cícero: Russian and Hungarian Cement https://qualla.com/statue-of-father-cicero/ Photo credit Allan Patrick from Natal, Brasil, CC BY-SA 2.0. Nothing about the construction was easy. There was no moulding technology available for a job like this in the Ceará interior in 1969, so the whole thing was made by hand — the forms shaped from wood and agave, the concrete placed in blocks that rose slowly with the outline of th...

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Image: Allan Patrick from Natal, Brasil | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/7/n/s/p/statue-of-father-cicero-wp/7nsp-statue-of-father-c-cero-russian-and-hungarian-cement.mp3 0:06 2 full Statue of Father Cícero: 1 March 1889 https://qualla.com/statue-of-father-cicero/ Photo credit Otávio Nogueira from Fortaleza, BR, CC BY 2.0. The man on the hill was born Cícero Romão Batista in Vila Real do Crato on 24 March 1844 and ordained on 30 November 1870. What made him famous happened on 1 March 1889, when a consecrated host was reported to have turned to blood in the mouth of a beata named Maria de Araújo dur...

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Image: Otávio Nogueira from Fortaleza, BR | CC BY 2.0

]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/7/n/s/p/statue-of-father-cicero-wp/7nsp-statue-of-father-c-cero-1-march-1889.mp3 0:06 3 full Statue of Father Cícero: The Priest Who Became a Colonel https://qualla.com/statue-of-father-cicero/ Photo credit Allan Patrick from Natal, Brasil, CC BY-SA 2.0. Barred from exercising his ministry, Cícero became something else: the political master of the Cariri. When Juazeiro do Norte was made a municipality in 1911 he was its first mayor, and he governed it for around twenty years. That October he signed the Pacto dos Coronéis, the agr...

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Image: Allan Patrick from Natal, Brasil | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/7/n/s/p/statue-of-father-cicero-wp/7nsp-statue-of-father-c-cero-the-priest-who-became-a-colonel.mp3 0:06 4 full Statue of Father Cícero: Two and a Half Million https://qualla.com/statue-of-father-cicero/ Photo credit Allan Patrick from Natal, Brasil, CC BY-SA 2.0. The devotion did not wait for permission and has not needed it since. Juazeiro do Norte is considered one of the largest centres of Catholicism in Latin America and, after Aparecida in São Paulo, one of Brazil's foremost destinations for pilgrimage. On the major dates the city ta...

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Image: Allan Patrick from Natal, Brasil | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/7/n/s/p/statue-of-father-cicero-wp/7nsp-statue-of-father-c-cero-two-and-a-half-million.mp3 0:06 5 full Statue of Father Cícero: Reconciliation, Eighty-One Years Late https://qualla.com/statue-of-father-cicero/ Photo credit Fabiobarros, CC BY-SA 4.0. At the top there is a small church and the Casa-Museu do Padre Cícero, and a view that takes in the whole Cariri valley. What there was not, for most of the twentieth century, was any acknowledgement from Rome that the man being venerated by millions had ever been anything but a ...

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Image: Fabiobarros | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/7/n/s/p/statue-of-father-cicero-wp/7nsp-statue-of-father-c-cero-reconciliation-eighty-one-years-late.mp3 0:06 6 full