Passionist Priests' Calvary Church on Rua Cardeal Arcoverde, at Praça Benedicto Calixto in the 1950s.
Saint Joseph with Baby Jesus and Saint Agnes on the right.
heavenly Calvary's ceiling.
Calvary in 1920.
Calvary Church in the 1940s.
Danton Gonzales defies gravity posing on top of Igreja do Calvario's balustrade in 1957, when he was 18 years old. One can see Rua Cardeal Arcoverde all the way to Avenida Dr. Arnaldo with the Protestant Cemetery (Christ the Redeemer) on the left and Araçá Cemetery on the right. Photo by Sylvia Gonzales at FB.
From our balcony we could see the steeples of not only one but two churches. One was the double towers of Our Lady of Fatima, on Avenida Dr. Arnaldo, at Sumarezinho, and the other was Calvary Church on the top of a hill which was Praça Benedito Calixto next to Cemitério São Paulo on Rua Cardeal Arcoverde.
As both churches were equidistant from our house and being from a Catholic family I should choose one of them to become a member of...any of them would do. For some reason I decided to visit Calvary Church first. Maybe because Calvary was easier to get to... it was only a matter of crossing Rua Simpatia and Rua Aspicuelta, then cross a little improvised wooden bridge on a polluted brook that led to Rua Medeiros de Albuquerque, turn right up to Rua Gonçalo Afonso all the way to Rua Luiz Murat, turn left and skirt the Cemetery up to Rua Henrique Schaumann, turn right again and there you were at gorgeous Calvary Church.
I was really impressed with Calvary Church's beauty and never had a second thought about sassing out yet another church, so it took me months to go and visit Our Lady of Fatima. When I finally went there, even though Fatima was beautiful too, I wouldn't think of trading it in for Calvary. Calvary had won hands down and I became a faithful member of it until I turned 17 years old in 1966.
Since I had taken my First Communion at Saint Benedict Church (Catedral de São Bento) in Marília, in 1958, I had become a fervent Catholic boy. I would attend Mass every Sunday, having had confession on the Friday to receive Holy Communion on Sunday. I attended the 8:00 o'clock Mass and went to matinee at Cine Marília, at 1:00 pm, where Myself, my adopted sister and younger brother watched 2 featured movies, and a serial at the very end of the session. All of that for only Cr$ 3.00 cruzeiros. That was a sort of holy routine we did every Sunday for at least three years 1958, 1959 and most of 1960.
When we moved to São Paulo, it didn't take us too long to start a new routine here. It wasn't as grand as the one we had in Marília but it was better than nothing. After a few weeks we moved at Rua Simpatia, I was told that there was a cinema space adjacent to Calvary Church where they had social gatherings and showed movies for children on Sundays afternoon... almost like the old times in Marília.
Differently from Marília, a child didn't have to pay Cr$ 3.00 cruzeiros to get in but had to attend a sort of Sunday School some Passionist novice nuns taught inside the church after 2:00 pm. As most of the children already had had their First Communion, these young novices would talk a little about Jesus, Mary & Joseph, then give us sheets of paper with simple mimeographed drawings representing God, the Holy Host, the Holy Trinity, figures of Saints & Angels and asked us to colour them at home and bring them back next Sunday. Each nun or novice had a group between 5 to 10 boys.
After a few Sundays attending these Sunday schools and colouring these mimeographed sheets I noticed I had grown fond of Sister Nirvana, a novice who must have been no more than 18. I think she liked me too for I was really interested in the stuff she taught us, differently from most of the boys who were there as a way to get into the cinema. I don't remember how long that went on, but it must have been for more than a year. Probably from late 1961 until early 1963. It was a great time.
Boys and girls were separated in small groups until such time as the teacher said it was time to quit, opened an inner door on a right-hand side altar that led straight to the cinema where children swarm with enthusiasm. There were more children inside the theater waiting for the 'proper boys' to enter and settle in. I don't know how that many had managed to avoid the Holy Teachings and go straight to the fun of westerns and adventure movies. I wish I could remember all those flicks I saw at 'cineminha do padre'. I remember seeing a lot of Jerry Lewis movies which I had never had the chance to see back in Marília. 'Delinquente delicado' 1957 (The delicate delinquent), 'La violetera' (1958) with Sarita Montiel, some westerns and lots 'Oliver & Hardy' (O gordo e o magro) flicks from the 1930s.
There was one particular incident concerning those Sunday afternoon sessions that occurs me. At one nameless and dateless Sundays we started watching a German movie called 'Resurrection' starred by Holtz Buchholz, Germany's version of USA's James Dean's ethos. Suddenly, a quarter of an hour into the projection, the lights went on and the projection of the movie halted. We kids were used with these unexpected interruptions due to the old age of those film cans that travelled the whole of the country and were sometimes broken up, so the projector has to stop it and splice it somehow. But this time was different. The lights wouldn't be turned off for more than 5 minutes and kids were getting restless. After a while someone shouted the session was over for that Sunday. Thank you and walk home safely.
We couldn't hide our disappointment in having been deprived of assured entertainment for at least 2 hours. Many decades later thinking about that event I realized what really happened that afternoon. Calvary's priest who hired movies for these sessions picked 'Resurrection' thinking it was about Jesus's coming back from the dead... but it actually was Leon Tolstoy's masterpiece about pre-revolutionary decay in the Russian Army. It had sexually explicit scenes that shook the very foundations of the priests who watched such debauchary depicted on film. There was a lot of violence too.
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