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Paper short abstract

Pilgrimages represent valuable sites for examining the intersection of historical trajectories, identities, and projects of coexistence. In this paper, I focus on pilgrimages that take place at the most popular Catholic shrines in Sicily (Southern Italy), involving Sinhala Catholics from Sri Lanka.

Paper long abstract

Entanglements between ritual practices and religious infrastructures may index both cultural continuity and social transformation at local and transnational scales, revealing ongoing reconfigurations of citizenship and sovereignty.

In this paper I will focus on pilgrimages taking place at the most popular Catholic shrines in Sicily (Southern Italy) and involving Catholic Sinhala migrants from Sri Lanka, one of the most conspicuous migrant groups in Southern Italy. Drawing on ethnographic research, I examine Sinhala pilgrimage practices in Sicily, ranging from the most solemn festivities to more ordinary and ‘lateral’ forms of attendance at shrines and churches. These practices are connected to transnational networks while simultaneously constituting a source of conflict with the pastoral institutions of the Sicilian Catholic Church.

Although the participation of Sinhala Catholics in pilgrimages and their devotion to the most popular holy figures of Sicilian religiosity are officially welcomed by Italian Catholic institutions, Sri Lankans’ religious activism and their autonomous organization of pilgrimage networks in Italy and beyond are often regarded with suspicion by local pastoral actors, as if they expressed a form of fervent religiosity in need of containment. Furthermore, shared devotion to Marian figures such as the “brown” Madonna of Tindari presents a twofold connotation. On the one hand, pilgrimages to Tindari work as a bridge connecting Catholic groups of different cultural backgrounds who meet on common devotional grounds. On the other hand, however, they reveal subtle ritual a(nta)gonisms against the backdrop of contemporary epochal changes in Catholic Christianity, marked by its decentering from a Western core.