RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Brazil's acute power crisis is sparing no home, not even the House of God.
A nation-wide, power-saving drive has turned the country's Catholic Church more toward the light of religion as it finds itself forced to cut earthly illumination.
"This crisis is meant to alert us that we've been consuming too much light in the splendor of worship," Rio de Janeiro Archbishop Dom Augusto Zini Filho told Reuters on Tuesday.
The Brazilian government is asking the nation to knock an average 20 percent off energy consumption starting June 1 for six months as it battles a chronic energy shortage.
Brazil has the world's biggest Roman Catholic population.
"The church is restricting itself to the bare necessities, we are returning to a more primitive church, back to the era of candlelight," Dom Augusto said.
In the city of Rio de Janeiro, 98 percent of its 242 churches and 600 chapels have had their outside lighting switched off, following government orders.
Masses are being celebrated more and more in the morning hours when few lights are needed. The clerics say that is better for the congregation since street lighting has also been reduced, making the night walk home more unsafe.
Only in the case of weddings does the church completely follow the couple's wishes. "For (our) church, marriage is once in a lifetime. If the bride and groom wish to get married at night we respect their wish," Dom Augusto said.
Despite the crisis and ban on public lighting, Rio authorities have decided to keep the giant 100-feet (30-meter) statue of Christ the Redeemer -- the landmark symbol of Rio -- illuminated at night.
They noted, however, that it was the statue's symbolic value, and not its religious importance, that spurred them to do so, since all the religious congregations were otherwise receiving equal treatment.
16:07 05-30-01
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