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In some ways Brazilian Catholicism is marked by a variety of forms of religious spectacle. Yet as one of the birthplaces and centers of liberation theology, Brazil is equally home to less spectacular but no less influential forms of Catholicism.

"Deities, ancestors and ghosts live in an invisible supernatural world which coexists with the natural world, allowing spirits to be closely involved in human matters."

A number of charismatic Catholic groups meet in Hong Kong, including El Shaddai, a Philippines-based Catholic charismatic organization with a following in the millions. These groups fill an important role in the lives of the hundred or more women who show up for weekday Masses — often on the one day a week they have off.

The Filipina experience in Hong Kong makes comfort and refuge very intense, dominant themes for the migrant Catholics. In interviews with Filipina househelp, women often cried when talking about prayer and their faith. While most of the Filipinos interviewed said that Filipino Catholicism was relatively emotional, all ascribed this tendency to cry to the social situation, strain and loss that women feel at such a distance from home. Religion became a particular refuge for them in ways that they had not experienced at home. But as interviews made clear, that sense of refuge is not simply a

There is some evidence that Catholic practice in Hong Kong tends to undo some of the local variation that exists in the Philippines. Back home, Filipino culture and religious practice encompass many particular local practices and devotions from 7,000 islands in a big archipelago. Some of those local practices and identities are brought to Hong Kong, but in the eyes of the dominant culture, a person’s origin in Luzon, Cebu, or Mindanao is subsumed even more to their identity as Filipinas. Enrique Oracion saw this to some extent in his study of the Sinulog Festival, a religious and cultural

The population of Hong Kong grew enormously after the 1948 revolution in China. While some churches, like the cathedral, predate that period, the vast majority date to the 1960s. Missionary clergy who wanted to indigenize Catholicism by including statues and paintings that depict Jesus or Mary with an Asian face speak with some disappointment about the desire among Hong Kong Chinese to stick with images that portray them with European looks.

For many Filipinas in Hong Kong, the lack of personal space makes it hard to practice religion in their homes, whereas this was very important to them in the Philippines.

As one interviewee put it, “If you asked most of us Filipinos to explain our faith, we would say instead, ‘Come to church with me, and experience it.’”

Filipinas say that the biggest cultural difference between Hong Kong and the Philippines is the “right now,” driven, work-focused ethic of Hong Kong Chinese. They compare this to a culture at home that is more “manana”-focused and far less rushed.1 They often speak with admiration of the way that the Hong Kong economy can provide for its people, in contrast to the corruption and ineptitude that they see at home, and which has driven educated people to have to seek lower-status forms of employment 1Interviews with Filipina househelp in Hong Kong, conducted by Thomas M. Landy, June 2013.

Hong Kong, a British colony until 1997, is a mixing place of Western (primarily British) and Chinese cultures. Hong Kong is a highly modernized, very densely populated global banking and business center, and also a place with glimpses of peasant culture in alley shops and stalls. Chinese will sometimes say that old Hong Kong culture is a legacy from rough and tumble seafaring and port life, but Hong Kong is also a global crossroads. Cantonese, the local Chinese dialect, is the dominant language, but English is tremendously important as well, as it has been for a century. Locals describe how