In 1712, a new church was opened in Faro, dedicated to Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Today, the temple is a reference in the city and one of its best known heritage elements. The celebrations of the 300 years of the Igreja do Carmo begin this week and continue until the 22nd of this month.
On Saturday, the baritone Rui Baeta, accompanied by the organist António Esteireiro, will star in a performance of Sacred Music. The church in Faro houses a historic organ and has been, with the Cathedral of Faro, one of the places chosen to host the Algarve Organ Festival.
This will be the first of three initiatives scheduled for February by the Third Order of Our Lady of Monte do Carmo in Faro, which was founded more than three centuries ago and had as one of its first assignments to build and manage the then new Church in Faro.
The high point of the commemorations takes place on February 22, the day on which the Bishop of Algarve D. Manuel Quintas will celebrate the Eucharist in the Igreja do Carmo and on which a tombstone commemorating the 300th anniversary will be unveiled.
The day before, on February 21st, the temple will host a lecture to be given by art historian Francisco Lameira, followed by a performance by Grupo Coral Ossónoba.
The Igreja do Carmo can be visited from Monday to Friday between 10 am and 17 pm, on Saturday between 10 am and 13 pm, and on Sundays during the Sunday Eucharist, which is celebrated at 8:30 am.
On the first Saturday of each month, at 21 pm, there is a Marian prayer and on the first Sunday of the month, after the Eucharist, there is a formation meeting.
In addition to architectural and heritage aspects, the Igreja do Carmo de Faro it is also well known for the many nests that storks have built there for centuries. The image of the stork on top of the bell towers is already a mark of Faro and it was for a long time one of the central elements in the communication material of the municipality of Faro.
D. António Pereira da Silva founded the Order in 1710
The Order, which is still responsible for the management of the Church of Carmo, was founded by the then Bishop of the Algarve, D. António Pereira da Silva, «a great devotee of Our Lady of Carmo, who saw in Carmelite spirituality an adequate means to better evangelize his diocesans , particularly those residing in the episcopal city», as revealed by deacon Luís Seabra Galante, president of the Board of the General Assembly of the Order on the institution's website.
«Our Society of Faro it was founded between 1710 and 1712 by the Bishop of the Algarve, D. António Pereira da Silva, who was its first Prior and Protector. the beautiful baroque-style church, where we have our headquarters, undeniably one of the most beautiful religious buildings in Faro, the Algarve and the south of Portugal”, he continued.
“In it we will be able to appreciate the beautiful gilded woodwork of its altars, the magnificent tiles on its walls, the famous “chapel of the bones” and the cemetery of the Order, where the brothers were buried until the first decade of the XNUMXth century”, he adds.
The first members of the Order of Carmo were knights from the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries who founded the religious institution in the Holy Land during the Crusades. One of the Order's main references in Portugal is Nuno Alvares Pereira, the Holy Constable.
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