The refurbishment work on the Hermitage of Nossa Senhora da Encarnação, in Carvoeiro (Lagoa), will be inaugurated on the 22nd of July, with an action promoted by the local community, entitled “Passos de Luz entre a Terra e o Céu”.
The action will include two moments: a Eucharist, at 20 pm, presided over by the Bishop of the Algarve and a musical event, at 30 pm, in the amphitheater next to the Ermida, which will include the presence of several artists, with Soul Band, Tiago Neves, already confirmed. Laura Pereira and Miguel Zeferino.
Also present will be the plastic artist Lígia Rodrigues (born in Porto, but based in the Algarve since 1999), responsible for the conceptualization and execution of the project to renovate the space of this Hermitage.
Working in stages over the last 11 years, the artist has transformed this small temple, located on top of a cliff overlooking the ocean and built after its destruction by the 1755 earthquake, from the original chapel.
This hermitage was located, moreover, in the center of the fort’s main square, whose building tombstone dates from 1670.
According to the historian João Vasco Reis, «the image of Nossa Senhora da Encarnação» (which today occupies a central place in the space) and the stone-carved arch in the presbytery were saved.
The need for a technical solution that combined with art was the key that set in motion the process of transforming this worship space, artistically mischaracterized by the works carried out from the end of the first half of the 1965th century until XNUMX that expanded the small chapel there. .
Thus, in 2009, Father José Nunes, parish priest of Lagoa and Carvoeiro, invited Lígia Rodrigues to design an altarpiece that would reclassify the presbytery and make it possible to stop the advance of saltpeter in the hermitage buffeted by the rigors of the sea.
It was the decisive moment to move on to a much more significant work.
«If we don't give beauty to a place of prayer, we can't pray», stresses José Nunes, explaining that the intervention resulted in a «catechesis» where «the whole history of Salvation» is found.
Completed in October 2020, the work was not formally inaugurated because of the pandemic.
Furthermore, Lígia Rodrigues has always said that she would like the project to contribute even more to opening up the Catholic community in Carvoeiro to society, specifically to the new generations and also to the foreign community residing there.
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