Everyday Life Theology and Pastoral Care

Abstract Michel de Certeau’s first visit to Latin America was in 1966 to attend the meeting of the Latin America Religious Conference ( CLAR ), which took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. From then on, he multiplied his interactions with a variety of researchers in the continent, due to his own area of interest: everyday life ( le quotidien ). One of his contacts in Brazil started in 1974, when he attended the meetings of the Popular Religiosity Group in the Northeastern States of Pernambuco and Paraíba. The paper shows that Certeau exerted a decisive influence on and the way of thinking about popular religiosity, but not as someone who came from the outside to bring light into darkness. On the contrary, the French Jesuit encountered a rich soil already in place where his theories could flourish. One example of such a mutual partnership is the Centro de Estudos e Ação Social ( CEAS ), an institution dedicated to research, publication and consultancy to social movements in the city of Salvador, Bahia.