Feast of the Eternal Father

Feast of the Eternal Father
Pilgrims visit the Basilica of the Eternal Father in Trindade.
Observed by	Christians
Type	Local
Begins	Last Friday in June
Ends	First Sunday in July
Frequency	Annual

Feast of the Eternal Father, also known as the Feast of Trindade, is a cultural event that takes place annually in Trindade, Goiás. It is a traditional religious celebration that lasts nine days, starting on the last Friday of June and ending on the first Sunday of July, which attracts Catholics from all over the country to the city. The festival is a registry of popular Catholicism, characterized by pilgrimage, which is the largest in the Central-West Region and the second largest in Brazil.

The event originated in the 1840s, when the farming couple Ana Rosa and Constantino Xavier found a medallion with the figure of the Holy Trinity in the former village of Barro Preto, starting a devotion movement to that image. Over the years, the pilgrimage consolidated and continued to expand, having gone through an institutionalization process at the end of the 19th century and adapting to ecclesiastic orders during the 20th century. Since then, many temples of worship to the Eternal Father were built and became symbols of the feast, such as the Parish Church of Trindade, the Basilica of the Eternal Father and the New Basilica Sanctuary.

The sacred and the profane are mixed in the celebration. There is, on one hand, the novena and popular piety, marked by the route of the pilgrims through urban and rural roads - with emphasis on the parade of ox carts - and, on the other, non-religious programs, such as the installation of commercial stalls, gambling and amusement parks. The event is highly profitable for the city of Trindade,^[1] and in its largest edition, in 2019, the Feast of the Eternal Father received more than 3.2 million tourists.