Saint anthony himself having been born in portugal

famous. Saint Anthony himself, having been born in Portugal and lived in Italy, who was also the
patron saint of lost things, is a fitting patron of Dona Beatriz’ cause, as the Kongo experienced
Portuguese colonial influence and Italian religious influence, and he had commanded her to
reclaim the lost kingdom of days past.
65
This lack of female representation is something Mary Daly takes serious issue with in her
book, Beyond God the Father . She talks about the liberation of women through religion, finding
that it is lack of representation that has kept women enslaved to the patriarchy for so long.
66
Daly
62 Ibid. , 70.
63 Ibid. , 71.
64 “Female/Women Saints,” Catholic Online, accessed November 30, 2014,
.
65 Ubaldus de Pandolfi, Life of St. Anthony of Padua (Boston: Angel Guardian Press, 1895),
15.
66 Daly, 2.

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says that the Catholic faith is rife with male symbols of the faith, but female examples are few
and far between.
67
She finds the representation of women to be problematic as well, because they
all have traditionally “feminine” characteristics and are more passive representations of living a
good Christian life, as opposed to their male counterparts who actively affect change.
68
Another
problem she has is the Christian fixation on Jesus as the central figure, as he is a male. Male
saints and male religious members can much more easily identify with Jesus, whereas females of
the faith who came after the time of Jesus could only identify with subordinate members of the
early church.
69
Daly concedes that the Virgin Mary receives a favorable portrayal, but she also
reminds her reader that Mary is so highly valued because she is the mother of the Son of God,
and that it would be difficult for any non-mother to attain such an influential status.
70
This idea
affected Dona Beatriz because in order to have a successful movement, she would have had to
identify with a non-passive saint, and representations up until that point would have been
unsatisfactory. It was providence that she was possessed by Saint Anthony, because otherwise
she would have had an uphill battle to find a means of religious inspiration.
Conclusion
Over the course of my paper, I hope to have proven the supposition that Dona Beatriz’
experienced more success in leading the Antonian movement because she was possessed by a
male saint, Anthony of Padua. However, this success was not due to cultural limitations by
Kongolese society, as they seemed to be much more accepting of women in positions in power
67 Ibid. , 72.
68 Ibid. , 73.
69 Ibid., 75.
70 Ibid., 90.

Garace 20
than most Western societies contemporary to them. The kingdom of Kongo never had one queen
that ruled the whole territory, but there were women high up in noble ruling classes that very
heavily influenced the decisions of their close male relatives. After the civil war, women were
able to take even more power, even ruling small sections of the territory themselves. The
limitations on female power in Dona Beatriz’ case came from her involvement with Catholicism,
which is very famously male-centric. She could not be ordained a priest, so that was one check