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The normal religious service of this church also takes into account an especially strong participation from the local Filipino community.
St. Augustine's Church has a simple, neoclassical front which contrasts with the elaborate decoration of the interior nave, chancel and service area. The main entrance is flanked by two pairs of Doric granite columns. All the windows on the façade are framed with simple white relief plasterwork. A triangular pediment tops the façade, displaying a niche in the middle, where a statue of the Virgin Mary is positioned. The nave is divided into three sections by two rows of archways supported on Corinthianinspired columns.
The wooden ceiling over the nave is decorated with paintings mostly over the main altar area. There are small side altars and niches following up to the main altar, with some decorative details that display a baroque influence. Over the main entrance there is a choir that extends to the side walls, forming a narrow balcony, in a design similar to that of St. Dominic's Church.
The marble-clad high altar contains a statue of Christ carrying the cross.
It is said that when this statue was taken to the Cathedral by Church authorities it would mysteriously return to the altar of the church. In commemoration the procession of Our Lord of the Passion (Nosso Senhor dos Passos) is held every year on the first Sunday of Lent. The statue is taken to the Cathedral for a night and next day is carried through the streets where the Stations of the Cross are set up, and, attended by the clergy and hundreds of citizens, is restored to St. Augustine's.
Among the people buried in the church is Maria de Moura, a romantic heroine who in 1710 married Captain António Albuquerque Coelho who lost an arm when attacked by one of her unsuccessful suitors. She died in child-birth and is buried with her baby and António's arm.
When the Augustinians were expelled in 1712, the Passos procession was cancelled. It was a time of food shortage and the local Chinese associated the two events. They asked that "the man with the cross" walk the streets again and when the Church agreed the shortage ended. |
