The Community’s History
In 1973 three ladies (two French and a Brazilian) coming from São Paulo, through a Belgian priest called Carlos de Becco, arrived at Juçaral with the intention of helping families who worked with the Sugar Cain production. They were deeply seduced by the beauty of Juçaral’s landscapes, warm welcomed by its citizens and touched with the extremely poorness all around the village, where people live in wood made houses, sometimes without any furniture and very often without any food.
Colette Catta, Josiane Saint-Pierre and Marieta Braga realized that Juçaral was the perfect place to create a little community, also a poor one, but where the happiness and peace could be spread to everyone, where the spiritual life, based on the Christian gospel could make the people find power and hope to make their lives a little better.
Many years later, in 1989 there were already created the rehabilitation house, a school for little babies, a nursery and a small chapel that quickly became the symbol of the community Arca de Noé, where many visitors from Brazil and from abroad started to come to rest from their stressful urban lives and to find peace and hope from their inner side.
Before 1988, the community Arca de Noé still did not have this name, it was simply a department from the Centro Social Nossa Sra. De Fátima, an association created by the Juçaral citizens, managed by the local priest, in order to get help from the government and other institutions. Today, we are no more just a department, but another legal institution, but the Centro Social Nossa Sra. de Fátima keeps working with its nursery and school, which has more than 200 children from one month to seven years old.