The paper discusses the relations between Church and State in the early years of the Brazilian military dictatorship, a time of consolidation of a new historical bloc within the Church and of great hegemonic dispute within the Armed Forces. A case which occurred in the steel town of Volta Redonda (RJ) in 1967, in which four young men connected to the local Catholic movement had been imprisoned by the Army for distributing pamphlets critical of the government, gave rise to a series of conflicts between the local bishop and the military authorities. A pragmatic reconstruction of the facts resulting from this case is given priority here in order to discuss the disputes of power that took place between progressive sectors of the Church and the authoritarian State, as well as their respective strategies for gaining hegemony.
Military dictatorship; Catholic Church; Volta Redonda (RJ)