This article focuses on the concrete conditions and the social processes involved in the maintenance or change of the moral order in immigrant communities. This question is addressed based on archival research of the events that resulted in the restoration of the authority of Greek catholic priests in the Ruthenian (Ukrainian) communities that settled in Paraná in the late nineteenth century. The analysis of the practices of the priests and of the settlers in the first years of their establishment in Brazil permits a reconstruction of the dynamics of the centralization of social life around the church, and the religious precepts of the Greek Catholic religion. The presentation of three cases in different communities with varying degrees of acceptance or rejection of the authority of the Uniate priests shows that the question of the maintenance of religious values in situations of diaspora can only be solved empirically.
immigration; moral order; ethnic persistence; Ukrainians - Brazil
