About a year later this group was of great assistance to another American Bahá’í who took up her residence in their city. This Bahá’í teacher, Miss Leonora Stirling Holsapple, took up permanent residence in Bahia and was soon able to address large public gatherings in Portuguese. Later she visited eleven other South American cities, speaking to Theosophists, Spiritualists, Masons and other liberal groups and everywhere found receptive minds eagerly seeking a saner and more logical presentation of religious truth. Miss Holsapple met with the most gratifying success in carrying on the work started by Miss Martha Root. She accomplished these results in spite of the materialism apparently increasing throughout Southern Brazil as the result of European influence, and of the religious intolerance prevalent in the more conservative North. By laying special emphasis upon the importance of a liberal education for women, Miss Holsapple has found an open door for carrying the Bahá’í message to the people of Brazil. The spirit of inter-racial amity which exists in South America has a strongeand more spontaneous influence than in the United States, this also being a condition which she has found extremely favorable.

In the year 1924 a permanent Bahá’í center was established in the city of Bahia and this has become widely known as a meeting-place of the different races, nationalities and classes, and as a center offering true hospitality to members of both the Catholic and Protestant faiths as well as to Spiritualists, Theosophists, Socialists and agnostics. As the result of this step, the group of workers found it possible to establish a Bahá’í publication in the Portuguese tongue, La Nova Era. This publication has been developed into a sixteen-page magazine and has appeared monthly for two years. The broad, constructive principles of the Bahá’í Move- ment have been carried by this medium to every city of the state of Bahia and to the more important cities of all other Brazilian states and even to Portugal itself.

A leaflet recently translated into Spanish and distributed to Theosophical centers throughout South and Central America and also in Spain, has brought many letters of appreciation and requests for more Bahá’í literature in Spanish.

Miss Holsapple’s work at Bahia was suspended for several months during the summer and autumn of 1927, to enable her to make a brief visit in the United States. On her return, however, she took the opportunity of making visits to different cities throughout the West Indies and Central America. Between September 9th and December 2nd, 1927, she made effective contacts with liberal individuals and groups and also with the local press at Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Curacao, Danish West Indies; Puerto, Colombia; Cartagena, Colombia; Puerto Cabello, Colombia; Caracus, Venezuela; Port of Spain, Trinidad; Parob-Maribo, Dutch Guiana; Georgetown, British Guiana; Barbados, British West Indies; and finally, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.