In the closing decades of the 20th century, some practitioners sought to remove Roman Catholic-influenced aspects from the religion to return it to its West African roots. In 1983, the prominent priestess Mãe Stella Azevedo for instance called on adherents to renounce all Roman Catholic saints and transform Candomblé into a more purely African tradition. Many of those emphasising this Afrocentric perspective were white middle-class practitioners, who re-emphasised Africa as a new source of authority because they had little standing with the predominantly Afro-Brazilian Bahian Candomblé establishment. Many terreiros distinguished themselves from this approach, arguing that to abandon the Roman Catholic elements would be to abandon an important part of their religious ancestry. The 2000s also saw growing opposition from Evangelical Protestants, including a rise in physical attacks on practitioners and terreiros; Candomblé practitioners responded with marches against religious intolerance from 2004 onward, with the first national march taking place in Salvador in 2009. On 1 January 2023, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed a law establishing 21 March as the National Day of Traditions of African Roots and Candomblé Nations. It was set to coincide with the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
