In the 19th century, a Povoan religious practice shocked the overwhelmingly Catholic country. An 1868 magazine article stated: "It is said, for a long time in Minho , that the fishermen of Póvoa de Varzim were so superstitious, that the women when there were storms, and wanting to beg to their favorite saint or saints to free their husbands boats from the gorging ocean, they said absurd and extravagant blasphemies, like a savage people could do in front of the most ridiculous idols."