In the hills above Rio, the community centre at Capelhino is decked out in green, white and orange, festooned with balloons and bunting in honour of the arrival of "Exmo Sr. Bertie Aherne". Some £50,000 of official Irish aid - the price of an upmarket car - ensured the centre could be built to provide a focus for this poor favella or shanty town.
To see the grateful response of the hundreds of locals who turned out to cheer Bertie and Celia on Saturday, you'd think they had handed over 100 times the amount.
The Taoiseach remarked on a previous trip - to South Africa - on the difference relatively small amounts of aid can make to poor communities. His journey out of Rio on Saturday morning, away from the suits and formal lunches and talk of trade figures which have dominated his visit to Brazil so far, provided further evidence.
With temperatures in the high 30s, more than 100 local people stood in the grounds of the newly built community centre to hear the Taoiseach pay tribute to the work of parish priest Father John Cribben, a Limerick man who has been in the parish since 1966. Father Cribben, who is in Ireland at the moment, joined the proceedings via a mobile phone. The community centre will provide courses in sewing, typing, crafts, literacy, sports, painting and some basic job skills.
Mr Ahern told the crowd he knew Father Cribben had further ambitions for the centre - he wants funding for computers, Internet access, software, desks and sewing machines. He got the loudest cheer for a promise of further funding - although an amount was not specified.
The Taoiseach told reporters afterwards that in an area with 10,000 people and an enormous amount of poverty, "it is terrific that we can give to them things they could not otherwise have".
His partner, Ms Celia Larkin, was formally presented with a bouquet of flowers and seemed genuinely touched by an unplanned presentation to her of handcrafted jewellery made at the centre. At the end of the formalities, they were surrounded by children as the Taoiseach described the scene by phone to Father Cribben in Ireland.
The Taoiseach, Ms Larkin and their entourage walked through the narrow winding streets of the shanty town where local children waved miniature Irish flags in a state of great excitement.
Escorted by another Irish priest, Father Bernie Colgan, they stopped in a small chapel where adults and children sang their own hymn to Mary - "Our Lady of Brazil".
This hymn turned out to contain a typical Latin American mixture of religion and politics. In between calls for Our Lady of Brazil to pray for them there were calls for the freeing of slaves, the redistribution of land, housing, education, peace and justice.
It is a potent mixture in this country of 170 million people with an enormous gap between rich and poor. Some 80 per cent of the population lives in urban areas - very many in slums and shanty towns. The same proportion is Catholic.
Brazil is in the top half of countries in the world in terms of development but contains massive disparities in wealth. From 1996 to 2001, Irish Aid provided over £2.2 million to projects in Brazil, mainly in the poor shanty towns.
Funding has increased steadily from £250,000 in 1996 to more than £700,000 so far in 2001.