Bolsonaro’s indictment in Brazil sparks outrage among conservative Christian supporters

SÃO PAULO (RNS) – A report released Nov. 26 by Brazil’s federal police details a plot allegedly involving former President Jair Bolsonaro and 36 others to stage a coup to prevent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from taking office in 2023.

The list of 37 defendants, which includes a Roman Catholic priest, was greeted with outrage by evangelical Christian supporters of the right-wing former president, who called the police investigation an attempt by Lula and members of Brazil’s Supreme Court to persecute conservatives in South America’s most populous nation.

According to the report, after Lula’s victory in the October 2022 presidential elections, Bolsonaro and close members of his entourage, most of them high-ranking military officers, launched a secret operation aimed at keeping him as president indefinitely.

Their smartphone messages, revealed in an 884-page police report, suggest the plan had the support of a broad segment of the armed forces, including generals and colonels who were allegedly waiting for Bolsonaro’s green light to take control of the government.

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A parallel investigation that resulted in the arrest of five people the previous week found that the conspirators planned to kill Lula, Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes using explosives or poison. De Moraes led the investigation into the attempted coup.

The report shows that the conspirators divided into groups, each of which was assigned different tasks. One group was responsible for spreading fake news about the electoral system, a campaign led by Bolsonaro since the previous year that claimed voting machines allowed Lula to skew the presidential vote.

Fr. José Eduardo de Oliveira e Silva, a Catholic priest who is the spiritual advisor of the Brazilian Association of Catholic Lawyers, was allegedly assigned to the so-called a group of judges who, according to the police, were to establish the legal basis for the army’s intervention, mainly using Art. 142 of the Brazilian Constitution. The article gives the armed forces responsibility for guaranteeing law and order, often interpreted by the far right as permission to intervene in the event of a constitutional crisis. In April, the supreme court ruled that it was not the military’s duty to organize a coup.

Silva, a vicar in the city of Osasco, near São Paulo, has ties to Opus Dei and holds a Ph.D. He obtained a doctorate in moral theology from the University of the Holy Cross in Rome, which belongs to this organization. Until his death in 2022, he was a close friend of Olavo de Carvalho, an ideologue of the Brazilian far right.

The report documented several trips by Silva to Brasilia in November and December 2022, where he had contact with some of the alleged conspirators, including Filipe Martins, Bolsonaro’s special adviser and friend Olavo de Carvalho.

Miguel Vidigal, Silva’s lawyer and president of a Catholic lawyers’ group, said in a statement that Silva visited Brasilia and spoke with other people named in the indictment as part of his work as a priest, which includes campaigning against abortion.

Vidigal accused the federal police of the fishing expedition and of violating the confidentiality it affords priests and those he advises.

With over 430,000 followers on Instagram, Silva is known for his public opposition to gender theory and abortion. In the run-up to the 2022 elections, he raised the Brazilian flag from the pulpit. His social media posts show that he is close to influential members of the Bolsonarist faction.

In a message to another priest included in the report, Silva said Catholics and evangelicals should pray to give the defense minister and 16 other generals “the courage to save Brazil.”

Silva had already surrendered his cellphone to authorities earlier this year following an earlier investigation and was banned from leaving the country.

It is not yet clear whether Bolsonaro, Silva and other accused conspirators will be detained. Since the report’s release, evangelical Christian leaders allied with the former president have expressed anger and vowed to take to the streets if he is arrested.

“We will respond if they maliciously imprison him. There will be a national reaction,” evangelical leader and congressman Sóstenes Cavalcante told RNS, adding that in Brazil “there is no legal security anymore, only Alexandre de Moraes remains persecuting conservatives and right-wingers.”

Pastor Aloizio Penido, a prominent Baptist, told RNS that the left “wants to prevent Bolsonaro from returning to the presidency, just as they did with (US President Donald) Trump.”

“But in the US they failed because people still breathe the air of democracy there,” he said.

Penido also believes that it is just a matter of political persecution of conservatives. “The convicted criminal was ‘acquitted’ and now holds the office of president,” he said, referring to Lula. “With Bolsonaro, they want to do the opposite; they want to condemn the innocent.”

After serving as president from 2003 to 2011, Lula was convicted of bribery offenses in 2017 and spent 580 days in prison. Sergio Moro, the judge who oversaw his case, later became Bolsonaro’s justice minister. After suspicions of political intrigue emerged in 2021, Lula’s convictions were overturned, allowing him to run for president in 2022.

Conservative Catholics have taken to social media to criticize the current investigation, especially lay members of the Charismatic Catholic Renewal and members of ultra-traditionalist groups.

According to Vinicius Borges Gomes, a professor of communications at the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais who has researched the Catholic right in Brazil, the cleric’s alleged involvement in the conspiracy is surprising. “The involvement of clergy in spreading radical rhetoric has always been evident, but it was not yet clear whether priests were actually involved in the coup plans,” he said.

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But Borges Gomes said the relationship between priests and far-right politicians is in line with the growing closeness between the new right and Catholic leaders around the world. “Many Catholic leaders speak of ‘spiritual warfare’ and tell their followers to fight those with whom they disagree.”

Others said there may be limits to how far Bolsonaro’s evangelical bloc in Congress is willing to go. A bloc adviser who asked not to be named told RNS: “Many members have a pragmatic relationship with the Lula administration and are trying to take advantage of it.”