OPINION: Councilman from Lula da Silva's party heads attack on church in southern Brazil

A Workers Party (PT) councilman, Renato Freitas, led an attack against the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary in Curitiba, Brazil last Saturday. The group of violent protestors hoisted Communist Party flags, shouted war cries, and called the worshipping Christians “fascists” and “racists.”

The aggressive political act occurred in the same context as racialist protests carried out by the Black Lives Matter group, which coincided with the last presidential elections in the United States. This time around, the justification for the violence was the brutal death of a Black Congolese man, Moïse Kabagambe.

We must condemn, and demand justice for Kabagambe’s death. However, we must be careful to not take advantage of a crime in order to further what can be called “necropolitical” objectives. Various racialist movements and left-wing parties immediately put forth the hypothesis that the death of Kabagambe, who had immigrated to Brazil, was due to racism. This version of events contradicts the information that police have gathered so far. What we do know is that two of the men who attacked him were Black, and that the attack that caused his death was most likely associated with an attempt to collect a debt. These facts go against the racialist narratives that would seek to politicize a tragic death.

Two of the three murderers had committed previous crimes such as aggression, extorsion, and corruption of minors. It is a fact that the Brazilian penal system is still very permissive towards criminals.

It is important to state that Catholic nuns from Paraná have nothing to do with an atrocious crime committed against an immigrant in Río de Janeiro. The purpose of the political statement -or vandalism- last Saturday is to attack the Church and to create a false correlation between the death of Kabagambe and the religious institution. Based on this premise, it seeks to grotesquely insinuate that the Congolese immigrant died, not due to the direct action of criminals, but rather due to the underlying causes of “structural racism”: Jair Bolsonaro and the Catholic Church.

It is also important to state that the action was organized by members of Lula de Silva’s political party (the Workers Party, an ally of the Cuban Communist Party, Chavism in Venezuela, and the Sandinista dictatorship in Nicaragua) in alliance with the Brazilian Communist Party, which raised the red flag inside the church.

The hatred that Communists and related ideologies espouse towards Christianity has a long history. The Italian communist writer Antonio Gramsci considered Christianity the working class’s worst enemy. This tradition of thought is spread today by the Workers Party and its allies.

Who is councilman Renato Freitas?

Councilman Renato Freitas is 38 years old, holds a master’s degree in law from the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), and has a long history of participation in left-wing politics. He also has a long history of religious intolerance and run-ins with the police, according to the newspaper National Critique.

Last July, he was arrested for attacking an elderly man during a left-wing protest against the government of Jair Bolsonaro. He was also the subject of a lawsuit, filed by the Municipality of Curitiba last year, because of offensive statements he made against Evangelical politicians. Freitas’ political influences are basted in the Black socialist and Marxist thought espoused by the Black Panthers. He was a member of the ultra-left-wing Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), and later joined the Workers Party (PT) in 2020 to stand in elections for councilman. Freitas won a seat on the Municipal Council with more than 5,000 votes, after failing to win in elections in 2016 and 2018.

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The NGO “Portas Abertas” (“Open Doors”) has reported that at least 360 million Christ followers suffer from persecution around the world. The countries that most frequently persecute Christians are those with authoritarian regimes and Communist dictatorships. While Brazil has more Catholics than any other country in the world, it is still not immune from these attacks.

The aggression towards faith and religious liberty carried out by the group in Curitiba was met with varied reactions. Councilman Eder Borges indicated that he will present a request to expel Renato Freitas from the Municipal Council, stating, “The councilman must fight to defend the material and immaterial heritage of his city. In this case, he damaged both.”

President Jair Bolsonaro has even weighed in on the case: “Thinking that they will once again take power, the left shows its true, hateful face and its contempt for our people’s traditions. If these marginal groups cannot respect the house of God, a sacred place, and offend the faith of millions of Christians, who can they respect?”