FaithWorld

By Paulo Whitaker

In Brazil we have a saying, "Soccer and religion are sacred." Here, as with one’s choice of a favorite soccer team, one’s choice of religion is also not up for discussion. When I discovered here in Sao Paulo a church run by a missionary and a pastor who are lesbian partners, I thought it would be an interesting photo story.

In this megalopolis, there already are a few evangelical churches that are inclusive, accepting people regardless of race, color, economic situation and sexual preference, but the Cidade de Refugio (City Refuge) is the first in Brazil to cater almost exclusively to the gay community. This church, part of the network of the evangelical Assemblies of God, is led by Lanna Holder, a lesbian activist who uses the title of Missionary.

This story was particularly difficult because of the number of subjects involved, and the need to get their and the church’s trust. I confess it took me a while to reach a level of confidence with them so that my pictures were natural. There was also a lot of suspicion among the congregation due to recent financial scandals involving different churches.

Missionary Holder had a complicated past as a young woman, having gone through drug and alcohol addiction, and suffered the discrimination of a lesbian in conservative society. She found her way by converting to Christianity. She says she dropped everything in the name of Jesus and came to join the Assembly of God church where she began to preach. At that time she married a man, had a son, and began preaching against all those aspects of her previous life: drugs, alcohol and homosexuality. Then, fully acknowledging her homosexuality, she separated from her husband and opened the Cidade de Refugio with her new partner, Pastor Rosania Rocha. They call their church a “missionary church.”

The first day I went to a Sunday mass, Holder presented me to the worshipers to explain that I wanted to photograph their congregation. She asked those who didn’t want to be photographed to please change their seats and move to the corners. She directed her words especially to anyone who was not openly gay in daily life.

By Ueslei Marcelino

Deep in the Brazilian heartland, where the upper reaches of the Amazon Basin dissolve into the central plateau,  I had the opportunity last week to spend a few days in the village of joy.

What I dubbed the village of joy is the home of the Yawalapiti tribe. One day last week, a group of us were escorted into the Xingu National Park by members of the Darcy Ribeiro Foundation and the Cavaleiro de Jorge cultural center, and arrived at the circular Yawalapiti village under an enormous full moon.

The mood was one of celebration. The Yawalapiti, one of the 14 tribes living inside the Xingu National Park, were preparing a new "quarup," a ritual held over several days to honor in death a person of great importance to them. In its original form, the quarup was a funeral ritual intended to bring the dead back to life. Today, it is a celebration of life, death and rebirth. From the very oldest to the very youngest, all the members of the Yawalapiti tribe participate in the preparations.

(Arpoador Beach in Rio de Janeiro February 14, 2011/Ricardo Moraes )

Rio de Janeiro, famed for its warm beaches and sunny skies, has hired a spiritual guru to keep the clouds away for U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit this weekend.

Adelaide Scritori, a medium who followers believe can help control climate patterns, claims to make contact with an ancient spirit known as Chief Cobra Coral who, according to legend, is powerful enough to influence natural phenomena.

“She goes into deep concentration so that she can communicate with the chief, and she asks him for good weather,” said Osmar Santos, her husband and a spokesperson for the Chief Cobra Coral Foundation that supports Scritori’s work.

(Photo: Unveiling of the statue of Jesus in Swiebodzin, western Poland November 21, 2010/Sebastian Rzepiel)

About 15,000 Christian pilgrims and tourists streamed into the western Polish town of Swiebodzin Sunday for the unveiling of what has been billed as the world’s tallest statue of Jesus.

Polish television stations showed throngs of worshippers marching in procession with religious banners and placards proclaiming “Christ the King of the Universe.”

The brain child of retired local Roman Catholic priest Sylwester Zawadzki, the figure soars to a height of 33 meters (108 ft) which he said symbolized the 33 years Jesus lived on earth. It is three meters taller than Brazil’s statue of Christ the Redeemer which stands on a mountain top overlooking Rio de Janeiro.

A statue of Jesus Christ that its builders say will be the largest in the world is fast rising from a Polish cabbage field and local officials hope it will become a beacon for tourists. The builders expect to attach the arms, head and crown to the robed torso in coming days, weather and cranes permitting, completing a project conceived by local Catholic priest Sylwester Zawadzki and paid for by private donations.

Standing on an artificial mound, the plaster and fiber glass statue will stand some 52 meters (57 yards) when completed, taller than the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer with outstretched arms that gazes over Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Polish officials say.

“I’m happy because this project will bring publicity to our town, not only in Poland but also from the global media. Other countries are showing a lot of interest,” said Dariusz Bekisz, mayor of Swiebodzin, a town of about 21,000 people in western Poland some 100 km (60 miles) from the German border.

(Photo: Dilma Rousseff looks up before a television debate in Sao Paulo October 25, 2010/Nacho Doce)

Dilma Rousseff, front-runner in Brazil’s presidential race, appears to have successfully shifted the focus of the campaign away from corruption and her controversial views on abortion and back to the shining economic legacy of her popular former boss, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Rousseff, a 62-year-old career civil servant and former leftist militant, fell short of the majority of votes needed to win the election outright in the October 3 first round as last-minute doubts of many evangelical Christian and Catholic voters about her support for abortion rights probably cost the Workers’ Party candidate an outright victory. Opposition challenger Jose Serra then closed her poll lead to as little as four points.

But her shift in focus appears to have re-energized her base in Brazil’s emerging lower-middle class, which has nearly doubled in size under Lula’s mix of market-friendly policies and social welfare programs, and now accounts for about half the population. Rousseff has promised to stick to Lula’s policies.

It was a little-noticed headline amid the daily crime, violence and accidents in Rio de Janeiro’s rough outskirts — Adriana de Souza Queiroz, 26, dead after a clandestine abortion went wrong. Queiroz, who scraped a living handing out pamphlets and was 3 or 4 months pregnant, last month became one of the some 300 Brazilian women who die each year after back street abortions.

The issue of abortion in the world’s most populous Roman Catholic country has been thrust into the spotlight by a presidential election in which front-running candidate Dilma Rousseff has been punished by religious voters for her past support for decriminalizing the procedure. (Photo:  An anti-abortion march in Brasilia September 10, 2008/Jamil Bittar)

Abortion rights groups have long argued the law does little to prevent abortions in Brazil and mostly hurts poor women who can’t afford safer, expensive underground clinics.

The YouTube video that helped push Brazil’s presidential election to a second round begins with Paschoal Piragine solemnly telling his flock: “In 30 years as a pastor, I’ve never done this before.” He then warns them that the ruling Workers’ Party wants not only to legalize abortion, but would make divorce easier, permit the spread of pornography, and continue to allow tribes in the Amazon to bury alive “thousands of children.”

The video, which includes disturbing images and has received nearly 3 million views, concludes with the Baptist preacher telling his followers not to vote for the Workers’ Party in upcoming elections. “Otherwise, God will judge our land,” Piragine says.

The last-minute doubts of many evangelical Christian and Catholic voters probably cost Workers’ Party presidential candidate Dilma Rousseff an outright first-round victory in last Sunday’s election, polls suggest. The shift is unlikely to keep Rousseff from winning an October 31 runoff vote against her nearest contender, opposition leader Jose Serra.

(Photo: Brazilian presidential candidate Dilma Rousseff in Brasilia, October 5, 2010/Ueslei Marcelino)

Brazil’s ruling party candidate Dilma Rousseff is playing up her Roman Catholic background in efforts to win back religious voters, whose doubts about her faith and position on abortion rights may have cost her an outright victory in Sunday’s presidential election.

In a surprise shift, many religious voters who oppose abortion, especially evangelical Christians, abandoned Rousseff’s  center-left Workers’ Party to vote for the Green Party’s Marina Silva, who captured an unexpectedly large 19 percent of the vote.

“Personally, I’m from a Catholic family. I am and always was in favor of life,” Rousseff told reporters on Tuesday outside of her campaign headquarters in Brasilia. “I have no problem addressing the religious issue. My project addresses all the religions.”

The statue of "Christ the Redeemer" is enshrouded in clouds atop Corcovado mountain in Rio de Janeiro, 8 Oct 1999/Gregg Newton.

The Roman Catholic Church in Chile on Tuesday said there had been 20 confirmed or alleged cases of child abuse by priests, and asked for forgiveness from the victims.

Monsignor Alejandro Goic, head of Chile’s bishops’ conference, said that in five of the cases sentences had been imposed, in another five trials were still under way, and in 10 others priests had been absolved or results were pending.