Two arms of Brazilian bishops’ conference: Throw the book against alleged coup plotters

Former Brazil president Jair Bolsonaro and 35 other people, including a Catholic priest, were charged by the country’s Federal Police on Nov. 21, 2024, on suspicion of the crimes of violent abolition of the democratic rule of law. / Credit: Fabio Rodrigues Pozzebom/Agência Brasil, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Brasilia, Brazil, Dec 21, 2024 / 09:00 am (CNA).

The Brazilian Commission for Justice and Peace and the National Council of the Laity of Brazil, both organs of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB), are spearheading a petition calling on the authorities to “hold all perpetrators of violence against the Democratic State of Law legally, rigorously, and exemplarily accountable, so that coup attempts against the Brazilian people are never articulated again in this country.”

The document rejects “any initiative aimed at the impunity of the coup plotters” who allegedly planned, in 2022, to prevent the inauguration of then-president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. 

The Dec. 15 document bears the signatures of pastoral commissions of several dioceses, grassroots ecclesial communities, religious orders, diocesan justice and peace commissions, lay organizations of environmentalists, feminists, professional associations, Workers’ Party chapters, and the Socialism and Freedom Party (Psol). Altogether, the document has more than 400 signatories. 

The document begins by quoting an excerpt (No. 208) from Pope Francis’ encyclical Fratelli Tutti. “We need to learn how to unmask the various ways that the truth is manipulated, distorted, and concealed in public and private discourse. What we call ‘truth’ is not only the reporting of facts and events, such as we find in the daily papers. It is primarily the search for the solid foundations sustaining our decisions and our laws.”

Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and 35 other people were charged by the Federal Police on Nov. 21 on suspicion of the crimes of violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, coup d’état, and criminal organization.

According to the federal police, the goal of the coup plotters was to kill then-president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, his vice president, Geraldo Alckmin, and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. The action, called “Green and Yellow Dagger,” would be carried out on Dec. 15, 2022, by military personnel trained in Special Forces.

For the CNBB bodies, “Brazil cannot live passively with successive attempts at a coup against democracy by sectors of the military, business elites, and landowners, bankers, political reactionaries, business media and religious fundamentalists (such as some Catholic priests named in the Federal Police investigation and representatives of evangelical pastors who manipulate religion in association with the far right).”

The only Catholic priest among the 36 indicted by the Federal Police in their investigation is Father José Eduardo de Oliveira e Silva from the Diocese of Osasco. He is accused of participating in a meeting with two of the other accused. The priest has 435,000 followers on Instagram and YouTube videos with more than 7 million views.  

According to the document’s signatories, “the participation of figures from the political, economic and religious elites in association with some of the high-ranking military personnel of the Armed Forces in coups in the past and present makes explicit the authoritarian relationship that sustains the power structures in our country.”

At the end of the note, they call on “sectors of civil society, class entities that defend and fight for the Democratic Rule of Law …, religious entities (such as the CNBB, churches, and traditions that do not align themselves with the far right), unions, social movements, and other living organizations to publicly demonstrate that in Brazil there is not, and will not be, room for those who attack democracy.”

“To those who call themselves Christians it is imperative to remember: True Christian ethics points out that omission and connivance are just as serious as the sin of the intentional act,” the document states.

This story was first published by ACI Digital, CNA’s Portuguese-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.