This is part of the online version of Jamil Chad’s newsletter sent yesterday (20th). In the full newsletter, for subscribers-only, columnist Itamaraty says he still doesn’t know what to say at the United Nations General Assembly in September, which traditionally begins with a speech from Brazil. The UN tribune can be used as a platform by President Jair Bolsonaro during his election campaign. Would you like to receive the full package with the main column and more information in your email next week? Click here and register.
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Dear Pope Francis,
You certainly won’t remember, but I went to Brazil with you for your first mission abroad as pope. On that plane between Rome and Rio de Janeiro, you joked with me and said: Don’t worry, if the Pope is Argentinian, God is Brazilian.
It is with great sorrow that I write to you today. Is God really Brazilian? Even so, does he see how his name is used to commit crimes in the country?
We know very well that the history of religion is full of bloody nights. It has always fascinated me that a tyrant chooses the religion he will adopt in his reign, based on the alliances he wants to form and the power he wants to conquer. This was a geopolitical decision, which later evolved into a decree that would force any subject to reconsider their most intimate beliefs.
If Christianity was so revolutionary in giving place to women and slaves at the birth of religion and so rebellious about equality, it is disturbing that slavery, imperialism, the crucifixion alliance lasted for nearly 2,000 years. Let them make swords and genocides in the name of faith, so that some of these principles become law in the justice of the people.
When I sit across from Picasso’s Guernica, I feel a deep disgust at the “sanctification” of the 1936 coup in Spain that has turned into a holy war. It took the earthquake of World War II for the search for meaning in life to re-emerge on the political agenda. Of course, this didn’t seem like an urgency as long as the genocide was black, indigenous, or simply out of sight of centers of power.
your holiness,
We are experiencing a new chapter in the abduction of faith for political purposes in Brazil today. In their quest for control, the sellers of illusions turned a person’s search for legitimate meaning in life into a tool of power.
Charlatans selling hope as public policy in exchange for votes and money. Faced with a period of uncertainty that affects us all, criminals resort to persuasion. They use faith to justify discrimination, racism and human rights violations.
Intolerance has become a medal that some, including those in positions of authority, proudly wear on their chests. Places of worship were turned into platforms, weapons mixed with Bible verses. Necropolitics is elevated to a strategy of power under the cover of God.
I can’t help but feel deeply disappointed when I hear hypocrites talk about faith while destroying girls’ dreams, lives, and freedoms. The cynics who named “Woman” on the door of a ministry.
My dear father,
I spent the weekends of my childhood between Sunday classes, the football field at the Presbyterian church in downtown São Paulo, and the orchestra trying to reenact mass. Not necessarily in this order.
But I have deep reservations about certain dogmas, the power structure, and the treatment that different versions of Christianity bestow upon women and their bodies.
Even with your intention to compromise after 500 years of division in the church, I am aware that the strands of faith remain autonomous and the authority at your disposal knows the limits.
But still, its influence is valid among Christians. Otherwise, Abin wouldn’t have carefully followed their meetings about the future of Amazon. With your sharp political and social conscience, you certainly know what is at stake in the Brazilian elections.
Once, in 2010, with Desmond Tutu, I asked him unpretentious which team the archbishop would choose to support if the weak South African team were eliminated from the World Cup that year. And the clergyman’s reply was as ludicrous as it was profound: “I’ll be cheering for Brazil. You should pray less,” and he burst into his perfect laugh.
I also want to pray less for Brazil. But in the current circumstances, I have received this letter to ask you to pray for us. The other day, while talking to a dear friend in Rome—author Juliana Monteiro—I discovered that I was praying not to give up. If we give up hope just because he’s been kidnapped, it will be hypocrisy. Therefore, prayer is part of the resistance.
However, as you have taught us so much in recent years, prayer must be accompanied by consistent action. And so I ask for your help in spreading the understanding that Christianity is founded on love, dignity and respect, not hatred, death, and intolerance, with your spiritual and political influence.
This is not just another choice. It shows who we are. What is at stake is the survival of a democracy project, which is still in its infancy and is the only viable way to guarantee the rights of all. A kind of translation of some of the revolutionary concepts of Christianity.
With great admiration, I send you a hug, another form of prayer.
jamil
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source: Noticias
