On October 17, 2022, around 300 Catholic priests and nuns met with the then-presidential candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to openly declare their support for him in the second round of the elections that would take place on October 30 that year.[1] These Catholic leaders came from different parts of the nation to publicly declare their support to the candidate of the extreme left. They were also conveying the same support of other priests and nuns from numerous Catholic dioceses, institutions and congregations. On that occasion, these priests and nuns also produced an Open Letter entitled ‘Commitment by Priests and Religious People to President Lula’. In the document, they allege a supposed “manipulation of the population through fake news” and “hateful speeches full of prejudices”. [2]
Of course, these are false accusations used by the extreme left to undermine democracy and freedom of speech. As everyone knows, the Lula administration in Brazil fully controls the nation’s mainstream media and high-tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Uber, Instagram and WhatsApp are presently providing registration data and contact numbers of the victims of unlawful censorship.[3] At the helm of this vast censorship scheme is Alexandre de Moraes, president of the Superior Electoral Court and a justice of the Supreme Federal Court. He is leading a tireless effort to stifle political dissent, including imprisoning individuals for content shared on the web. On 21 November 2024, President Lula awarded Justice Moraes with the Rio Branco Medal, an honour conferred only on those who accomplish “meritorious services and civic virtues” for the government.[4] According to American journalist Michael Shellenberger,
“President Lula da Silva is participating in the push toward totalitarianism … What Lula and de Moraes are doing is an outrageous violation of Brazil’s Constitution and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights”.[5]
Be that as it may, the role played by a considerable number of Catholic priests in Brazil is to turn the religiosity of ignorant people away from biblical Christianity and towards Marxism; a diabolical strategy ultimately aiming at the implementation of a brutal socialist dictatorship. However, it might be important to explain the historical collaboration of Catholic priests and nuns in the violation of basic human rights in that country.
Although Brazil constitutes the largest Catholic country in the world, the Catholic clergy comprise one of the main ruling groups that have done its uttermost to foster authoritarianism and undermine the rule of law. While some clergymen, to be fair, do favour democracy and the rule of law, others prefer instead to promote in its place an understanding of ‘class struggle’ based on radical Marxist principles of revolutionary socialism. Those of such an ideological orientation believe that concepts such as individual rights, private property and free initiative are routes to ‘hell’, the only corrective of which is a violent socialistic revolution to lead the nation toward a ‘tropical paradise’ or ‘God’s Kingdom on Earth’.[6]
During the colonial period, Catholic priests were not only the main political allies of the ruling economic groups, particularly the sugar planters, but were themselves party to the system of slavery. Their support for the slave system was not just based on the premise that black people did not have a soul, but on practice as well; Catholic priests constituted the largest landholders and slave-owners of colonial times. In colonial times, in Brazil, Catholic religious orders owned a ‘disproportionate amount’ of property despite laws created to prevent this occurring.[7] For example, in the eighteenth century, the Order of Jesuits alone owned all the largest and most profitable farms in Rio de Janeiro. One of their farms, called Santa Cruz, comprised an impressive 100 square leagues and held more than one thousand slaves. According to Dauril Alden, a professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Washington:
“The properties which the Jesuits operated were managed by one or two padres who supervised the labour of Negro slaves, as in the case of sugar plantations… The Society of Jesus was probably the greatest institutional slaveholder in Brazil; certainly it possessed the largest number of slaves confined to a single plantation in all of colonial America”.[8]
In 1656, the Crown enacted an important decree declaring that the properties of the Church should not be exempt from contributing taxes for the army’s defence against the ‘heretic’ Dutch invaders. However, according to a June 1661 letter written by Francisco Barreto, the Governor-General of Brazil, the religious orders refused to pay any tax on their plantations and estates. A year later, in 1662, the city council of Salvador would complain that these religious orders, “which in this captaincy possess much property and slaves, refuse to contribute anything at all to the cost of the war, so that the rest of the people are heavily burdened, and the poor suffer continual oppression”.[9]
During colonial times the Catholic Church was viewed as a mere branch of the State bureaucratic apparatuses.[10] With the country’s independence from Portugal on 7 September 1822, such control of the State over the Church remained unchanged.[11] While Pedro II, the eldest son of Emperor Pedro I, waited for the parliamentary declaration of his majority, a Catholic priest, Antonio Feijó, was appointed by Parliament as the nation’s provisory regent. Father Feijó is broadly regarded as one of the most radical and authoritarian rulers ever to succeed to the head of the Brazilian state.[12] He remained in power until resigning for political reasons in 1837.
Unfortunately, the behaviour of priest-politicians such as Father Feijó was far from exemplary. Priests like him “surely neglected their spiritual mission and their lives were not positively edifying”.[13] A document written in 1870 by the Secretary of the Bishop of Rio de Janeiro reveals most Brazilian priests to be “deeply moved by all sorts of passions and ambitions”.[14] This document communicates that they were “ignorant of the most basic elements of dogma and morals”.[15] Some of these priests owned many slaves and betrayed their vow of celibacy through having intercourse with their slave women mistresses.[16] Curiously, one of the most significant figures in the abolitionist (i.e.; anti-slavery) movement, José Patrocínio, was the illegitimate son of a priest and a poor black woman who made her living as a street vendor.[17]
In contrast to the situation in Britain where the fight against slavery was primarily conducted by people motivated by strong Christian convictions based on the morality espoused in the Gospels, the Catholic Church in Brazil not once raised its influential voice to protest against slavery. On the contrary, no Catholic priest could be found participating in the abolitionist movement arguing for the incompatibility between slavery and Christianity.[18] Though legislation was introduced in 1831 prohibiting the slave trade, once again, no priest was ever found denouncing the cruel violation of this statutory provision. Not only did the influential Catholic clergy completely ignore all the suffering of those illegally brought to the country as slaves, they also criticised the papal bulls condemning the slave trade.[19] As a consequence, hundreds of thousands of people were illegally smuggled as slaves from the African continent into Brazil, usually remaining in a condition of forced servitude for the rest of their miserable lives. As Joaquim Nabuco, the main leader of the abolitionist movement, observed in 1883:
“In other countries the anti-slavery propaganda was religious, preached from the pulpit, fervently supported by the various churches and religious communities. Among us the abolitionist movement unfortunately owes nothing to the state church. On the contrary, the ownership of men and women by the convents and by the entire secular clergy completely demoralizes the religious feelings of masters and slaves. The slaves see nothing in the priest but a man who can buy them, while the masters see in him the last person who would think to accuse them. Our clergy’s desertion of the role that the Gospel assigned to them is as shameful as it could possibly have been. No one observes it taking the side of the slaves; no one sees it using religion to ease the burdens of their captivity, or to propose moral truths to the masters. No priest ever tried to stop a slave auction; none ever denounced the religious regime of the slave quarters”.[20]
Whereas the institutional separation between Church and State was brought about by the fall of the constitutional monarchy, on November 15, 1888, this did not mean that Catholic priests would become less interested in politics. In fact, their interest seems to have increased over the years, although it is fair to consider that the guiding ideology has changed. Yet, despite such changes in terms of ideological outlook, one can observe that the clergy still retain the same old distrust of individual rights and freedoms, and, broadly speaking, the tradition of the rule of law in representative democracies.
For example, in the 1950s a group of Catholics established a radical organisation called the Ação Católica Brasileira – ACB (Brazilian Catholic Action). The ACB embraced a radical Marxist orientation that openly sought to undermine democratic institutions and abolish the Brazilian Constitution of 1946. To achieve such a subversive goal, the ACB’s leader, a Franciscan friar called Thomas Cardonnel, created the concept of ‘established disorder’, which he went on to enunciate as follows:
“We can never insist enough on the need to denounce natural harmony and class collaboration. God is not so dishonest, so false as to produce a certain kind of social peace consisting of the acquiescence of all in an unnatural injustice. Violence is not only a fact of revolutions; it also militates against the maintenance of a false order”.[21]
Brazilian Catholics created even a more radical organisation in 1962 as a segment of the ACB: the Ação Popular – AP (Popular Action).[22] The AP constituted in the 1960s, in the words of American historian Thomas C. Bruneau, “the most revolutionary organisation in Brazil”.[23] Its 1966 booklet entitled Estratégia Revolucionária (Revolutionary Strategy) advocated for “guerrilla warfare and a plan to establish pure socialism”.[24] Similarly, its 1966 booklet Documento Básico (Basic Document) declared:
“The Popular Action basically opts for a policy of revolutionary preparation, consisting of mobilization of the people based on the development of their levels of consciousness and organization, and securing this mobilization in terms of a struggle against the domination of capitalism (international and national)”.[25]
With the rise of the military regime in April 1964, many church institutions were discovered sheltering left-wing guerrillas who aspired to replace army rule with communism. Church buildings such as the Cristo Rei, a Jesuit seminary in southern Brazil, provided strategic support and accommodation for emissaries of ‘armed groups’ involved with terrorist activities throughout the country.[26] In October 1969, the police identified a Catholic orphanage that was also being used by a terrorist group called Forças Armadas de Libertação Nacional – FALN (National Liberation Armed Forces) to store chemical products used in the manufacture of explosives.[27]
There has been little change in terms of leftist radicalism over the years.[28] Many are the Catholics in Brazil who still believe the ‘oppressed’ is committing a ‘sin’ by not rebelling against the ‘capitalist system’.[29] In doing so, they regard the desire conveyed in papal encyclicals for harmonious coexistence between social classes to be ‘self-deception’. Hence, according to Leonardo Boff, a leading contributor to liberation theology, the capitalist system is ‘the “666” of the whore of Babylon’.[30] Boff says: “There is no cure for this system. It must be overcome”.[31]
Boff thus advocates that the world will face a “final apocalyptic confrontation of the forces of good [communism] and evil [capitalism], and then the blessed millennium”.[32] The violent suppression of capitalism, in his own words, will represent “God’s Kingdom on Earth, and the advent of a new society of a socialistic type”.[33] And since his apocalyptic view of the ‘Day of Judgment’ is based on the violent confrontation leading to the advent of a communist utopia, he advocates the use of the Catholic Church as a means of revolutionary support and socialist indoctrination. As Boff explains:
“The subordinated classes solicit the Church to aid them in their search for greater power and autonomy in the face of the domination they suffer. They ask the Church to support and justify the breakdown of the ruling classes and lend itself to revolutionary service. Yet, the faithful are present on both sides; the Church is inevitably affected by class conflicts and so may serve a revolutionary function or serve as a strengthening force for the ruling classes. These two possibilities are not free choices or options”.[34]
As can be seen, the ‘theology’ of Boff refuses to accept any peaceful coexistence between different social classes. For him, Catholics have a moral duty “to rouse the working class to an awareness of class struggle and the need to take part in it”.[35] Thus, he does not regard as a ‘sin’ for a person to physically attack another one from an ‘oppressive’ social class, since such violence would be committed in the struggle to remove inequality.[36] Under this type of radical thinking, the later Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, former Pope Benedict XVI, commented:
“The desire to love everyone here and now, despite his class, and to go out to meet him with the non-violent means of dialogue and persuasion, is denounced as counterproductive and opposed to love. If one holds that a person should not be the object of hate, it is claimed nevertheless that, if he belongs to the objective class of the rich, he is primarily an enemy to be fought. Thus the universality of love of neighbour and brotherhood become an eschatological principle, which will only have meaning for the ‘new man’, who arises out of the victorious revolution”.[37]
Boff left the priesthood in 1992 but he remains a prominent Catholic figure in Brazil. He was the editor of Vozes, the nation’s leading Catholic publishing house. In his 1987 book O Socialismo Como Desafio Teológico (‘Socialism as a Theological Challenge’), Boff postulates that the highly oppressive former communist regimes in Eastern Europe, especially the Soviet Union, “offers the best objective possibility of living more easily in the spirit of the Gospels and of observing the Commandments”.[38] Returning from a visit to the Soviet Union in 1987, just a few years before the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, he contended that these oppressive regimes were “highly ethical and… morally clean”, and that he had not noticed any restrictions in those countries on freedom of expression.[39]
When Boff was summoned in the 1980s by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to the Vatican, Brazil’s only two cardinals, Dom Aloisio Lorscheider and Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns, accompanied him to the interrogation in order to support him. Responsible for matters of faith and doctrine, this body of the Church requested Boff to explain his concept of ‘ecclesial division of labour’ by which the hierarchy of the Church supposedly engaged itself “in the gradual expropriation of the means of religious production from the Christian people”.[40] The fact that the country’s only two cardinals accompanied him to the interrogation was correctly interpreted as ‘unprecedented support’ for his radical positions.[41]
One of these two cardinals who accompanied him was Dom Evaristo Arns, who constantly lobbied the Vatican for the ‘positive work’ carried out by the Comunidades Eclesiásticas de Base – CEBs (Ecclesiastical Base Communities).[42] Cardinal Arns was the staunchest supporter of the CEBs, which actually constituted one of “the most subversive institutions the Latin American church has developed”.[43] In Brazil, the CEBs were multiplied as a way of “reformulating the Christian message”[44] through Bible-studies, homilies, and priest-parishioner dialogues whereby religious people were persuaded to accept a ‘theology’ that embraces not just socialism but violence as a valid political strategy.[45]
Of course, the interest that extremists have in infiltrating the Catholic Church is not so difficult to explain. No revolutionary undertaking can be successful in a deeply religious society like Brazil without the support of the powerful Catholic clergy. As with other Latin American nations, the Catholic Church “can still legitimate or discredit given values and attitudes with profound impact on the prospects of the people”.[46] Recognising this, the Cuban-Argentinean revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara once declared: “When the Christians have the courage to commit themselves completely to the Latin American revolution, the Latin American revolution will be invincible”.[47] One such radical extremist is Carlos Libânio Christo OP, or Frei (‘friar’) Betto, a political activist and Dominican friar. Frei Betto accuses people tortured in the Cuban gulags, or executed by that communist government, or who have managed to escape from the country-island, to be, without any exception, either a criminals or deeply selfish people. Thus he suggested in a January 4, 2004, article published by Brazil’s leading newspaper Folha de S. Paulo :
“If Cuba is so advanced socially, why do some people attempt to escape from this country? Well, does not Brazil also have three million of its citizens living outside its borders? The only difference is that the Cuban economy is socialist and does not accept individuals doing tourism outside the country; that is, it does not accept the evasion of capital for the purpose of individual gratification. This, however, does not stop any Cuban citizen from travelling overseas at the expenses of the state for scientific, artistic, commercial, or diplomatic reasons. As for those who deserted Cuba in search of the ‘American way of life’, I haven’t heard of any of such people trying to improve the conditions of the poor in the countries where they now are living. On the contrary, jails in the United States are packed with such Cuban escapees (evadidos) … I include myself among those who disagree with the execution of political criminals in Cuba. But I do not hear the people who protest against this also point out that Bush, while governor of Texas, signed 153 death sentences against criminals … Some may even criticise the government of Cuba for those killings, but no-one has the right to ask for more liberties in a country where… U.S. sanctions weigh heavily around its neck”.[48]
Frei Betto is therefore a ‘religious’ person who has an enormous faith in communism, especially the communist regime of Cuba. He believes that Cubans have the moral duty to completely renounce their freedom and subject themselves entirely to the Cuban totalitarian government, even though their personal needs are presently satisfied under a state rationing system. Maybe because of this faith in communism, he postulates that it is important that the Brazilian Left “not yield to the naïve concept of making revolution through the ballot”.[49] Other Catholic priests think exactly like him. For example, Dom Thomas Balduíno, the late bishop of Goiás, considers ‘agrarian reform’ just a ‘barely acceptable term’ because what he really wants is ‘agrarian revolution’, he says.[50] In an interview with journalist Belisa Ribeiro, Bishop Balduíno bitterly complained that Pope John Paul II was a conservative Pole who fought against communism. “When we were beginning to open, he stepped in and forced us backwards”, he says.[51] Of course, writes law professor Joseph A. Page:
“Having experienced the fruits of Marxism firsthand in his native Poland, [John Paul II] was decidedly unsympathetic to any suggestion that the Church view the world through a Marxist lens. Although he often displayed great compassion for the wretched of the earth and voiced harsh criticisms of exploitive capitalism, the pontiff made it abundantly clear that he did not want the Church to become involved in political activity, which at this time meant left-wing politics”.[52]
The late archbishop of Salvador, Geraldo Majella, was for many years president of the highly influential Conferência Nacional dos Bispos do Brasil – CNBB (National Conference of Brazilian Bishops). He was notorious for eulogising social movements that, in his own words, created “a pressure cooker that is about to explode”.[53] Of course, he ignored the message by Pope John Paul II when he cautioned the clergy against violence and the use of radical Marxist concepts. To attain social justice, John Paul II recommended:
“Much more is required than the simple application of ideological schemes derived from class struggle such as, for example, the invasion of lands – already condemned in my Pastoral Trip of 1991 – and of public or private buildings, or, to mention only this, the adoption of extreme technical measures that can have much graver (and socially unjust) consequences than the injustice they are meant to resolve”.[54]
In today’s Brazil, a basic problem stems from the fact that far too many Catholic priests still adopt radical Marxist concepts. Marxism, of course, does not favour either democracy or the rule of law. Instead, Karl Marx believed that the advent of communism requires, as he put it, “a period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat”.[55] Accordingly, Vladimir Lenin once explained, in a lecture delivered in 1919, that, under Marxism, law is just a mechanism “for holding the other subordinated classes obedient to the one class”.[56] As can be observed in any communist regime existing in the world, the practical application of Marx’s conception of law does not tolerate any political dissent.
Because Marx saw law solely as an instrument of oppression, the judicial function was understood as being to safeguard the absolute interests of the ruling class. Thus, judicial independence and impartiality are regarded in Marxist jurisprudence as ‘bourgeois myth’. In Marxist legal theory, the function of the judiciary is basically to hold everyone subjugated to the dominating class that controls the State, no matter which one this might be. Of course, the world already knows that, in Brazil, a deeply unpopular and notoriously communist president was controversially elected via a highly contestable electoral system. He is now using his top federal judges to persecute and arrest his political dissidents.[57] During the 2022 presidential election, these controversial members of the federal judiciary issued numerous orders against alleged “fake news.” They ordered social networks to remove thousands of posts and arrested numerous supporters of the previous president without trial for posts on social media that they claimed “attacked Brazil’s institutions.”[58]
About fourteen years ago, during President Lula’s second term, he sent a letter to the president of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB), Dom Geraldo Lyrio Rocha, thanking him for “the support received from the Catholic Church during his almost eight years in office”.[59] The document states that the support of the Catholic Church was fundamental for the socialist government’s implementation of its most radical policies. Prior to this, the CNBB had already published a notorious document declaring Marxist-oriented ‘liberation theology’ as not only ‘timely’ but also “useful and consistent with the Gospels”.[60] If so, allow me to say that such a gospel is a gospel according to Marx! In a society that is overwhelming Catholic, both in culture and ‘spirit’, such a communist infiltration in the Catholic Church in Brazil results in support for an oppressive socialist government that has no regard for the rule of law and is directly responsible for gross and ongoing violations of fundamental human rights and freedoms.
Augusto Zimmermann, who was born in Brazil, is Professor and Head of Law at Sheridan Institute of Higher Education. He is a former Associate Dean, Research, at Murdoch Law School. During his time at Murdoch, Dr Zimmermann was awarded the University’s Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research in 2012. He is also a former Commissioner with the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia (2012-2017). Dr Zimmermann is the author/co-author of numerous academic articles and books, including ‘Direito Constitucional Brasileiro’ (Brazilian Constitutional Law) (Lumen Juris, 2014) 990 pp.
[1] Marcelo Menna Barreto, ‘Padres e Freiras Declaram Apoio a Lula em Defesa da Democracia’, Extra Classe, 17 October 2024, at https://www.extraclasse.org.br/politica/2022/10/padres-e-freiras-declaram-apoio-a-lula-em-defesa-da-democracia/
[2] Ibid.
[3] ‘Brazilian Censorship Scandal: Twitter Files Shows How Government and Big Tech Silence Dissent’, Reclaim The Net, 6 April 2024 at https://reclaimthenet.org/brazilian-censorship-scandal-twitter-files-shows-how-government-and-big-tech-silence-dissent
[4] Cristyan Costa, ‘Lula homenageia Moraes no dia do velório de Clezão’, Revista Oeste, 21 November 2023, at https://revistaoeste.com/politica/lula-homenageia-moraes-no-dia-do-velorio-de-clezao/
[5] Michael Shellenberger, ‘Brazil is on the Brink’, X, 7 April 2024, at https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1776776372351836642?t=gOwXlxtMJHK8os_qzwFFcA&s=19
[6] See: J.O. de Meira Penna, Opção Preferencial pela Riqueza (Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Liberal, 1991).
[7] C.R. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire (1415-1835) (London: Hutchinson, 1969) 328.
[8] Dauril Alden, ‘Economic Aspects of the Expulsion of the Jesuits from Brazil: A Preliminary Report’, in: H.H. Keith and S.F. Edwards (eds.), Conflict and Continuity in Brazilian Society (University of South Carolina Press, 1969) 29.
[9] Boxer, op. cit., 328.
[10] Gilberto Freyre, Order and Progress: Brazil from Monarchy to Republic (New York/NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970) 289.
[11] Emauel de Kadt,Catholic Radicals in Brazil (Oxford University Press, 1970) 53.
[12] Lima, Manoel de Oliveira, The Evolution of Brazil Compared with that of Spanish and Anglo-Saxon America (New York/NY: Russell & Russell, 1966) 76.
[13] Ibid.
[14] ASSRJ, ACM, Bullário, II, p.476. Quoted from: George C.A. Boehrer, ‘The Church in the Second Reign, 1840-1889’, in: H.H. Keith and S.F. Edwards (eds.), Conflict and Continuity in Brazilian Society (University of South Carolina Press, 1969) 126.
[15] Ibid., 126-127.
[16] Joaquim Nabuco, Abolitionism: The Brazilian Antislavery Struggle [1883] (University of Illinois Press, 1977) 132.
[17] See: Boris Fausto, A Concise History of Brazil (Cambridge University Press, 1999) 228.
[18] José Murilo de Carvalho, ‘The Struggle for Democracy in Brazil: Possible Lessons for Nigeria’, Port Harcourt: SEPHIS/ University of Port Harcourt, 2000, 8.
[19] Nabuco, op. cit., 131.
[20] Ibid., pp.18-19.
[21] Thomas C. Bruneau, The Political Transformation of the Brazilian Catholic Church (Cambridge University Press, 1974) 95.
[22] Edward Norman, Christianity in the Southern Hemisphere: The Churches in Latin America and South Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981) 82.
[23] Bruneau, op. cit., p.96.
[24] Chilcote, op. cit., p.2.
[25] Ação Popular; Documento de Base. Goiânia: Centro de Cultura Popular, January 1963. Quoted from: Thomas C. Bruneau, The Political Transformation of the Brazilian Catholic Church (Cambridge University Press, 1974) 99.
[26] Hélio Gaspari, A Ditadura Escancarada (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2002) 265.
[27] Ibid., 264-265.
[28] Paul Sigmund, Christian Democracy, Liberation Theology, and Political Culture in Latin America. in: Larry Diamond (ed.), Political Culture and Democracy in Developing Countries (London: Lynne Rienner, 1993) 338.
[29] Gustavo Gutierrez, Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll/NY: Orbis, 1971) 175.
[30] Leonardo Boff, Salvation and Liberation (Melbourne/Vic: Dove, 1984) 106.
[31] Leonardo Boff, Ecclesiogenesis (London: Collins, 2001) 43.
[32] Boff, Salvation and Liberation, 106.
[33] Ibid., 116.
[34] Leonardo Boff, Church, Charism, and Power (New York/NY: Crossroad, 1985) 112.
[35] Liberation Theology. The Angelus, Volume VIII, Number 6, June 1985 (Reprinted from ‘The Economist’, 13 October 1984), at: http://www.sspx.ca/Angelus/1985_June/Liberation_Theology.htm
[36] Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids/MI: Baker Book House, 1983) 592.
[37] Joseph Ratzinger, Instruction on Certain Aspects of Theology of Liberation (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1984) at: http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_df84lt.htm
[38] Leonardo Boff, O Socialismo Como Desafio Teológico (Petrópolis/RJ: Vozes, 1987) 682.
[39] Joseph A. Page, The Brazilians (Reading/MA, Addison-Wesley, 1995) 349.
[40] Boff, Church, Charism, and Power, 112.
[41] Ibid., vii.
[42] Paul Sigmund, ‘Christian Democracy, Liberation Theology, and Political Culture in Latin America’, in: L. Diamond (ed.), Political Culture and Democracy in Developing Countries (London: Lynne Rienner, 1993) 341.
[43], Tommie Sue Montgomery, ‘Liberation and Revolution: Christianity as a Subversive Activity in Central America’, in: M. Diskin (ed.), Trouble in Our Backyard (New York/NY: Pantheon, 1983) 82.
[44] Page, op. cit., 344.
[45] Monte Reel, An Abiding Faith in Liberation Theology’, The Washington Post, 2 May 2005, at https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2005/05/02/an-abiding-faith-in-liberation-theology/d52cf703-0ba6-427b-8c6e-9d18e375e129/
[46] Carlos Alberto Montaner, ‘Culture and the Behaviour of Elites in Latin America’, in: L.E. Harrison and S. Huntington (eds.), Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress (New York/NY: Basic Books, 2000) 61.
[47] Liberation Theology, op. cit.
[48] Frei Betto, ‘Cuba Resiste, Solidariamente’, Folha de S. Paulo, São Paulo, 04 January 2004, at: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/fsp/mundo/ft0401200417.htm
[49] Frei Betto, ‘Alternativa Socialista en América Latina y el Caribe’, Revista America Libre, No.1, 2002.
[50] Belisa Ribeiro, ‘Talking to Dom Tomás, the Bishop of the Landless’,Brazzil Magazine, 1 October 2003, at: https://www.brazzil.com/14260-brazil-talking-to-dom-tom-aacute-s-the-bishop-of-the-landless/
[51] Ibid.
[52] Page, op. cit., 346.
[53] Luciano Mendes de Almeida, ‘O Grito dos Excluídos’, Folha de S. Paulo, São Paulo/SP, 9 August 2003, at https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/fsp/opiniao/fz2708200507.htm
[54] American TFP, ‘John Paul II and Land Reform’,Lula Watch, Vol.1, No.16, 5 December 2003.
[55] Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme. Quoted from: Maureen Cain, and Alan Hunt, Marx and Engels on Law (London: Academic Press, 1979) 163.
[56] Hans Kelsen, The Communist Theory of Law (London: Stevens & Sons, 1955) 54.
[57] Augusto Zimmermann, ‘Why Millions of Brazilians Have Flocked to the Streets for Democracy, The Epoch Times, 5 March 2024, at https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/why-millions-of-brazilians-have-flocked-to-the-streets-for-democracy-5596574
[58] Augusto Zimmermann, ‘Brazil is Becoming a Socialist Dictatorship’, The Epoch Times, 25 January 2023, at https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/brazil-is-becoming-a-socialist-dictatorship-4992716
[59] Agência Brasil, ‘Lula Envia â CNBB Carta de Agradecimento por Apoio da Igreja Católica’, JusBrazil.com.br, 16 April 2024, at https://www.jusbrasil.com.br/noticias/lula-envia-a-cnbb-carta-de-agradecimento-por-apoio-da-igreja-catolica/2174617
[60] Augusto Zimmermann, ‘How Christ Met Marx in Brazil’, Brazzil Magazine, 3 February 2005, at https://www.brazzil.com/how-christ-met-marx-in-brazil/
