Brazil: Protests in Fortaleza
Attacks on religious symbols reignite debate on intolerance “If it reopens, everyone dies.” This is how the poster pasted on a Catholic religious goods store in downtown Fortaleza began on the night the place was the target of a Molotov cocktail attack. The attack happened in the early morning of September 9. On that same night, two other Catholic establishments and one Umbanda establishment also had their facades set on fire in the capital of Ceará. The attacks are being investigated by the Civil Police, but the next day, Father Josileudo Queiroz, from the Church of São José Operário in Caucaia, in the metropolitan region of Fortaleza, used social media to classify what happened. Related news: Dino orders PF to investigate alleged wave of attacks on Catholic images. “We live in a country where we must understand that the country is secular, meaning it does not have an official religion. It is not atheist, because there are many religions, there are many expressions of faith. What happened here in Fortaleza and what happens across Brazil is called a crime of religious intolerance.” The attacks in Fortaleza are far from the only ones against Catholic symbols. One day before the attack in Ceará, in Londrina (PR), the head of an image of Nossa Senhora Aparecida, which was in front of a religious goods store, was torn off. Two days later, in Salvador, the target was the image of Nossa Senhora das Graças, which was broken. On the 22nd, also in Salvador, the image of the first Brazilian saint, Santa Dulce dos Pobres, was destroyed. Last Wednesday (30th), Minister Flávio Dino, from the Supreme Federal Court (STF), ordered the Federal Police (PF) to investigate an apparent dissemination of attacks on Catholic religious images across the country. All cases of intolerance occurred before the discussion about the title of patroness of Brazil for Nossa Senhora Aparecida entered the electoral dispute. Denunciations of religious intolerance According to Disque 100 data, in the first half of 2026 alone, between January and June, 1,252 denunciations were registered with at least one violation related to freedom of belief or religious intolerance. Catholics are not the main targets. Practitioners of Candomblé and Umbanda are historically the main victims of religious intolerance, according to the IBGE census, despite representing about 1% of the Brazilian population. Between January and June of this year, 270 denunciations were registered, an increase of more than 40% compared to the same period in 2025, when there were 192 notifications. Among Catholics, denunciations also grew in the first half of the year compared to the same period last year. Registrations went from 15 to 34, an increase of over 100%. During the National Week to Combat Religious Intolerance, which took place in January in Rio de Janeiro, the general secretary of ACT Alliance (Action by Churches Together), Rudelmar Faria, said that exclusion based on religion has been a political strategy not only in Brazil. “We are in a global moment when religion is instrumentalized to exclude, because religions today, this movement of confluence of fundamentalisms, seek precisely to exclude groups. And these are groups that are not Christian, white, rich, and more than their own church financially, they support a group of politicians who have the power to make decisions and create laws that are exclusionary,” he stated, citing that the most affected are women, LGBTI+ people, indigenous peoples, and low-income Black youth. “This is what exists not only here in Brazil, but in Latin America, in Central America,” he added. ACT Alliance is a worldwide coalition of churches and faith-based organizations operating in 140 countries. Last week, the electoral campaign in Brazil was filled with posts involving Nossa Senhora Aparecida. The controversy began when posts attributing to presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) the intention of removing the title of patroness of Brazil from Nossa Senhora went viral on social media. The candidate appealed to the Electoral Justice and the Supreme Federal Court (STF) to have the messages removed, which led to a series of judicial decisions by the ministers, determining at one moment the removal of the posts and, at another, the release of the messages. The justifications were the dissemination of false news about the candidate and the preservation of the right to freedom of expression, respectively. The Superior Electoral Court (TSE) formed a majority of votes to keep the posts offline. Punishment The public defender of Ceará, Igor Barreto, explains the foreseen punishment for those who commit the crime of religious intolerance. “The most important thing is to highlight the fact that these crimes are all not subject to bail, to pardon, they are imprescriptible crimes, they can be prosecuted at any time.” In Brazil, the penalty for the crime of religious intolerance (practice, induction, incitation) ranges from one to five years of imprisonment and a fine. * With the collaboration of Márcia Vieira, from Rádio Universitária FM de Fortaleza
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