The Anglican Church takes a stand against the military coup and the pension reform.

247 - The Anglican Catholic Church has positioned itself, through a manifesto, against the commemorations of the 1964 military coup and the pension reform proposed by the Jair Bolsonaro government. In the text, the religious leaders emphasize that "when President Jair Bolsonaro imposes on Brazil the remembrance of the business-military coup of April 1, 1964, which generated so much unease, loss of freedom, and violation of human rights in all forms, he sets the government against the people, against Brazil, and against the Federal Constitution that he swore to obey and that the Brazilian people..."

"Furthermore, we recognize that the brutality of the idea of ​​commemorating the oppressive mockery of 1964 to 1985, with the dictatorship that imprisoned, tortured, disappeared, exiled, and killed our brothers, is the same as the backbone of the much-touted pension reform, whose barbarity we also denounce," the manifesto emphasizes.

Read the full manifesto.

We, the pastoral and administrative leadership of the Anglican Catholic Church, faithful to our canons that define our mission as preferential for the poor, come to the people and our Brazilian Nation, threatened by the injustice caused by oppression that chooses the memory of death, the loss of freedom, the torture and murder of children, adolescents, young people, women and men, to call upon our people to strengthen their hearts and rise up in liberation from orphanhood, from the trampling of the boots of the new pharaohs and the reproduced Caesars, who have always spewed hatred and cunning to crucify the righteous.

From every corner of Brazil, rising from our communities of workers in fishing, on the waters, in the jungles, forests, in factories, in schools as teachers, staff and students, from the quilombola communities, from black men and women, voices cry out for justice and freedom.

Suffocated by the coup in favor of the inhumane oppressors in the service of rentier capital, robbed from workers, widows, orphans, and the poor, whose calamity strikes them deeply and inhumanely, all to privilege selfishness in the form of wealth concentration and the power of death, these voices still groan in silence and call for national unity in favor of the people's march, as in the exodus, to overthrow the wicked pharaohs.

We, the Primate Archbishop, bishops, deacons, priests, lay men and women of the Anglican Catholic Church, in perpetual prayer and celebration of the Eucharistic life of the body and blood of Christ, victim of the Roman Empire and of religion colluding with the powerful, understand that when President Jair Bolsonaro imposes on Brazil the remembrance of the business-military coup of April 1, 1964, which generated so much unease, loss of freedom, and violation of human rights in all forms, he opposes the government to the people, to Brazil, and to the Federal Constitution that he swore to obey, and that the Brazilian people, from its working class to those most affected by the coup d'état that brought to power those who mock economic and social justice, must rise up strengthened by their faith in the liberating God, who hears the cries of the poor (Ex 3:7-10).

We understand that the Brazilian government has divorced itself from Brazil, opposes the Brazilian people and the Nation, and degrades the legal, constitutional, and political order. Therefore, in our prayers, celebrations, and social doctrine, we do not accept that our people be degraded and the workers made miserable and orphaned.

Furthermore, we recognize that the brutality of the idea of ​​commemorating the oppressive mockery of 1964 to 1985, with the dictatorship that imprisoned, tortured, disappeared, exiled, and killed our brothers and sisters, is the same as the backbone of the much-touted pension reform, whose barbarity we also denounce.

The principle guiding the imposition that the market and the government make on the uncommitted National Congress, with its back turned to the sense of justice, is the same principle that guided the 1964 business-military coup, which plunged Brazil into misery, hunger, and submission to the appetites of the United States, the modern pharaoh.

The ideology of national security (Father Joseph Comblin, The Ideology of National Security, Civilização Brasileira, 1978), which imprisoned, tortured, murdered, killed, and exiled people in the service of domination and concentrated profit in a few hands, generating unemployment, poverty, misery, and orphanhood, is the same central idea that imposes the pension reform, enabling the capitalization of retirement benefits and the most inhumane precarization of the lives of the elderly, already wronged by the labor reform.

Therefore, we call upon Brazilian workers from all sectors of economic production, as well as the entire population, to strengthen their hearts by uniting broadly to stop all forms of terror and oppression.

We believe that the preferential option for the poor implies that the poor themselves choose and rise up to govern the Nation.

++Dom Orvandil Moreira Barbosa, Primate Archbishop and President of the Chamber of Bishops;

Dom Franciney Pantoja, President of the Primatial Administrative Executive Council;

Waldirene da Cruz Gonçalves, Primary Secretary for Social Action and Women.