Mercadante defends summoning Heleno for spying on the Church.

247 - Former minister Aloizio Mercadante defended this Sunday the immediate summoning of General Augusto Heleno, Minister of the Institutional Security Cabinet (GSI), to the Joint Committee for the Control of Intelligence Activities of the National Congress, and an action by the opposition before the Supreme Federal Court (STF) to declare unconstitutional the provisional measure that instituted the monitoring of NGOs in the country. According to Mercadante, the general needs to provide explanations about the government's espionage allegations against the activities of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB) and the Synod of the Amazon, which the Catholic Church worldwide will hold in October in Rome, with the participation of other churches and faiths and indigenous peoples from the entire region.

The revelation that the Bolsonaro government is spying on the activities of the Catholic Church, which it considers a potential opponent of the new regime, exploded like a bomb this Sunday (read hereAccording to the governor of Maranhão, Flávio Dino, "we are facing one of the biggest scandals of this beginning of the year. The return of the 'national security doctrine' of the dictatorship is unacceptable" (read here).

Here is the full text of the statement released by Mercadante:

"The Joint Committee for the Control of Intelligence Activities of the National Congress needs to be established immediately and summon the Minister of the Institutional Security Office (GSI), General Heleno, to provide clarifications regarding the espionage related to the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil and other events of the Catholic Church. And the opposition needs to request a hearing with the Supreme Federal Court (STF) for the prompt judgment of the direct action of unconstitutionality of Provisional Measure 870/2019, which provides for the monitoring of international and national non-governmental organizations."