Auxiliary Bishop Vicente de Paula Ferreira of the Archdiocese of Belo Horizonte was threatened by an armed man after a Mass on November 12 in the suburban city of Moeda, in a sign of the political violence facing members of the clergy in Brazil.
Since former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva beat incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in a run-off vote on October 30, similar incidents have taken place in different parts of the country.
Ferreira, an outspoken critic of the rightwing Bolsonaro, left the church after Mass and was approached by a stranger who reportedly was not part of the parish. The Brazilian press reported that the perpetrator is allegedly a Bolsonaro supporter.
Archbishop Walmor Oliveira de Azevedo, who is also the President of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB), released a statement in which he said that Ferreira was a “victim of intolerance, of the lack of a minimal sense of conviviality, of cowardly disrespect.”