It's Sunday

Narco pentecostals.  Perfect.

When Rio’s drug conflict exploded in the 1980s, Brazil’s evangelical revolution was still gathering pace and many gangsters looked to Afro-Brazilian deities such as Ogum, the God of war, for protection. Drug bosses frequented Afro-Brazilian temples, built shrines to Orixás and wore necklaces to show their devotion to the Umbanda and Candomblé faiths.

Four decades later, many of those sanctuaries have been replaced with sculptures of Bibles and murals of the Last Supper, as a new generation of born-again criminals takes power, influenced by a brotherhood of pentecostal preachers.

The sway those pastors hold over Rio’s so-called “narco-pentecostals” is unmissable in the hundreds of favelas controlled by gunmen from its three main gangs: the Red Command (CV), the Friends of the Friends (ADA) and, perhaps the most evangelical of all, the Pure Third Command (TCP).

Drug lords, some regular churchgoers, have incorporated Christian symbols into their ultra-violent trade.

[...]

Nowhere is the evangelisation of Rio’s underworld more visible than the Complexo de Israel, a cluster of five favelas near the international airport governed by Peixão (“Big Fish”), a preacher turned drug peddler who takes his nickname from the ichthys “Jesus” fish. (The drug lord’s second-in-command is named after the Judaean prophet Jeremiah, while their troops are known as the Army of the Living God).

[...]

Police call Peixão, who is wanted for dozens of crimes including torture, murder and concealment of death, one of Rio’s most ambitious and iron-handed villains, whose fast-growing criminal empire makes a mockery of his purported Christian faith.

  Guardian

Oh, I don't know. Maybe we should talk about the Vatican.

Police call Peixão, who is wanted for dozens of crimes including torture, murder and concealment of death, one of Rio’s most ambitious and iron-handed villains, whose fast-growing criminal empire makes a mockery of his purported Christian faith.

There you go.

Rio’s narco-pentecostals admit their often brutal line of work clashes with the scripture they profess to follow. As one top trafficker in another gang-run part of town lounged on top of a Honda motorbike surrounded by bodyguards with automatic rifles, he acknowledged the drug trade was an “evil” business that sometimes entailed horrific violence.

But the gangster claimed his faith inspired him to minimise the barbarity, by trying to persuade fellow criminals to spare those who crossed them. “Those I can save, I save,” he said, remembering how he once persuaded a colleague not to murder a trafficker who stole a weapon and defected to a rival group.

Instead, the traitor was forced to clasp his hands together, as if in prayer, and shot at close range, shattering his metacarpal bones but preserving his life.

Christian tradition dating back as far as Christopher Columbus and beyond.

In another favela, a footsoldier with a Bible tattooed on to his chest spoke of how he enjoyed attending services at the God is Love pentecostal church, a fundamentalist congregation with temples across the US and Europe. “It makes me feel lighter,” he said, before racing away on his motorbike with an AR-15 slung over his shoulder.

Isn't that why most people go to church?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.