SÃO PAULO – A live social media broadcast early in the morning promoted by a Charismatic Catholic Renewal priest sparked political controversy in Brazil over the past few days, with the left-wing accusing him of having political interests and the right-wing – including former President Jair Bolsonaro – supporting him.

Known as Frei (Friar) Gilson, 38-year-old Father Gilson da Silva Pupo Azevedo has been gaining notoriety in the South American country over the last few years, especially due to his work as a singer – he leads a ministry of music called Som do Monte (Sound of the Mount) – and to his social media presence.

For Lent, he is leading the Rosary at 4 AM in the morning, and over 1.2 million people are watching it online.

Ordained in 2013, Gilson is a member of the Brazilian community Carmelitas Mensageiros do Espírito Santo (Carmelite Brothers, the Messengers of the Holy Spirit), founded in 2003 and inspired by the Carmelite order.

He was a vicar in a parish in the Diocese of Santo Amaro, in São Paulo, for a few years, and since then has been more and more involved with music and media platforms. Only on YouTube, Gilson has 6.67 million subscribers. On Instagram, he has 7.9 million followers. He is also the host of shows aired by TV stations Canção Nova and Rede Vida. On Spotify, he has 1.3 million monthly listeners, with a number of hit songs.

The idea of promoting a live broadcast at 4 AM is not new. Gilson once said in an interview that he has always faced difficulties going to sleep early in his community, so that was a way he found to use the night time in more productively.

According to Bishop Devair Araújo da Fonseca of Piracicaba, São Paulo State – who has kept regular contact with Gilson over the years – the priest decided to intensify the dawn live broadcasts during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he was totally alone in his room.

“Last year, some of his live broadcasts almost reached 1 million viewers. We knew he was going to grow even more and attain people from other social segments,” da Fonseca told Crux. At that point, he was not talking only to Charismatic Catholics anymore – Catholics of other sectors and even non-Catholics began to follow him.

The bishop suggested that Gilson should concede to giving interviews to secular podcasters, and he indeed gave a large interview to a major podcaster in Brazil, Rogério Vilela. Later, he invited Vilela to take part in one of his live broadcasts, and that was one of the factors that boosted the numbers of his social media profiles.

This year, since he launched the rosary of Lent last week, his numbers have only increased. There have been live broadcasts with peaks of 1.2 million simultaneous viewers. The phenomenon sounded the alarm for the left-wing, already worried about next year’s presidential elections.

Without significant government programs that could boost his approval rate, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is now disapproved by 53 percent of the Brazilian voters. Former President Jair Bolsonaro is forbidden to run for any office until 2030. In 2023, the highest electoral court decided he was guilty of abuse of political power for convening a meeting with foreign ambassadors to falsely claim the Brazilian voting machines are not safe.

Despite that, Bolsonaro keeps saying he will be a presidential candidate next year. A recent poll showed that he would beat Lula with 46 percent of the votes, while the incumbent would receive 43 percent of support.

If Bolsonaro doesn’t manage to overrule the electoral court’s decision in time, he has at least three very strong names to replace him: His son, Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, his wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, and his former minister of infrastructure, São Paulo’s Governor Tarcisio de Freitas.

Bolsonaro and his allies keep enjoying a strong support among Evangelicals and conservative Catholics. Gilson’s growing on-line live showings have been seen by some progressives as a politically motivated phenomenon and as preparation for the upcoming elections.

Maybe that’s why left-wing digital influencers like Helder Maldonado and Vinicios Betiol decided to criticize Gilson’s dawn rosary last week. Maldonado, who has 129,000 followers, posted on his X account that the priest is connected to the video producing company Brasil Paralelo, notorious for its support to Bolsonaro and its documentaries that contradict leftist ideas.

Betiol, with almost 180,000 followers, posted an undated video in which Gilson is seen preaching to a group of women.

“To the man, it was given leadership, but the woman has the desire for power. It’s not the desire for service, but the desire for power. I repeat the word ‘empowerment.’ That’s a word of today’s world,” Gilson said.

He then mentioned Genesis 2:18 and said that God promised to Adam that he would give him somebody to be his helper. “Here we begin to understand the mission of a woman. She was born to help the man,” he added.

“This speech was given by Friar Gilson, a Catholic leader promoted by Brasil Paralelo, a pro-Bolsonaro production company whose job is to take over all the churches and make them stop worshiping Christ and start worshiping the golden calf. This guy managed to get more than 1 million people to watch a live broadcast, most of whom are in good faith and do not know the real purpose behind him and Brasil Paralelo,” Betiol said.

He also posted a video allegedly recorded in 2022, in which Gilson and a fellow friar are seen consecrating Brazil to Our Lady. At one point of the prayer, he said: “And do not allow, Lady and Queen of Nazareth, that the errors of Russia come to ravage Brazil, as Our Lady affirmed in Fatima.” Gilson’s colleague then asks: “Deliver us, Mother of God and our Mother, from the scourge of communism.”

Since the rise of Bolsonarism, the far-right has been accusing all the Brazilian left of being communist, including President Lula’s Workers’ Party (known as PT). Despite the presence of communist groups in PT, it’s widely accepted by scholars and analysts in Brazil that it’s not a communist party and that the administrations led by it were not communist.

Many left-wingers and Progressives followed Betiol and Maldonado’s steps and posted criticism of Gilson. Social media users accused him of failing to pray for Pope Francis’s health and of being part of Catholic groups that want the pontiff to die.

The only bishop who mentioned Gilson was Bishop Vicente Ferreira of the Diocese of Livramento de Nossa Senhora in Bahia State.

Without directly mentioning Gilson, Ferreira on X on Mar. 9 said that “the far-right has stepped up its attacks, with abusive speeches, without limits or biblical and theological seriousness.”

A similar analysis was carried out by the members of the Bishops’ Conference’s Justice and Peace Commission.

“In the United States, an alliance of right-wing Catholics was fundamental to elect [President Donald] Trump last year. This Brazilian group is following the same successful recipe now,” Daniel Seidel, General Secretary of the Bishops Conference’s Justice and Peace Commission, told Crux.

Seidel said his group knew that a change would be carried out by the Bolsonarist part of the clergy this year in order to prepare for the elections.

“We didn’t know when it would happen and who would be their new public face, but now it’s all clear,” Seidel added.

Shortly after the attacks on Gilson, many Bolsonarists wrote or recorded messages to manifest solidarity to him, including Bolsonaro himself, who said, “Friar Gilson is increasingly presenting himself as a phenomenon in prayer, bringing together millions through the word of the Creator” – and that would be the reason for the “increasing attacks by the Left.”

“The Christian faith has never bowed to persecution, and it will be no different now. My solidarity with him and all who defend the values ​​of God and family,” Bolsonaro added.

Those posts confirmed for the left-wing that Gilson has personal relations with Bolsonarist leaders.

“But that is not true. Those messages of solidarity from politicians hadn’t been asked by him. They were spontaneous. Gilson has never had any kind of political intention with his work,” Bishop Devair da Fonseca said.

Da Fonseca emphasized that at the beginning of the rosary prayer Gilson did include Pope Francis’s health as one of the intentions. He also said that the video against feminist empowerment posted by Betiol was taken out of context.

“That was a group of Canção Nova women [another Charismatic Catholic Renewal group in Brazil]. That’s the kind of thing one will hear in a meeting like that, because that’s what’s in the Bible. If a woman wants to be feminist, there’s no problem, but in the Church she will hear a different message,” he argued.

Da Fonseca said the prayer against communism is a traditional part of the prayer of consecration of the country to the Virgin, something that existed long before Bolsonarism.

“All that Gilson does and says is based on the Scripture. I’ve never seen him saying anything that a Catholic priest should not say,” he said.

The bishop said that having 1.2 million people praying the rosary at the same time is something unprecedented in Brazil. He said it has been possible to feel some of the consequences of that movement in his diocese.

“We have been receiving many people interested in regularizing informal unions. The number of baptisms of adults has been growing, as well as the number of people looking for a confession. Many of them mention the work of Gilson,” he said.

Da Fonseca attributed the controversy to the current atmosphere of political polarization in Brazil. He thinks, however, that the left-wing committed a mistake that may have a high cost in the future.

“The rosary has always been a prayer of unity. Unfortunately, the right-wing and the left-wing have been incapable of doing so. But the left-wing was the one to politicize it. The result was the opposite: more and more people will now join the rosary,” he said.