Displaying items by tag: growing churches

Pastor Marcio Antonio stands at the pulpit in a one-room evangelical church built precariously above barbed wire fences and illegally hung electrical cables, exhorting his flock in a Brazilian favela to improve their morals. A former drug dealer in Cantagalo, an informally built hillside settlement where most residents lack official property rights, Pastor Antonio and his flock at the Assembly of God Church are part of a growing trend. Evangelical churches are expanding rapidly in Brazil, home to the world's largest Catholic community, especially in poor favelas. These communities, which developed from squatter settlements, often do not have the same services as formal Brazilian neighbourhoods in terms of healthcare, sanitation, transportation or formal property registration. ‘The government doesn't help us so God is the only option for the poor’, Pastor Antonio, 37, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation following his Sunday sermon.