Lancellotti’s present focus is on lobbying city hall to carry out a more responsible census. Now back in the lower house and waiting to be revised, the bill is a reminder of the day Lancellotti took a sledgehammer to the stones that had been placed in a São Paulo underpass. Approved by the senate on 31 March last year, the “Júlio Lancellotti bill” aims to ban the practice of putting stones and iron spikes in underpasses – a measure adopted by mayors to prevent homeless people sleeping there. They have been tortured and criminalised unfairly,” says Lancellotti, who helped secure the release of some of the demonstrators from jail in 2013. He does not hesitate to take a stand for controversial groups such as those involved in black bloc tactics at demonstrations. In August, São Paulo state deputy Janaína Paschoal praised the military police after they blocked the homeless commission’s access to an inner-city area nicknamed Cracolândia – “ Crackland”.Īdvocating for homeless people is the focus of Lancellotti’s activism, but not its only cause. Lancelotti says the Covid pandemic has worsened the living conditions of São Paulo’s homeless, while the ultra-conservatism of the Bolsonaro era has fuelled what the priest describes as “aporophobia” – a fear and rejection of the poor. He describes being pepper-sprayed, spat at, and punched in the stomach by São Paulo’s municipal guard while helping homeless people in 2018. Since 1996, Lancelotti has coordinated the pastoral commission of homeless people in São Paulo, which helps about 35,000 people in the district. Families from all over Brazil have been able to find relatives who were believed to have disappeared Fr Júlio Lancellotti He resumed his theological studies and, in 1985, became a priest. It was during these years that Lancellotti met progressive priests who were actively engaged with the children’s rights cause, and in doing so rediscovered a sense that social justice was possible within the Roman Catholic church. I felt I was being tested all the time by those who were aligned with the government,” he says. “I refused to accept the torture I witnessed against young people.
He graduated from a course in education in 1978, started working with juvenile offenders and soon became a thorn in the side of the authorities. They kicked me out.”Īfter this episode, Lancellotti spent years away from the priesthood. “I was beaten with a bamboo stick, I was forced to kneel on corn grains … one day, a priest said I asked too much in class, that I was very critical. His days were marked by censure and abusive punishments. He says the seminary where he first studied, in the city of Araraquara, was “very conservative”.
As a novice in the late 1960s, he was expelled from the seminary for “bad behaviour”, as he describes it. Photograph: Ian Cheibub/The Guardianīut Lancelloti’s run-in with the authorities began long before Bolsonaro took office. He was even sued by Bolsonaro for moral damages because of his March 2017 mass (a judge dismissed the claim).įr Julio Lancellotti pushes a shopping trolley while distributing food in the Mooca area of Sao Paulo in October.
The sermon, in which he also preached against rape culture and sexism, was typical of the man who has devoted his life to fighting injustice, often finding himself targeted by conservative politicians as a result.Īn openly leftwing priest who embraces revolutionary ideas – the 72-year-old has demonstrated arm-in-arm with anti-establishment “black bloc” protesters and believes hotels should provide free rooms for homeless people – Lancellotti seemingly represents the antithesis of everything Brazil’s president stands for. “I am astonished that a homophobic person like Bolsonaro appears on the presidential ballot,” said the priest during mass on 7 March of that year at St Michael the Archangel parish in São Paulo’s East Zone.
But for Júlio Lancellotti, there was already cause for concern in the reactionary rhetoric of the man who would be elected president two years later under the slogan: “Brazil above everything, God above everyone.” I n 2017, most Brazilians were still unfamiliar with the name Jair Bolsonaro.