Justice Flávio Dino of Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) on Wednesday (30) ordered the Federal Police to investigate and asked the Attorney General's Office (PGR) to assess whether to open proceedings into attacks on religious images and places of worship reported between March and September, according to CNN Brasil. The episodes cited took place in eight cities across seven states, according to G1. The order was signed on the same day the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) began weighing a dispute over false social media posts about Nossa Senhora Aparecida, Brazil's patron saint, and four days before the first round of the presidential election.

In the ruling, Dino said that after his Sunday (27) decision suspending a TSE takedown order at the STF, his office received reports from across the country. "After my decision issued last Sunday... there reached my office, through several channels, reports from various parts of Brazil showing an apparent wave of attacks in recent months against religious images," he wrote. According to Poder360, the justice cited evidence of crimes including contempt of religion, religious prejudice, violence against religious practices, religiously motivated insult, threat, theft, property damage, arson and home invasion. Federal Police involvement was justified by the interstate reach of the cases, the need for uniform enforcement and the apparent nature of crimes against human rights. No one has been named as a suspect and all episodes remain under investigation.

The cases cited

According to G1, the ruling cites episodes recorded in Salvador and Santo Amaro, both in Bahia state; Londrina, in Paraná; Rio Grande, in Rio Grande do Sul; the Jatiúca neighborhood of Maceió, in Alagoas; the Belo Horizonte metropolitan area, in Minas Gerais; Cuiabá, in Mato Grosso; and Novo Progresso, in Pará. Among the incidents listed by the justice are:

• vandalism at a parish in Salvador, with a religious image destroyed;
• images of saints destroyed at a store in Londrina;
• sacred images destroyed inside São Pedro Cathedral in Rio Grande;
• an image of Our Lady vandalized in Jatiúca;
• an umbanda temple vandalized in greater Belo Horizonte;
• a man who smashed an image of Nossa Senhora Aparecida with an axe inside a chapel in Mato Grosso;
• a complaint by an umbanda priestess against a pastor, whom she accuses of destroying an Exu altar at a temple in Bahia;
• an image of Nossa Senhora Aparecida burned and destroyed on the banks of highway BR-163, in Novo Progresso.

Timeline of the dispute

The ruling is the latest chapter in a standoff that mixes the election, social media and faith. In recent weeks, posts circulated associating presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro of the PL party and sectors of the right with a supposed push to strip Nossa Senhora Aparecida of her title as Brazil's patron saint. The candidate denied that any such proposal exists and accused the CNBB, the body that gathers Brazil's Catholic bishops, of involvement in disinformation episodes.

On Sunday (27), Dino suspended at the STF the decision by electoral court justice André Mendonça ordering social networks to take the posts down. According to G1, after an appeal, Justice Luiz Fux suspended Dino's determination. On Wednesday the TSE began judging whether to keep the takedown. Mendonça voted to uphold his own order and rejected the criticism, calling it "irresponsible" to attribute any curbing of religious freedom to his rulings, since the order covers only a "concretely false" statement about a candidate.

"It causes special perplexity the insinuation that the decisions issued in these proceedings would have sought to prevent Catholic faithful from expressing support or devotion to Nossa Senhora Aparecida. Nothing, absolutely nothing, in the decisions supports such a conclusion," Mendonça said, according to CNN Brasil.

The next steps rest with the Federal Police and the PGR: copies of the ruling were sent to the police force's director general and to the prosecutor general, with no deadline set. The TSE judgment over the posts, which began on Wednesday (30), is still underway, and the first round of the presidential election is scheduled for Sunday (4).