Brazil’s African origin faiths under attack as Evangelicals carry out ‘holy war’

In 2024, Brazil recorded an almost 70 percent year-on-year increase in cases of discrimination and attacks on religious practices, according to the ministry of human rights. The main victims are religions of African origin, such as Umbanda and Candomblé. Their followers are threatened and their religious temples destroyed and ransacked. This intolerance is fuelled by branches of evangelical Christianity: Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal churches, whose numbers have soared in Brazil in recent years. FRANCE 24’s Louise Raulais and Jan Onoszko report.