Brazil’s Patroness, Nossa Senhora do Aparecida (Our Lady of Aparecida), has become a talking point in the nation’s 2026 presidential campaign in recent days after a fake news campaign claimed that conservative Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, an Evangelical Christian, planned to formally eliminate the Catholic patron saint title.
For nearly 100 years, Our Lady of Aparecida, a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary, has been the patron saint of Brazil since the late Pope St. Pius X officially declared it so in 1930. Her history spans over 300 years of faith and veneration in Brazil — an overwhelmingly Christian country where over 56 percent of its over 213 million people identify as Catholic and nearly 27 percent identify as Evangelicals.
In recent days, a campaign reportedly deployed across social and mainstream media accused Senator Bolsonaro — an Evangelical Christian — of allegedly seeking to strip Our Lady of Aparecida of Her title as patron saint of Brazil should he be elected president. According to CNN Brasil, the now-debunked campaign also utilized remarks made by Bolsonaro during an August event in which he promised his followers that he would decree that Brazil “belongs to our Lord Jesus Christ” should he win the October election.
Bolsonaro first rejected the claims — which were proven to be false — in a video published last week on social media. Bolsonaro accused the “mafia” of the ruling far-left Workers’ Party (PT) led by incumbent socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of being behind the claims.
The conservative candidate stressed that he respects all religions “and also those who have no religion, unlike Lula, who wants to meddle even in the rules of the Catholic Church,” referring to recent remarks issued by the Brazilian president who claimed to Catholic leaders last week that the Church is growing more slowly than the Evangelical Church in Brazil because it “has not abolished celibacy.”
“There’s no such plan. So here we go, right to the end, the PT only knows how to do one thing: lie. It came to power through lies, but we’re going to oust it with the truth,” Bolsonaro said.
In a separate post, the conservative senator publicly accused Globonews of allegedly acting as the “central hub” that spread misinformation against him and Our Lady of Aparecida. Hours later, Sen. Bolsonaro published a snippet from a Globonews broadcast containing its official retraction on the matter. The outlet’s anchor clarified that, in reality, a project of that nature was presented before the Brazilian Congress in 2007 and subsequently archived. Bolsonaro warned his followers to stay alert because the “PT mafia will spread several lies throughout all the days until the elections.”
The conservative senator addressed the controversy during a visit to a local Catholic podcast titled SantoFlow. On the podcast, Bolsonaro compared the false campaign against him to the assassination attempt that his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, suffered during his presidential campaign in 2018. He explained that he found out about the campaign while he was playing soccer in the state of Minas Gerais — the same state where his father was stabbed eight years ago.
“I am convinced that they tried to kill my father because they saw that he was already the President of Brazil in 2018. That’s why they went after him to try to eliminate him. It was that stabbing, back in Juiz de Fora,” Bolsonaro reportedly said in the podcast. “Just to give you an idea, once again. I think I can consider this fake news about me a kind of stab against me.”
“I said, ‘What’s going on, man? Check out this nonsense, it doesn’t make any sense.’ How is that even possible? How did this spread so fast?” he wondered.
The conservative senator affirmed during the podcast that he is a recurring victim of “fake news,” but affirmed that he draws his strength from his faith in God to continue on with his campaign.
The controversy against Bolsonaro involving Our Lady of Aparecida has also become the center of a series of back and forth rulings in the Brazilian Supreme Court — an institution still reeling from a recent “civil war” between its top justices, some of whom are current members of the top electoral authority, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE). The judiciary became involved after Bolsonaro’s campaign formally filed a complaint over the false claims, arguing that it reportedly amounts to “hate speech and a criminal accusation.”
According to the state-owned news agency Agência Brasil, Supreme Court Justice André Mendoça ordered the immediate removal from the internet of all content associated with the false claim that Bolsonaro sought to remove Our Lady of Aparecida as patron saint of Brazil. On Sunday, Supreme Court Justice Flávio Dino — who previously served as President Lula’s justice minister — suspended the Mendoça ruling citing a request presented by Brazilian comedian Antonio Tabet who alleged that the removal infringed his free speech rights.
On Tuesday, Supreme Court Justice Luiz Fux overturned Dino’s decision in response to a new request from the Bolsonaro campaign. Fux instead brought the situation forward to the Supreme Court’s full bench, who are reportedly expected to begin voting on the matter throughout Wednesday.
Brazil, while overwhelmingly Christian, has experienced a decline in its Catholic population over the past decade. Conversely, the Evangelical population in the country has experienced a slight growth. This situation prompted widespread complaints by Brazilians that the rise of Evangelical Protestantism was responsible for the lackluster performance of the Brazilian national soccer team in the recent 2026 FIFA World Cup tournament.
Brazilians have reportedly affirmed across social media that their nation’s once world-class team played much better when they were “behaving like Catholics.” Although Brazil is the current top World Cup winner with five trophies, it has suffered a streak of disastrous performances over the past 20 years, having last won a FIFA World Cup in 2002.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.