The Rev. Júlio Lancellotti is São Paulo’s designated vicar for street people. He has been posting images of spikes and other elements of hostile architecture gathered from cell phone photos or video from all over Brazil.

Criminals “are not dangerous people. They are only people who are not sufficiently loved.”

In a region of vast distances, weak infrastructure and a relatively small number of priests, religious and laywomen like Sister Laura are the mainstay of Catholic spirituality.

Besides taking up the challenge of exploring new frontiers of evangelization in Africa, Asia and Latin America, Brazilian women religious have also become evangelizers of the “old continent,” Europe, where female vocations have radically declined in recent decades.

The invasion of public land by big landowners and illegal miners at the expense of Indigenous groups and small growers has led to record numbers of violent conflicts in Brazil’s rural and forest areas.

“In every large city in Brazil, you can now see a greater number of kids begging for money or selling candy on the streets than before the pandemic.”