SAINT PAUL.- Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians prepared for this Holy Week with the help of Frei Gilson, a 39-year-old Catholic friar who has become a phenomenon that attracts digital and earthly crowds. During the 40 days of Lent, faithful from all over Brazil got up in the middle of the night to enter, via cell phone or television, their social networks and pray the rosary starting at four in the morning. The first day of digital Lent, It gathered a million and a half followers.
The friar has been part of the daily life of Roseli Gomes, a 40-year-old merchant, for years. On the phone from his home in a city in Pernambuco, he admits that to overcome sleep and fatigue when it is still dark night, he connects the broadcast to the television screen. “It is a sacrifice, but when you listen to Frei Gilson you feel inner peace, you feel welcomed,” he maintains.
Frei Gilson personifies an incipient movement within Catholicism, faithful who return to the faith with renewed impetus. a breath of air for a Church stalked in recent decades by the strength of evangelicalswhich in Latin America add converts and political power. For this reason, this affable, charismatic priest, who plays soccer—an important fact in Brazil—has the blessing of the Catholic hierarchy, although he marked the field after a controversial sexist sermon and flirtations with Bolsonaroism.
Friar of the Carmelite Messengers of the Holy Spirit—a young order—he wears a brown habit with a large cross on his chest, sandals and a shaved head. He left the parish he led in San Pablo years ago to devote himself to the Internet, where he built a giant audience. He never had a strategy to attract followers or large investments, he explained; success, according to him, is a matter of divine power.
The fact is that he accumulates some 28 million followers on social networks, including Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, WhatsApp and The Brazilian was able to greet the Pope on a recent visit to the Vatican.
“Praying the rosary at four in the morning is not a great novelty, the religious orders always wake up early,” says Tabata Tesser, sociologist and researcher on Catholicism at the Institute for Studies of Religion (ISER). “What is different about Frei Gilson is that he took the idea of sacrifice to social networks and it became a phenomenon. He combines a strong Marian devotion with spiritual discipline and clear, didactic and direct language.” Last year he was the content creator (streamer) most watched and listened to in Brazil (followed by a war video game commentator and an evangelical pastor).
Gilson da Silva Pupo Azevedo was born in São Paulo in 1986. He himself confessed that he was a rebellious teenager, traumatized by the separation of his parents. Raised in a family with little practice, his mother’s conversion, discovering the guitar and living in the Paraisópolis favela, in São Paulo, changed the course of his life. When the priestly vocation appeared, he went to look for the girl he had liked since he was 11 years old: “I didn’t want to be a priest without trying to fall in love,” he said in a podcast.
After taking the habits of a friar, he studied to become a priest.. He built a career in the wake of the first Brazilian singing priests who, starting in the nineties, began to fill stadiums.
The Carmelite friar is conservative; contrary, for example, to couples living together without getting married. A sermon from 2025, in which he advocated the submission of women, sparked a formidable controversy. “The man was given leadership, but the woman desires power. (…) The war of the sexes is pure ideology, it is diabolical. To cure man’s loneliness, God created you (the woman). You were born to help man,” he proclaimed. That parliament also catapulted him to fame beyond the Catholic universe. Former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro and the most prominent of his pupils, deputy Nikolas Ferreira, an evangelical, ran to show solidarity with him.
Six months later, the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB) convened what it called the Meeting of Priests in Digital Mission. Aim? “Inspire a more authentic, creative and evangelizing digital presence, in tune with the challenges of the contemporary world.” The Catholic hierarchy wanted to bring order to the wide range of Brazilian influential priests and avoid being dragged into the mud of political polarization.
In the case of Frei Gilson, It involved deleting about 30 or 40 videos with statements considered too risquéexplains the specialist from the Institute of Religion Studies. “The episcopal conference accepts that a priest is very conservative, what it does not want is to associate itself with any candidate, it seeks a certain neutrality,” he adds. There ended the friar’s public controversies.
But Frei Gilson also speaks through his silences, warns the sociologist. “Avoid speaking out on social issues relevant to the Church in Brazil, such as the environment, housing or the recent rape and femicide of an 82-year-old nun in a convent.” The friar, who does not use money or have a bank account due to the vow of poverty, has just purchased land in San Pablo with four million dollars received as donations to build a Catholic mega-temple, as revealed Folha de S.Paulo.
One of the priests most beloved by the Brazilian left, Father Julio Lancellotti, 77 years old, a great defender of the homeless (some 100,000 wander around São Paulo) and transsexual people, visited the friar a few months ago—“my dear brother”—in a gesture of harmony. They made a selfie. The veteran Lancellotti knows the controversy well. The last one put a vow of silence on him imposed by the archdiocese that left him without social networks or live broadcast of masses.
Without a doubt, the fact that Brazil is one of the countries with the most Catholics in the world (and its Internet users browse for many hours a day) contributes to the success of the Carmelite friar. Although Catholics are decreasing, they still number about 100 million compared to about 47 million evangelicals, who are increasing, but at a slower rate than expected. From here came bold proposals that the Vatican embraced—permission for gays and transsexuals to be baptized—or rejected, like allowing married priests in places like the Amazon.
Tesser, who investigates the changes in Brazilian Catholicism, senses that the secret of the Carmelite is in the simplicity of the message: “Our hypothesis is that Frei Gilson becomes a mass phenomenon because he dialogues with a basic catechesis, preaches about Jesus, about original sin… he does not enter into complex theological debates”. In this he is in tune with the new pontiff, who promotes the catechesis of adults.
Brazil, a conservative country that fervently follows all types of beliefs, is fertile ground: “This primary catechesis allows Frei Gilson to dialogue with non-practicing Catholics, with spiritists, who in Brazil number 1.5 million (who communicate with spirits through mediums), with evangelicals raised in Catholicism…”.
Gomes, the merchant from Pernambuco, married, mother of two children aged 13 and 11, says that the boys “only fall asleep with Frei Gilson’s prayers.” The priest’s teachings brought profound changes to his life: “Thanks to him, I got closer to God, I began to frequent the Church more. I left habits that were not good for me.”
It is a digital and earthly faithful. A couple of weeks ago, the woman from Pernambuco attended the vigil in which Frei Gilson filled a stadium in Recife with 45,000 people for an entire night of prayer and Christian music. You already have tickets for the solidarity football match that the Carmelite organized in July. And in August there will be another Lent, that of Saint Michael, also at four in the morning.
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