Jair Bolsonaro, president of Brazil, in Brasilia on June 29. EVARISTO SA / AFP
In the Brazilian Senate Commission (CPI) that investigates the possible crimes committed by President Jair Bolsonaro as a result of the pandemic, the Bible was cited several times.
It is especially the defenders of Jair Bolsonaro who use it as a defense weapon.
Bolsonaro, when he was a deputy, defended in Congress that the State is secular, but that "Brazil is Christian" and added: "And those who do not like to leave."
When he was elected president, he held up the Bible along with the Constitution in his hands.
In his motto as head of state, he chose the biblical phrase: "The truth will set you free" and added: "God above all."
This passion for the Bible of Bolsonarism, in addition to being morbid, is dangerous because it is close to the theocentrism of some Islamic countries involved with terrorism.
And nothing is more dangerous than using the Bible as an instrument of violence.
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The Bolsonaro Government already had a Minister of Education who wanted to replace teaching books with the Bible in schools.
What the Bolsonarists ignore is that it is precisely the Bible and, above all, the New Testament who condemn the lie, which is one of the elements most used by Bolsonarism.
The genocidal captain has us already accustomed to using children for his teachings in favor of violence and weapons.
During his electoral campaign a photo went viral and scandalized.
It was when, surrounded by followers, he took a five-year-old girl in his arms and taught her to make the gesture of firing a revolver with his innocent hands.
That passion and symbolism of using children in gestures related to violence is strange. This is how his moral violence carried out days ago in his visit to Río Grande do Norte, with a girl and a 10-year-old boy, has been days ago. He asked her, who was going to recite a poem, to remove her mask. The child, whom he lifted in his arms, he himself ripped from the people, exposing both to the danger of contagion. It is difficult to know what those two gestures of violence with these children could represent one day in their lives.
What is clear is that Bolsonaro even uses his fascination with violence and death with the little ones.
To his three sons-in-law he has transmitted that desperate passion for weapons and death.
It is impressive, for example, a photo in which he and his three children, Flavio, Eduardo and Carlos appear, imitating with their hands the gesture of firing a gun while laughing out loud.
After the new vaccine corruption scandal that is terrorizing the president, his nervousness and fear that he could be removed from office is visible.
He, who had presented himself as the Savonarola against corruption, boasting that he did not exist in his Government, today appears naked without knowing where to hide.
His only defense is the attack that at this hour sounds false and reveals his weakness more than his strength.
In the next protest demonstrations called for this Saturday against Bolsonaro and his policy of death in the management of the pandemic, the corruption scandals with vaccines should be highlighted, considered a crime without forgiveness because it has cost many lives, as well as the gesture of violence committed with the children whom he stripped of their masks.
Bolsonaro should be reminded that the only time Jesus asks for the death penalty is against those who "scandalize a child."
It is a passage that should also be highlighted in the demonstrations.
That biblical page in which Jesus asks for the death penalty for anyone who scandalizes a child explains that it would be better for him to "put a mill wheel around his neck and throw him into the sea."
In the demonstrations, he will again demand the removal of Bolsonaro from power due to the corruption scandals of the purchase of vaccines.
There are those who ask for the prison sentence for him.
But if the crime of corruption is serious, the violent gesture of ripping the mask off the face of an innocent child is no less serious.
The Church from its origins gave special importance to that passage of the canonical Gospels in which Jesus asks for the death penalty for anyone who causes scandal to a child.
This harsh statement must have so impressed the first Christians that it appears in three of the canonical gospels that it was one of the episodes in the life of Jesus that had most shocked the first communities of his followers.
If there is no forgiveness for the vultures that feed on the carrion of the corruption of vaccines, there should be no forgiveness for those who scandalize and corrupt a child.
Let neither the ICC nor the Supreme Court forget this, since Congress seems to be deaf to the cry from the street that calls "Out, Bolsonaro!"
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