A Brazilian court sentenced a pastor to an 18.5-year prison sentence for praying for another Holocaust, an unprecedented penalty that captured headlines throughout Brazil, JTA reported.
Judge Valeria Caldi Magalhães said: “The defendant used his condition as pastor of a religious community” to commit a crime, “which increases the potential to induce followers to act similarly.”
She added: “With regard to social conduct, the records showed that the defendant maintains an ostensible behavior that confronts public institutions.”
Ricardo Sidi, legal director of the Brazilian Israelite Confederation, responded to the ruling by stating: “A historic sentence in the fight against anti-Semitism. It is the largest penalty applied in Brazil for this type of crime, which will help to inhibit this odious practice.”
Pastor Tupirani da Hora Lores was caught on video last year praying that G-d should “destroy the Jews like vermin.”
A Jewish group discovered an online video of da Hora Lores leading his congregation in shouting “Massacre the Jews, G-d, hit them with your sword, for they have left G-d, they have left the nations.”
“G-d, what you have done in World War II, you must do again, this is what we ask for in our prayers to you: Justice, justice, justice!”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
12 Responses
Now he’ll have a truly captive audience.
Hopefully his prison cell shall be inside a gas chamber, and hopefully they shall liquidate his assets to cover his incarceration and not burden Brazilian taxpayers
What? An 18 year sentence for praying? I am not comfortable with that at all. As disgusting a man this guy is, (and even if in Brazil some speech can be criminalized) the punishment does not fit the crime.
Unfortunately, there are sick demented people in this world. Can you imagine? This moron wants to kill all Jews but he himself believes in and worships a dead Jew on a stick?
That is what happens in a country with no Bill of Rights. People get thrown in prison for PRAYING. Boruch Hashem for America, where that can’t happen.
A TRUE CHRISTIAN. HE SAYS WHAT THE OTHERS THINK.
@besalel, Milhouse
Maybe you didn’t read the full headline and article. It doesn’t seem that he was arrested for praying, after all, prayer is very admirable (yes, even in Brazil).
Rather, he was arrested for the things which he was praying for, and the way how he was doing it, which ended up being an incitement of violence.
For example, if I encounter a Muslim praying in the street on a prayer rug, I don’t bat an eyelash. Yet, if he is holding an ax and crying out, “All-h, please send a volunteer to take this ax and smash it on the head of that Jew!” – I would feel very unsafe and either attack him or run away (depending on the circumstances).
Of course he wants to see Jews burn, He literally worships a Jew that was burned to death on a cross. Prays to a Jew, yet wants Jews killed. Wow.
A worthy punishment, good.
Menachem, he was arrested FOR PRAYING and nothing else. It makes no difference what he’s praying for. He’s asking his god to do something, and in a free country EVERYONE has the right to do that, without any exceptions whatsoever, regardless of what they’re praying for, or which god they’re praying to. Prayers CANNOT harm anyone. If G-d chooses to grant the prayer then לא עלינו תלונתיכם, and if He doesn’t then it’s harmless.
Praying cannot be incitement. Whom are you inciting, G-d?! The only way a person can call prayer incitement is if he is an extreme atheist, and assumes everyone else really is too, and that all religion is fake. Such a person assumes that when someone asks G-d for something, he is really intending to do it himself, or he’s asking some person to do it, because what else could he mean? Surely he isn’t actually asking some made-up ghost to do it, because what would be the point? But the moment you admit that there might actually be a G-d Who hears prayer, then that supposition becomes invalid.
@Milhouse: Please read the example I gave again, I think it clearly answers your points.
Since the times of Chana, prayer is something which can be done quietly.
I agree: If someone would unearth a letter that the pastor put into the Kossel asking for the destruction of the Jews, it would be ridiculous to prosecute him for that.
But we are discussing someone who shouted with his congregation “Massacre the Jews!” This is not personal prayer asking G-d to intervene, this is pure incitement.
This is what happened to the Yidden for thousands of years in golus, priests would get up in their churches and yell and scream about the dangers of the Jewish people, and then everyone would run out and make a pogrom.
Boruch Hashem, nowadays we were blessed with governments that stop this early on before it gets out of hand.
SG, what are you talking about? The Xian god was not burned to death!
outrageous……then Nazi’s moved into these places to shine……