SÃO PAULO, Brazil (RNS) — Conservative Christians are accusing the pop star Madonna, who gave a free concert on Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach May 4, of including satanic rituals in the show, with catastrophic consequences for Brazil.
The concert, the last stop on Madonna’s The Celebration Tour, drew more than 1.6 million Brazilians and fans from neighboring countries and was aired in its entirety on Rede Globo, the national TV network.
Besides a diverse cast and some sexual play that LGBTQ+ Brazilians and other minorities said spotlighted their communities, the show projected images of Brazilian human rights icons, including Marina Silva, an advocate for rainforest preservation and Brazil’s minister for the environment, and Marielle Franco, an activist and politician who was assassinated in 2018.
Evangelical Christian pastors and digital influencers with ties to former President Jair Bolsonaro have attacked the concert and posted dozens of videos on social media with analysis pointing out purported diabolical behavior and attacks on the Christian faith. They have connected the concert’s licentiousness with unprecedented floods that have devastated cities in Rio Grande do Sul state and killed 147 people.
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A video by motivational speaker Pablo Marçal, who combines career insights with Christian ideas, said Rede Globo, a target of the Brazilian far-right in Brazil for its criticism of Bolsonaro during his time as president, said showing “that pornographer” during the flooding “disrespected the Brazilian people that were drowning and dying.”
Marçal said that juxtaposing the two was equivalent to “making offerings with the corpses from Rio Grande do Sul. Anyone with a basic spiritual understanding knows what happened,” Marçal said in the video.
Baptist Pastor Aloizio Penido, a prominent Christian leader from the city of Juiz de Fora, told Religion News Service that the concert was “an insult to God,” and that the images drew an “association with the worst possible segment in society.” He pointed to a picture of Che Guevara and “other anti-Christian leaders.”
