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Pastor Silas Malafaia delivers a sermon, transmitted live through social networks, inside the empty Assembly of God Victory in Christ Church, amid a lockdown to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sunday, March 29, 2020. "I’m asking, which is worse: coronavirus or social chaos?” Malafaia, one of Brazil’s most prominent pastors who leads the Assembly of God Victory in Christ Church, told The Associated Press. “I can guarantee you that social convulsion is worse.” (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Pastor Silas Malafaia delivers a sermon, transmitted live through social networks, inside the empty Assembly of God Victory in Christ Church, amid a lockdown to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sunday, March 29, 2020. "I’m asking, which is worse: coronavirus or social chaos?” Malafaia, one of Brazil’s most prominent pastors who leads the Assembly of God Victory in Christ Church, told The Associated Press. “I c…

March 31, 2020

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Brazilian pews become trenches in fight against quarantine
March 31, 2020 1:03 a.m.

Brazilian pews become trenches in fight against quarantine

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Like every Sunday, Brazilian Pastor Silas Malafaia took the stage of his Pentecostal temple in a middle-class Rio de Janeiro neighborhood. But this week, he wore a T-shirt instead of a blazer and, behind the three cameras broadcasting to his legion of YouTube followers, were thousands of empty seats.