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Pastor Silas Malafaia delivers a sermon transmitted live through social networks, from 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. Malafaia and other evangelical leaders across Brazil have voiced outrage at governors’ decisions that all non-essential businesses and gathering such as churches, shut down, warning they would only cooperate under court order. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Pastor Silas Malafaia delivers a sermon transmitted live through social networks, from 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. Malafaia and other evangelical leaders across Brazil have voiced outrage at governors’ decisions that all non-essential businesses and gathering such as churches, shut down, warning they would only cooperate und…

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.