It's party time!

Taking to the air on Ascension Day

It seems everyone wants to come to the City of God these days. Sergio Cabral, the Governor of the State of Rio de Janeiro, has been twice already this week. But the residents of Cidade de Deus are not complaining. On Tuesday he launched the renovation of 57 apartment blocks - famously featured in Fernando Mireilles' 2003 film - which haven't seen a lick of paint for 40 years and today he came to bring free broadband internet access for all 100,000 inhabitants.

Since the police occupation last November, the City of God has become a symbol of change for politicians in Rio. Eduardo Paes, Rio's newly-elected, right-wing Mayor came to power promising an 'order shock' and has delivered just that in several of the city's slums. Fellow right-winger Cabral told his audience in the main square in Cidade de Deus this morning that the drug traffic's days were numbered - 'the stones have now been got out of the way' - and that after decades of being abandoned and ignored the City of God was now the centre of attention at City Hall.

I almost had to pinch myself as I stood in the square listening to a youth orchestra from a nearby, but not local, secondary school playing Bossa Nova classics in the sunshine. Was this really Cidade de Deus where, only six months ago, young men walked around with rifles unchallenged and men, women and children died in the streets if they happened to be standing in the wrong place when an exchange of gunfire between the police and the drugs barons broke out? Cabral proclaimed: "It's a joy to see a community like this, that was once the subject of a film showing the violence and suffering handed out to people by the 'parallel power', having its peace re-established today."

But why provide broadband internet access for free for so many? Fr. Jesus Hortal Sanchez, the Jesuit Rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, who I bumped into before the launch and whose institution is responsible for the project's technical challenges, spoke powerfully of the capacity of the internet to unite a divided city. Yet what cannot be denied is that neither the drugs traffic nor the militia - a private army of former soldiers and policemen formed to take communities back from drug gangs - who have long been able to offer residents cheap internet access through their own pirate services, are best pleased by the development which will rob them of much of their financial power over the neighbourhood.

As children queued to use the eight computers installed in a kiosk in the town square with instructors on-hand to show them what to do (residents will be able to access the internet via wi-fi), the debate this Ascension Day in the City of God was whether what had just gone up would, like so many politicians' promises, come back down just as quickly.

Saw-saw not jaw-jaw!

I've seen some pretty unusual sights at church synods down the years but I've never been to one where somebody plays the saw!

It seemed more like a moment from a variety show than a meeting of the church's 'parliament' but the amazing musician who secured the saw between his knees and stroked it with his bow proved a welcome diversion after a particularly gruelling session revising canon law.

The three-day Synod takes place once a year and involves all the clergy and lay representatives from the 15 parishes of the Diocese of Rio de Janeiro. It was a particularly important meeting for the new Bishop - Dom Filadelfou Oliveira - as it was his first chance to direct the church's agenda for the coming year. Much of the normal business was cleared to make way for lectures on mission and service.

The Anglican Church arrived in Brazil almost two hundred years ago when Church of England priests accompanying explorers and merchants set up chaplaincies in a number of cities. But the journey towards the creation of an indigenous church really began in 1890 when two missionaries from the Episcopal Church of the United States established a church in the south of the country at Porto Alegre.

It took 50 years before the first Brazilian-born bishop was appointed and it was 1965 before the Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil became fully autonomous. Financial independence was achieved in 1982. Today it is a Province of the Anglican Communion and nine dioceses claiming 100,000 baptised members. The Primate is Dom Mauricio Andrade who is also Bishop of Brasilia - the nation's capital - and spends much of his time on aeroplanes as the the country is just too big to drive around!

Sadly, I couldn't persuade anyone from the City of God to go to the Synod with me. "We've seen it all before and nothing ever changes," said one stalwart. By the way he took charge of organising the group photo, I think Bishop Filadelfou has other ideas!

From ordination to orthodontics

No man is an island but I do sometimes feel like something of a lone ranger in the City of God. When I left London for Rio I had been expecting to work closely with my colleague Fr. Eduardo Costa. Eduardo is a first-class clergyman who rides a motorbike, wears his hair like Jesus, prefers Black Sabbath to Bossa Nova and will soon become a black belt in the Japanese martial art of Aikido. But last year Eduardo decided he wanted to be a dentist and now much of the week he's at university.

Rooting around in someone's mouth may seem an easier task than delving into somebody's soul but Eduardo isn't doing it because he's lost interest in the priesthood. It's just that at the age of 30 he can't be sure any longer that he has any financial security for himself and his family in the Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil.

As well as being Rector of the Parish of Christ the King - I'm really his curate - he's also responsible for Holy Trinity, Meier, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro. But most months his small stipend arrives very late and whilst the Anglican Church is far from finished here, it's not clear what the future's going to be now that the American money which once funded the whole operation has all but gone.

And Eduardo isn't alone. When I met up with the 16 other priests of the diocese to take part in a two-day retreat at the beautiful Roman Catholic Monastery of St. Benedict, I met clergy who had other strings to their bow in order to get by: one an engineer, another a teacher and so on.

Until recently even the Bishop spent most of his day working as a psychologist at his clinic in Copacabana but thanks to the support of the Diocese of Atlanta the new Bishop of Rio de Janeiro can focus full-time on the task.

Born a Pentecostal, Eduardo is just the kind of charismatic clergyman that the Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil badly needs and it's sad to see young people who want to dedicate their lives to building the Kingdom of God struggling to make ends meet. It's good for the church to have priests with one foot in the 'real world' but without a core of clergy available seven days a week to form their communities I wonder how viable it will prove to be.

Thank Evans!

When the Vicar of Ruislip became the first priest to promise me a pastoral visit - although the Curate of Hampstead actually got here first - I didn't realize at the time how much I would appreciate his ministry.

A bad stomach bug had left me low for a month and 6kg lighter but from the moment Fr. Simon and Cheryl Evans got off the plane life was all anti-bacterial hand hygiene gels and pots of yogurt and I was soon on the mend!

When you've stood around an altar in Ruislip with people who then gather around an altar with you on the other side of the world in Rio de Janeiro you appreciate all the more what it means to belong to the Body of Christ and how the celebration of the Eucharist, in the words of William Cavanaugh, "transgresses national boundaries and redefines who our fellow citizens are".

It wasn't just me who wanted to say thank Evans! The people of Christ the King laid on a lunch featuring Brazil's favourite rice and beans dish - Feijoada - to thank the pair for their commitment to provide a Priest Missioner in Cidade de Deus. St. Martin's, Ruislip is one of 30 parishes in the UK and Cheryl Evans one of 60 individuals (including the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London) who have pledged through USPG: Anglicans in World Mission to support the project.

During their 10-day stay, Fr. Simon and Cheryl toured Cidade de Deus and saw places that just months back before the police occupation were no-go areas, visited church families in their homes, attended the launch of the new community website and took part in a St. George's Day Procession and Mass at the Roman Catholic Church where the hand-launched fireworks threatened to create more martyrs than the one we were commemorating! They also squeezed in visits to Corcovado, Sugar Loaf Mountain, Iguassu Falls and the odd Caipirinha, the Brazilian cocktail that literally means 'little country girl' but packs a punch more akin to a 'large urban terrorist'.

Fr. Simon and Cheryl went to the airport and back to London in a torrential downpour which appeared to do nothing to dampen their determination to return to Rio at the earliest opportunity. I hope the Churchwardens of St. Martin's will oblige!

Launching into cyberspace

I never expected to actually meet the man who designed the City of God. Back in the 1960s, Giuseppe Badolatto was one of a group of young architects handed the challenge to design a state-of-the-art housing heaven for Rio's poor.

We bumped into each other at a special event to launch a new community website for the City of God. Giuseppe explained that the neighbourhood was intended to set a new standard in urban planning but that the decision by local government at the time to decant homeless people from a number of the city's slums into Cidade de Deus - migrants from across Brazil in search of employment in the capital -meant that the new estate welcomed residents without any shared history or sense of community. He believes it was this which led to the neighbourhood's sharp spiral of decay and decline. Today, Giuseppe, himself an immigrant from Italy - who still posesses his original architectural drawings for his Latuin American New Jerusalem - is hoping to take part in the revitalisation of the neighbourhood.

The website launch was held in our church. It's still a struggle to sort out answers to the question, "Why be an Anglican in Brazil?". But if Anglicanism is committed to local communities, unity in diversity and the search for new ways to communicate Good News, then hosting the launch seemed the natural thing to do.

Church was packed for the celebration which included performances from an old people's choir, a young people's dance group, a sketch by three actors celebrating the neighbourhood's achievements and a presentation by a young computer boffin from a local univeristy who had been seconded to help the project. It even attracted a camera crew from Rio de Janeiro's television news channel who produced a report for the evening bulletin.

You can see the website for yourself: www.cidadededeus.org.br

We can't afford the £3-a-moth membership fee at the moment but as soon as our income improves we'll sign up!

Easter Triduum