Time waits for no man

What are we waiting for? In the Church of Christ the King in the City of God it's normally for a worshipper to arrive. We're a small group of about 15 adults at the moment and there are no early birds amongst us. Some people might think I'd suit a church where the services started late

Singing in the rain

I don't want to believe in a God who makes the rain stop for my convenience. But the torrential downpour that accompanied the Festival Mass to celebrate the Feast of Christ the King did come to a dramatic halt just moments before we left the church for a procession around the City of God.

It's late spring in Rio de Janeiro, temperatures should have been soaring and skies should have been blue for the Patronal Festival but from daybreak, as London-like grey clouds hid the sun from view, we were in for a deluge. My heart sunk as it started to spit whilst I queued for flowers at the stall in the town square. The only thing that lifted my spirits was the florist penning a greetings card for the elderly woman in front of me who had never learnt to read and write.

In church, with raindrops turning to drizzle, I blew up the yellow balloons that were to be carried in the procession, a symbol of the universe of which Christ is Lord and King but whose weather systems he apparently has little influence over. By the time the service began the rain was lashing down. Then, as I was going to call the whole thing off, it just stopped.

Not every priest gets to lead his people down the Street of the Gospels but take two right turns out of church and you enter a narrow road whose uneven surface makes it hard to walk bearing just that name. We looked a rather bedraggled bunch marching behind the cross through the puddles in 'Rua dos Evangelhos'. A robust drainage system couldn't have been high up the agenda of the planners who built Cidade de Deus in 1960. It soon seemed that the ability to walk on water was going to be an essential aspect of life here. We sang 'Tell me the old, old story' in the hope that it would be a new song for some. The owners of the Boca de Fumo - or crack den -we passed on the way looked as if they'd heard it all before.

It had been Pope Pius IX who established the Feast of Christ the King in 1925 at a time when secularism was on the rise and Communism and Fascism held sway. The creation of the new festival was an attempt to assert that in the end Love would have the last word. In 1991, a partnership between the Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil and congregations in the USA, Canada and Holland built the Church and dedicated it to Christ the King. I haven't yet discovered why. Perhaps the forces at work in Cidade de Deus seemed to them as insurmountable as the ideologies of the 20th century and they too wanted to send a signal of hope. I trust it's what we did today.

Otherwise occupied

The City of God is now occupied territory. Occupied by the military police. Power changed hands at 4am today when 150 officers launched a spectacular operation called 'The City of God is God's' and took control of the community from the drug traffic using Old Testament methods rather more than New Testament ones. From dawn to dusk there were intense exchanges of gunfire.

Life in places like Cidade de Deus is a parallel society where outlaws are the law. Residents can get electricity, gas, water, tv and internet services for next to nothing by paying a small fee to the bandits. Some argue they aren't given a choice! It's one of the issues that irritates Rio's middle-classes and fuels public apathy to improve living conditions in slum neighbourhoods.

So as well as closing seven crack houses, the police shut down the pirate TV service, the illegal sale of gas and confiscated motorbikes used by criminals to rob cars in wealthier suburbs. Streets were shut, traffic ground to a halt and 13 schools closed leaving more than 7,000 children at home for the day. Barricades built by bandits to stop the police giving chase were torn down by bulldozers. By the end of the day a mountain of arms and amunition had been uncovered including two swords alleged by the police to be used by drugs barons to torture their victims.

You might wonder why it hadn't happened before. After all, until yesterday the only real police presence here were the handful of officers who run the local police station. Some will say that it's just a matter of willpower by the authorities. Corruption runs rife through government and it doesn't always serve everyone's interests to keep the bandits at bay. Will it last? The police say they plan to stay for a year. Nobody knows but for now there's an eery silence around town and the sight of carefree teenagers armed with rifles doing deals on street corners has been replaced by stoney-faced cops looking like they feel 12 months is a very long time.