One of the world’s largest and most controversial Pentecostal churches has been given permission to build a US$200 million replica of Solomon’s Temple in Sao Paulo.
The 10,000 capacity “mega-church,” which is the brainchild of Brazil’s Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, will also house a replica of the Ark of the Covenant and be built according to “biblical orientations.”
The Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper said planning permission was granted this week and church officials say it should be completed in four years.
BLOGGING
“We are preparing ourselves to build the temple, in the same mold as Solomon’s,” the church’s leader and founder, Bishop Edir Macedo said in a televised service, posted on his blog.
“[Solomon’s] Temple ... used tonnes of gold, pure gold ... We are not going to build a temple of gold, but we will spend tonnes of money,” he said.
Macedo said his church had signed an US$8 million contract to import stones from Israel.
“We have commissioned the stones that will come from Jerusalem, just like the ones that were used to build the temple in Israel; stones that were witnesses to the powers of God, 2,000 [years] ago,” he said.
“It is going to be beautiful — the most beautiful of all. The outside will be exactly the same as that which was built in Jerusalem,” the blog said, adding that the 55m high temple would be “twice the height of [Rio’s] Christ the Redeemer statue.”
The project was drawn up by Brazilian architect Rogerio Silva de Araujo. It includes a car park for 1,000 vehicles, TV and radio studios, and classrooms for 1,300 children.
BELIEF IN PROSPERITY
Founded in Brazil in 1977, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God claims an estimated 8 million followers in 180 countries, with a TV channel and a free newspaper, the Folha Universal, which it says has a weekly print run of 2.5 million.
The church supports so-called “prosperity theology” by which acts of faith including donations are rewarded with material wealth.
Sao Paulo’s public prosecutor last year accused 10 senior members of the church, including Macedo, of siphoning off billions of dollars of donations to buy cars and property. Macedo, who denied the charges, owns a US$45 million private jet.
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
RSS