09/10/2023 – 9:44
Spaces that were used as residential apartments, auditoriums, classrooms and a parking lot for 800 vehicles are part of the temple of the World Church of the Kingdom of God, owned by pastor Valdemiro Santiago, which will be auctioned to pay off debts of the evangelical denomination. The 46,000 m² space is valued at R$38.5 million, the initial bid value for the offers, which begin in October.
The auction of one of the largest temples in the country exemplifies the denomination’s deep financial crisis, which has been worsening in recent years. The São Paulo Court of Justice registers 1,100 actions against the church, the majority for debt collection. Church representatives claim that the debts resulted from the closure of temples during the pandemic and that tithes are the church’s only source of income.
The seizure of the temple was ordered by the Court to pay off a debt of R$881,000 owed to another church, in Ubatuba, on the coast. Mundial was condemned in the first and second instances and can no longer appeal. In April 2022, the Court had already authorized the auction. The temple had been closed for two years.
According to the description of the property, available on the Superbid Exchange website, responsible for the auction, the project has three areas: the administrative building, with 5 floors, a warehouse with 17 thousand m² and a ceiling height of 10 m, as well as parking for 813 cars and 162 motorcycles.
At the address in Santo Amaro, in the south zone, there is room for 20 thousand people, 13.5 thousand sitting. Older pastors of the church told Estadão that the temple, opened in 2014, has rooms that were used as apartments, with beds, TVs and wardrobes.
The auction puts a question mark over the next steps of Santiago, one of the most influential evangelical leaders in Brazil. The 59-year-old pastor, who prefers to be called an apostle, was one of the faces of
“third wave” of neo-Pentecostalism, the fastest growing segment in Brazil. Bishop RR Soares, Edir Macedo and Silas Malafaia also belong to the current.
TV CHANNEL. In addition to the closure of the temple, there are problems with a church TV channel in Curitiba. In an open dispute with Universal, Mundial signed million-dollar contracts to purchase time slots. Currently, services occupy 22 hours on Ideal TV, a closed channel. The costs, which were already R$5.5 million per month, are half as much.
TV Mundial employees, who went on strike over late wages this year, see management problems, concentrated in the hands of the Santiago family, and excessive spending on travel, private flights and events.
In the process of seizing the temple, the lawyers declare that Mundial is a non-profit religious organization that maintains itself through tithes and donations and that the “cash is volatile in nature, since tithes and contributions follow the liberality of the faithful , being voluntary and sporadic in nature”. When contacted, Mundial did not respond to the report.
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