With the World Cup just six weeks away and the Olympics on the horizon, social dysfunction in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro is subject to increasing international scrutiny. Many say authorities' attempts to tackle crime in Rio's famous slums have been heavy-handed and ineffective. But now more than ever it seems the city's residents are turning to faith to express their dissatisfaction with the police. It's not often you get to interview Jesus, but last week I was lucky enough to have a few words with the great man before he took off on the road to the crucifixion.
Except on this occasion, he wasn't heading up a hill outside Jerusalem but a steep incline near the centre of Rio de Janeiro in South America's largest slum, Rocinha. Jesus has been doing this for the last 22 years on Good Friday. On this occasion, Andre Martins, a security guard at a nearby shopping mall, was playing Him for the fourth time. The reconstruction is called the Via Sacra and it's not difficult to see why the show's director and founder, Aurelio Mesquita, cast this startlingly charismatic year-old in the lead role.
I am surprised that his exceptionally clear diction and penetrating eyes have not earned him a role in one of Rio's television soap operas, which are sold all around the world. But the Via Sacra is not about stars, or about a faithful reconstruction of Christ's final journey. Each year Mr Mesquita selects important political and social issues to highlight in a show which, given its setting in Rocinha, cannot but shine a light on Brazil's huge levels of inequality.
The traditional figures of the Passion Play have over the years been portrayed as drug dealers, corrupt policemen, prostitutes, victims of massacres and bent politicians among others, to emphasise what Mr Mesquita believes to be the contemporary relevance of Christ's personal philosophy.
This has created problems for Mr Mesquita from the very start. Police officers had a strong presence in Rocinha in Andre Martins played the role of Jesus during the re-enactment of the Passion of Christ. Indeed, after the first performance in he was condemned from the pulpit of Rio's Roman Catholic Cathedral for, it was deemed, tainting the story of Christ by associating it with a favela, as the slums in Brazil are known. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the Catholic hierarchy were grumbling when they learned that one of this year's themes was about what Andre Martins, aka Jesus, described to me as the global scourge of paedophilia.
