One man who has a background in crime and religion – though not in his case at the same time – is Pastor Diego Nascimento, who became a Christian after hearing the gospel from a gun-wielding gangster.
Looking at him, it’s hard to believe that this boyish-looking 42-year-old Wesleyan Methodist minister with a ready smile and dimples was once a member of Rio’s infamous Red Commando crime group and ran its operations in the city’s Villa Kennedy favela.
Four years in prison for drug trafficking was not enough for him to give up crime. But when he became addicted to cocaine, his position in the gang plummeted.
“I lost my family. I practically lived on the street for a year. I went so far as to sell things from my house to buy crack,” he says.
It was at the moment when he was at rock bottom that he was summoned by a known drug dealer in the favela.
“He started preaching to me, saying that there is a way out, that there is a solution for me – to accept Jesus,” he recalls.
The young drug addict took this advice and began his journey to the pulpit.
Pastor Nascimento still spends time with criminals, but now through his work in prisons, he helps people change their lives, just like he did.
Despite having been converted by a gangster, he finds the idea of religious criminals controversial.
“I don’t see them as evangelicals,” he says.
“I see them as people who are on the wrong path and have the fear of God because they know that God is protecting their lives.
“There is no such thing as combining the two, being an evangelical and a thug. If a person accepts Jesus and follows the commandments of the Bible, that person cannot be a drug dealer.”
