(-RJ), licensed pastor of the church and leader of the PL in the Chamber, has a “brother friend” in Brasília. “Lindbergh and I will never confuse a political fight with personal friendship”, he says about Lindbergh Farias (PT-RJ), one of the most vocal deputies in the political field that he so despises.
Sóstenes has already worn the red shirt, it’s true. He was a student leader as a teenager, when he lived in front of a teachers’ union in Ituiutaba (MG). Passionate about politics, he went to sessions at the City Council every week. “I was a PT star, I studied at the party library. I read Marx, Lenin.” The caricature of what today would be classified as a “left-winger”.
It’s been a while since Sóstenes turned right on the ideological GPS. Today he advertises himself on social media under the heading “Christian, defender of life and family”. He says he was disappointed with the PT when he was still young, after seeing a party councilor, according to him, “change cars and build a mansion after stealing so much.”
After (PL) had his preventive arrest ordered this Saturday (22), the parliamentarian lamented what he said was “the greatest injustice in history”. Because it happened on the day that symbolizes the PL number, 22, it would reveal, for him, “the high degree of psychopathy” of the minister of the (Supreme Federal Court).
On Friday (21), while the evangelical’s nomination for the STF attracted sympathy from part of the religious segment, the PL’s leading pastor maintained a critical tone towards the choice of (PT). “Another 30 years of a PT leftist judging and delaying Brazil,” he said.
Third generation evangelical in the family, with spiritualist and Catholic grandparents who converted, in the 2000s he met the person who would become the architect of his political career. Admiration for Malafaia dates back to the times when Sóstenes was a missionary in Argentina and watched video cassettes of the pastor, a longtime televangelist. “On cold mornings, I liked to see Silas preaching”, he said in one of the several interviews he gave to the reporter in recent years.
Sosthenes spoke again with the Sheet last week, when he detailed his invitation to run for deputy in 2014. “Silas called me into his office one day and said, ‘I met with my G20’, which is a group of 20 pastors from the church.” The hard core of the Assembly of God Vitória em Cristo identified in him a vocation to represent it in Brasília. Thy will be done.
Already at his start on the party avenue, he was the 12th most voted deputy in Rio, with 105 thousand votes. Bolsonaro led this ranking, in what was his last race for the Chamber, before the presidential incursions.
Sóstenes is aware that the good performance was much more linked to having Malafaia as an electoral campaigner than to his own electoral brilliance. The congressman was re-elected and gained political strength not necessarily linked to the pastor, although associating one with the other remains a practice in Congress.
He presided over the evangelical bench in the year that Bolsonaro ran for re-election and lost to Lula. Afterwards, he held the second vice-presidency of the Board of Directors of the Chamber, which promoted him internally beyond the image of an evangelical deputy. In his third term, he is one of the protagonists of the current legislature.
The upward trajectory did not come without setbacks. Opponents and even allies point out that a bill that Sóstenes presented in 2024, which for victims of . The proposal received a strong social reaction, even in churches, for equating raped women with homicides.
The deputy was already one of the most active opponents against Lula when, in February, he assumed leadership of the PL. It plays a role in one, fragmented by internal splits and tensioned by the upcoming presidential succession — with Bolsonaro ineligible, names are swarming on the right for 2026. He says that, when visiting him at the end of 2024, he had the blessing to lead the party and heard the request to “keep the bench together”.
Sosthenes is generous with some colleagues and less so with others. , accused by the Bolsonaro wing of not making enough effort to defend the Bolsonaros, is for him “one of the most mature parliamentarians on our bench”, someone who now thinks more about the collective, as opposed to “the person who worked more on his social networks during his mandate”.
Ana Caroline Campagnolo, an anti-feminist with a seat in the Santa Catarina Legislative Assembly, was reprimanded after , averse to Carlos Bolsonaro’s intention to run for senator for the state. “With all due respect to her, but for a state deputy to get into a national fight, I don’t even see proportionality for that.”
Sóstenes predicts a bumper crop for the elected Legislature next year. He is enthusiastic about the people that the PL intends to launch, people who at some point had a recall in the progressive field. Take, for example, homosexual candidates (“right-wing gays”) and former funk singer Jojo Todynho, who maintains a good dialogue with former first lady Michelle Bolsonaro.
For the main election, he follows the line of exalting the former president as the PL’s greatest asset, “and not a dead dog as some want to put it.” Whoever Bolsonaro nominates as head of the ticket, “we will support”, he says.
He does not fail to point out “a feeling from center parties, from several right-wing personalities, from many people”: the most competitive name would be that of the governor of São Paulo, (Republicans).
He sees Michelle, senator Tereza Cristina (PP-MS) and ACM Neto, vice-president of União Brasil, as possible vice-presidents. “Dream Board”, in fact, would be a composition by Tarcísio and Ciro Gomes, recently affiliated to the PSDB, proposes the deputy.
Sóstenes says he learned from the former mayor of Rio César Maia “that all growth generates pain”, hence so much unrest on the right. For him, it’s better this way.
Two pieces of advice given by his friend Lindbergh come to mind. One that he did well to dismiss, the other has proven accurate over the last few years, in his assessment.
“He always thought that I shouldn’t stick my image too much to Bolsonaro’s, because I have the moral authority to talk about God, country, family and freedom. Lindbergh thought Bolsonaro didn’t have it.” This suggestion he discarded.
A second word, however, today sounds prophetic. “He was the first guy who told me, in 2015, that polarization was going to arrive in Brazil”, as well as in the United States on the verge of electing Donald Trump.
Sóstenes responded at the time by saying that the PT member was crazy, because he thought there was no right wing in Brazil. “Today I have to prove him right.” And he makes a point of sitting in the window of this conservative tram.
