A Netflix film depicting Jesus as a gay man has prompted widespread anger in Brazil with almost two million people signing a petition calling on the streaming service to remove the film.
The First Temptation of Christ (A Primeira Tentação de Cristo), which is described as a “dark comedy” and has reportedly drawn widespread anger from Catholics and evangelical Christians as well as some politicians.
The film is the work of Rio-based YouTube comedy group Porta dos Fundos and reportedly portrays a 30-year-old Jesus bringing home his presumed boyfriend Orlando to meet the Holy Family.
More than 1.8 million people have signed an online petition on Change.org calls for the 46 minute film to be removed from Netflix and said it had “seriously offended” Christians.
President Jair Bolsonaro’s son and member of Congress, Eduardo Bolsonaro, has reportedly called the Netflix film “garbage”.
“We support freedom of expression, but is it worth attacking the belief of 86 percent of the population,” he said in a tweet.
Brazil is the largest Catholic nation in the world with an estimated more than 120 million Catholics in a population of 200 million. There is also a fast-growing evangelical church.
At least one Catholic bishop – Henrique Soares da Costa, a bishop in the north-eastern state of Pernambuco – has reportedly cancelled his Netflix subscription over the film which he described on Facebook as “blasphemous, vulgar and disrespectful”.
