Father Lancellotti destroying rocks under a bridge in Sao Paolo in 2021.
The Brazilian government plans to amend a decree within the next weeks with the detailed norms of a law conceived to combat the so-called "hostile architecture", a set of devices implanted by private and public entities on sidewalks and in other urban spaces to drive away homeless people.
A law forbidding hostile architecture was approved last year by the Brazilian Congress, despite an attempted veto from former President Jair Bolsonaro.
Known as the Father Júlio Lancellotti Act -- in honor of the Archdiocese of São Paulo's Vicar for the Homeless, a long time critic of violence against the poor in Brazil -- the law still needs to be regulated by an auxiliary norm, which will define its concrete functioning.
"I have been in touch with the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship and some elements have already been decided, like the creation of a hotline to receive denouncements from people all over Brazil," Father Lancellotti told La Croix International.
On his social media accounts, he continuously addresses the theme, showing pictures of a private building's marquee under which spikes were implanted, for example, or the iron grids that surround public squares in São Paulo, installed by the city government in different locations of the central district.
A notorious moment of Lancellotti's struggle against the hostile architecture was in February of 2021, when he...
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