Portugal Colonial - A saintly spat and debate snub: Brazil enters final campaign stretch

US President Donald Trump said he was keeping a close eye on the bitterly fought election between leftist Lula and right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, 45, who face off in a vote on Sunday.

The pair have not yet thrashed it out in person, however, and 80-year-old Lula has refused to attend a televised debate with Bolsonaro and three other candidates, opting instead to appear on a popular podcast at the same time.

The latest squabble erupted after media reports that figures in the Catholic Church were concerned about the future status of Our Lady of Aparecida.

This collided with the unearthing of an abandoned 2007 bill, initially proposed by a conservative lawmaker, to demote the patron saint.

Flavio Bolsonaro fiercely denied such plans as "fake news," but the issue struck a nerve in a country where the majority Catholic population, which reveres the saint, tends to back Lula.

A booming evangelical population is a key electoral base for far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro, and now his son.

On the campaign trail, Lula clutched a figure of Our Lady of Aparecida, Brazil's beloved Black Madonna, declaring that "messing" with her was "unacceptable."

In a decision late Wednesday, the electoral court upheld a Supreme Court order to remove "notoriously untrue" online posts claiming that Flavio Bolsonaro intends to strip the patron saint of her role.

Police meanwhile opened an investigation into the destruction of statues of saints in churches in Salvador and the defacement of a statue of Our Lady of Aparecida with an axe in a chapel in the state of Mato Grosso.

Brazil has the second-largest Christian population in the world, after the United States, according to the Pew Research Center.

- Debate vs podcast -

Some commentators have framed Lula's decision to skip the final debate as a bid to sidestep a pile-on from the other participants, none of whom are on the left.

Instead, he will appear on the Flow podcast -- which has 10 million followers on YouTube -- starting half an hour before the debate.

Lula has a slight lead over Bolsonaro in polls ahead of the first round, while the pair are in a dead heat in a potential runoff.

The president has campaigned on a promise to preserve Brazilian sovereignty, warning against "meddling" by the Trump administration.

The US leader on Thursday told reporters he was watching Brazilian elections "very closely."

"The people of Brazil are fantastic people. Very important election," he said.

Attorney General Jorge Messias on Thursday called for an investigation of allegations that the White House was using government funds to promote a "far-right agenda" in Brazil.

The request came after Britain's The Guardian newspaper published an article alleging that Washington planned to award $1 million to fund civil society groups opposing the Brazilian Supreme Court -- an institution hated by the political right.

H.Portela--PC