A few weeks ago, several Brazilian missionary families were preparing for a Christmas Eve potluck in the Mozambican city of Beira. Charles Santos, his wife, Maria, and his 17-year-old daughter, Melissa, were supposed to bring a dessert, and Charles planned to leave the morning of December 24 to buy fruit that the recipe required.
Instead, he never made it out his front door.
“It was the most stressful Christmas Eve we could have ever imagined,” said Charles.
Around 1 a.m. on December 24, residents, preparing to confront authorities, began assembling barricades on the Samora Machel Avenue, where the Santoses reside.The bustling artery serves as the access road to both the nation’s second-largest port, which faces the Indian Ocean, and many working-class neighborhoods in the 500,000-person city.
Over the following 32 hours, Samora Machel became ground zero for a bitter fight over the outcome of the country’s October 9 general elections. When Mozambican police tried to shut down the protest by firing into the crowd, protesters responded by throwing stones, bottles, and pieces of wood. In other parts of the city, people looted and assaulted residences and businesses, setting cars and houses on fire.
Similar scenes took place in other parts of the country, and 56 people reportedly died in the crackdown against demonstrators in the week of Christmas, reported The New York Times. Violent clashes had occurred intermittently since October, with at least 300 people reportedly killed, including 10 children, in confrontations with the police.
Only one party, the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (Mozambique Liberation Front, or FRELIMO), has ruled the country since Mozambique gained its independence from Portugal in 1975. On December 23, more than two months after the election, the Conselho Constitucional proclaimed the FRELIMO candidate, Daniel Chapo, the next president, with 65 percent of the vote. But Venâncio Mondlane, who the court said finished second with 24 percent of the votes, refused to concede, claiming election fraud. Declaring himself the rightful winner, Mondlane called on citizens to take to the streets, encouragement he had similarly offered after demanding a recount, in October.
What began as peaceful marches quickly escalated into violent clashes with police, particularly in the capital, Maputo. The violence of the confrontations stoked fears that the country would fall into a new civil war, like the one that lasted from 1977 to 1992.
A new civil war would endanger decades of foreign ministry, much of it done by Brazilian missionaries. For Santos, a conflict would threaten the Instituto Bíblico de Sofala (IBS), an interdenominational school planted by the Inland Africa Mission in the 1980s, where he teaches. Potential and current students outside of Beira would have difficulty relocating to the city.
Outside of IBS, Charles and Maria Santos also regularly offer sewing classes, literacy courses (the country’s illiteracy rate is 28%), and Portuguese lessons, programs that rely on access to foreign donations and a stable currency.
All Brazilian missionaries in Mozambique, a country with the third-largest population of Portuguese-speaking nations, rely on this stability.
Brazil is currently the second-largest missionary-sending country, and Mozambique ranks as a top destination for Brazilian missionaries abroad, according to Associação Brasileira de Missões Transculturais (Brazilian Transcultural Missions Association, AMTB).
Of the 3,240 Brazilian nationals in Mozambique, AMTB estimates that up to 450 of those are evangelical missionaries. Catholic missionaries, mainly nuns and laypeople who are also working in education and health care, are present. (One state diocese has sent 70 people alone.)
Despite the tense days after the election, many missionaries stayed. But following the Christmas unrest, at the advice of their mission agencies, most left.
In Nampula, the 740,000-person capital of the eponymous province in Northern Mozambique, protesters blocked a main access road and demanded money from passersby. Those who refused risked their cars being stoned. Looters plundered numerous local stores, and the prices of goods have skyrocketed. A bag of flour that cost 1,200 meticals ($18.70 USD) on December 22 was 2,000 meticals ($31.30 USD) by December 24.
Despite comparing the situation to apocalyptic thriller Mad Max, Ricardo Borges—who along with his wife, Carla, leads Comunidade Cristã de Chocas Mar, a church just outside of Nampula—did not intend to leave. Only after demonstrators set the police station next to their house on fire did the couple fly out in January.
When they informed the church that they would leave, their local congregants were relieved.
“They said, ‘We know how to escape through the bushes and where we can hide. You wouldn’t be able to do that,’” said Ricardo.
The Borgeses flew to Johannesburg on January 4 but returned yesterday. Ricardo will officiate a wedding on Thursday.
There’s more at stake for the Borgeses than their commitment to the couple getting married. The missionaries teach parenting and nutrition classes, offer some basic infant medical care to 300 families, and operate a preschool with 56 students. This year they plan to launch adult literacy classes and tutoring programs for children.
These resources became even more vital when two cyclones, Chido in December and Dikeledi on January 13, struck the country, collectively leaving at least 120 people dead, with 250 schools and 52 health facilities damaged.
Chido was especially destructive in the Cabo Delgado province, where Mozambique shares a border with Tanzania. Once a tourist destination because of the Arquipélago das Quirimbas, the province became the headquarters of Al-Shabab (not affiliated with the Somali organization with the same name), a group linked to Islamic State whose attacks have killed 6,000 people and displaced more than half a million.
This violence has made Mozambique one of the most violent countries in the world for Christians. Videos of insurgents decapitating Christians have been shared on social media in recent years.
Muslims make up 19 percent of Mozambique’s 34 million people, dwarfed by Christians, which are 62 percent of the population. About half of those Christians are evangelicals and Pentecostals.
Among them were the 2024 presidential candidates. Mondlane, who claimed the elections were rigged, was an assistant pastor at Ministério Divina Esperança, an African Pentecostal megachurch based in Maputo. While on the campaign trail, Chapo, now the new president, posted on social media a photo of himself in a prayer position, accompanied by a blessing to God for the country and a song of praise by the Brazilian singer Gabriela Rocha.
Most Mozambican churches and Christian leaders have avoided taking stances on the electoral controversy, even when they have had members who participated in the mass demonstrations in favor of Mondlane. One exception has been Noemia Cessito, a Brazilian missionary invited to the inauguration by the new first lady, Gueta Chapo, who was baptized by her husband, pastor Jeronimo Cessito.
In Cessito’s 40 years in Mozambique, she has lived through its civil war and witnessed the country’s peace efforts. She empathized with Mozambicans frustrated with their circumstances.
“People don’t accept the high unemployment rates. Young people want to study, and they have realized that they can protest,” she said.
During the morning on Christmas Eve, Cessito went to her church in Dondo, a suburb of Beira, for a rehearsal for the teenagers who would take part in the evening service. Demonstrations started right after practice ended, and by the time she left, protesters had closed the road that goes to her house. Cessito only got home after driving off-road and walking through the woods.
Married to a Mozambican, Cessito hasn’t entertained the idea of leaving, despite her Brazilian support team that would help her get out. “The problem isn’t leaving—it’s coming back,” she said. “How do you face everyone again after abandoning the people?”
This dilemma was also on the mind of Charles Santos. Though he didn’t leave Mozambique immediately after the Christmas incident, he flew to a conference in Brazil in early January, and his wife and daughter temporarily relocated to South Africa in his absence. The family plans to return on January 30.
From their upper-floor apartment overlooking a chaotic scene of barricades, protesters, and police officers, the Santoses endured the most unusual Christmas of their lives. As sounds of gunfire echoed in their home, the family comforted themselves through phone messages from brothers and sisters in Brazil, who assured them of their prayers, and from fellow missionaries urging them to stay strong.
The most comforting words came from their Muslim neighbors, who play soccer with Charles every Tuesday and Thursday. “They told me not to leave the house,” he said. “They were very concerned about our safety.”
The Santoses story has been edited to better explain Charles Santos’ Christmas Eve challenges.
