Brazil: TSE Orders Platforms to Purge Fake ‘Patroness’ Posts Targeting Flávio Bolsonaro

Politics: Brazil

Nine days before Brazil votes, the electoral court has ordered five social platforms to scrub a viral claim that Flávio Bolsonaro wants to dethrone the country’s patron saint — a fake story his camp calls a political set-up.

Senator Flávio Bolsonaro on the campaign trail. He denies any plan to remove Our Lady of Aparecida’s patroness title and calls the viral claim “fake news”. (Photo: The Rio Times)

What the TSE Ordered

Justice André Mendonça, who sits on the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), ruled on Friday that X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube must take down publications claiming that Flávio Bolsonaro — the PL candidate for president — or his family intend to withdraw the title of Patroness of Brazil from Our Lady of Aparecida.

The order goes beyond individual URLs. Because the claim was being reproduced across platforms, Mendonça determined that identical copies and even publications in different formats — text, image or video — that carry the same narrative must also be blocked. Brazilian media report the decision covers about 1,170 links and carries a R$50,000 fine for non-compliance. Platforms have 48 hours to inform the TSE of the measures taken and the number of items removed.

Among the named targets is a post on X by the comedian Antônio Tabet, who publicly repudiated the decision. Mendonça, however, drew an explicit line around legitimate speech: journalistic coverage of the episode, content debunking the claim, criticism, satire, political opinions and general debate about religion and politics remain untouched, provided they do not present the delimited factual core as true.

How the False Claim Spread

The story went viral on Thursday night: posts alleged that Bolsonaro supported a project to strip Our Lady of Aparecida — Brazil’s most venerated Catholic figure — of her official status as the country’s patroness. Estadão reports that left-leaning profiles drove the spread of the false information.

The claim fed on a remark the senator made about a month ago, after skipping an election debate: he said one of his first acts if elected would be to “decree that Brazil belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ”. The phrase was widely read as a nod to evangelical voters, a constituency often critical of the veneration of images such as Aparecida — and the viral posts inflated it into a concrete plan that does not exist.

Bolsonaro rejected the story in blunt terms on social media, calling it “a lie, a fake news story” invented by what he described as the Workers’ Party’s online militia. “There is no such project,” he wrote, saying he was surprised by the claim while campaigning in Minas Gerais.

Why It Matters Nine Days Out

The episode shows the TSE’s disinformation machinery running at full campaign speed. With the first round on 4 October, the court is compressing response times: a viral claim on Thursday night became a binding multi-platform takedown order by Friday, with a compliance report due before the weekend ends.

Religion is a sensitive axis of this election. Bolsonaro’s coalition leans heavily on evangelical churches, while Our Lady of Aparecida resonates with Catholic voters — and with a broad, non-practising majority for whom the patroness is a cultural symbol. A false story positioning the candidate against her was tailor-made to cost him votes, which is why his campaign treated it as a coordinated attack.

The latest Datafolha poll, published on 24 September, shows President Lula at 40% and Flávio Bolsonaro at 36%, with a hypothetical run-off tied at 47-45 — margins tight enough that a viral narrative in the final stretch can matter. Mendonça, a Presbyterian pastor whom former president Jair Bolsonaro once called “terrivelmente evangélico” when nominating him to the Supreme Court, is no stranger to the intersection of faith and politics himself.

What We Could Not Confirm

We could not confirm how many posts the platforms had actually removed by Saturday morning — the 48-hour reporting window to the TSE was still open — nor who originally seeded the coordinated spread of the false claim on Thursday night.

It is also not yet clear whether the TSE will extend the same rapid-removal treatment to other viral narratives in the final week, or whether any of the affected accounts will challenge the order. We will update this report when the platforms file their compliance reports.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did Brazil’s electoral court order about the Flávio Bolsonaro posts?

On 25 September 2026, TSE justice André Mendonça ordered X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube to remove posts falsely claiming Bolsonaro plans to strip Our Lady of Aparecida of her title as patroness of Brazil. The order covers about 1,170 links and copies in any format, with a R$50,000 fine for non-compliance.

Is there a real plan to remove Our Lady of Aparecida’s title?

No. Flávio Bolsonaro denies the claim outright and no such bill exists. The viral story grew out of his remark, made about a month earlier, that he would “decree that Brazil belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ” — a phrase aimed at evangelical voters that was inflated into a fictitious plan against the patron saint.

Does the TSE order affect journalism or satire?

No. Mendonça’s ruling expressly exempts journalistic coverage, debunks, criticism, satire, political opinion and general debate about religion and politics — as long as they do not present the false factual core of the claim as true.