Well, I [clearing my throat] first want to thank the people who had the idea to hold this meeting, and thanking Nilda and Pastor Iovaldo, I want to thank all the pastors and female pastors present here, and especially our guests from the United States and our colleague from Cuba. It may be true that I am as concerned about the situation in Cuba as I am about the situation in Brazil. Cubans don't deserve what they 're going through. The world is very confusing. The world is lacking in leadership. The world lacks an understanding of the inequalities caused by the incomprehension of those in power, who believe that governing is not about catering to the same people as always. To govern and serve that part of society that for centuries has been considered invisible . These are the people who are treated as numbers and not as human beings. These are the people who are treated according to their skin color, their birthplace, and the religion they profess. The world no longer has leadership that we could call humanist leadership. Human beings are not the primary focus of political decisions. I began my first term by giving a very simple and straightforward speech on the day of my victory . I had said that if, by the end of my term, every child, every woman, and every man was having breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, I would have already fulfilled my life's mission . When we arrived in this country, we had 54 million people suffering from hunger. In 2014, we ended hunger in this country. After 15 years out of government, we find ourselves back in 2023 facing hunger. We managed to put an end to that in two and a half years. But the most serious problem is that I discovered that inequality wasn't just about hunger. Inequality is a basket full of inequalities that we must examine, each in its own time and according to its importance. Religious inequality, financial inequality, inequality in education, inequality in medical care, inequality in waiting lists for public healthcare systems—that is, there are dozens and dozens of reasons for inequality. You know, all over the world, all over the world there is a lot of inequality, and we fight to try to convince society to be indignant about this hardship, because it's a matter of indignation, it 's no longer just a matter of rights, it's a matter of indignation, because many times you have the law and that law is disrespected right in front of the authorities, in the eyes of the judiciary, and depending on where a person was born, nothing is done. You see, even today, this war between Russia and Ukraine remains largely unexplained. If the war is because Putin thinks some Ukrainians are Russian by birth, that his territory belongs to him, and that he thinks the Ukrainian people belong to Ukraine, there wouldn't be a war; it could be resolved with a public opinion poll . Do you want to be Russian or Ukrainian? The people decided and would go wherever they wanted. But that's not the only problem. The problem of power is something more serious. This invasion of Iran by the United States is inexplicable. Trump thought that by killing Caminei he had won the war, but the war was just beginning. The result of this war, besides the deaths that we can never recover from, is the Strait of Hormoço, which is causing an increase in fuel prices, an increase in gasoline prices, an increase in the cost of living, and an increase in fertilizer prices. Who pays the price for this war? The poor people. It is he, and on his shoulders, that the thoughtless actions of the world's leaders often fall, you know. After the Iran war and the Ukraine war, the whole world is arming itself again. The entire world spent almost 3 trillion dollars on weapons last year. And how much was spent on food? How much was spent on healthcare? How much was spent on education? In other words, this demonstrates that the poor continue to be treated as if they were numerous, not as human beings. Who is concerned about children going hungry in Latin America, Asia, and Africa? That child is not just a number; it is a human being who came into the world thanks to God and needs to be cared for. Who takes care of this? Which leader is concerned about this? You can count them on the fingers of my hand, which only has four fingers. So few people were concerned, and yet it solved the problem of humanity, which was born to live in communion and was born to live in community. It is this pastor who is leaving humanity alone, a pastor who should be a companion to women, men, and children, for better or for worse. Dier, when are we going to fix this world? We have the UN Security Council , 15 permanent members, 15 permanent countries, five of which are powerful. France, England, the United States, Russia, and China. Five people who could end all wars, who could prevent any wars from starting, but they are the ones who start the wars. They are the ones who produce weapons, they are the ones who sell weapons. This year we have the highest number of armed conflicts in world history since the Second World War, when the world needs peace, harmony, love, education, food, and work, and we are living in war and conflict. People, how can we consider what happened in the Gaza Strip to be normal ? How can we find Netanyahu's behavior of killing women and children normal? This ca n't be normal. So, the question of outrage is that five people could resolve this. About 15 days ago I called Trump, I spoke with Trump for 1 hour, 1 hour and 20 minutes. I called Fiping and spoke with him for over an hour. I called the guy, spoke with them for over an hour, begging them to do something about it . Please, there are only five of you . You are the permanent members of the Security Council. They have the power of veto. The power of veto could prevent many things, but it only prevents what benefits ONA. They do not forbid what is evil. Get together . I still joked around with work. I invite Tijiping and the kid to have some wine at his house in Florida. You don't have a gulf course. Invite them in, and a color will arrive to put an end to all this . Let's spend that war money on education. [clearing throat] Let's spend this war money on food. We're going to spend that war money, you know? He has health, but it seems to me that the deaf ears of the leaders do not hear the cry of the millions and millions and millions and millions of poor people who wander the world like nomads in search of an opportunity. And often the path they find leads to a concentration camp. The world is more confusing now. And it is in this aspect that religion is important, because religion can bring comfort, it can, through the spirituality of the human being, bring a little peace and a little hope. The pastors here in Brazil, Arvaldo knows, I refuse every time someone is asked to go to a church to talk about politics, I just don't go. I'm not going because I have great respect for people's faith. I have great respect for the individual commitment that each person has to God. So, don't invite me to a meeting to form a committee because I won't go. I don't go to either the Catholic or the Evangelical church because I respect people's faith. If I want to engage in politics and campaigning, I'll do it in the streets, but I won't do it in church. And no church, because I believe that every human being needs to have their own moment of peace to talk to God. Jan already said something here. I always say that if there's one human being in the world that God has been very generous to, it's me. I don't believe there's anyone God has been more generous to than me. First, because I was born in a region where children, many children, died before [clearing throat] the age of 5 from hunger. Secondly, because I came to São Paulo when I was 7 years old to avoid starving to death. And I'm not ashamed to say that I ate bread for the first time when I was 7 years old. My whole life I've longed to eat an apple. I only started eating when I was old enough to buy it. So I keep thinking, if God took a boy who was born in the Brazilian Northeast with the possibility of dying of hunger before the age of 5 and made him survive and made him become president of the Republic three times, there ca n't be a greater embrace that God gave to a human being than the one he gave to me. It cannot. [applause] And I don't need to keep proving things. My whole life I've had to prove myself. You know that poor, black children in Brazil spend their lives proving our existence. When I created my party, I spent years having to explain the color of my party's flag. I used the blood of Christ as an example of the red in my flag. Then, after they questioned the flag, they questioned the star of my party. I've spent my whole life showing that the great navigators throughout human history used the star as a guide to cross the seas. After spending years explaining the red flag and the star, I moved on to explaining my beard. Why did I have a beard? I used to say Jesus Christ had a beard. But this doesn't convince those who are against it, because there are people who don't want to be convinced. And I wanted to tell you that we are at a very important moment in the country. In 19 days, this country will decide what kind of regime it wants, what kind of government it wants, what kind of democracy we want. And the Brazilian people are sovereign. I've even told my friend Trump, don't interfere in the Brazilian elections, because the Brazilian elections are a problem for the Brazilian people. And don't doubt the Brazilian ballot boxes. Don't doubt it. [applause] The proof, the most compelling proof I have that the Brazilian ballot box is the most reliable ballot box in the world, is that if it could be rigged, Lula wouldn't have been president of the Republic three times. It wouldn't be because I came in second in '89, I came in second in '94, I came in second in '98, I came in first in 2002, first in 2006. The PT came in first in 2010 with Dilma, first in 2014, second in 2018 and first in 2022. And they were the ones in government. It is those who reject the ballot box, it is those who reject democracy, who say that the ballot box is not valid. They were in power and now they're in jail because they tried to stage a coup. So I wanted you all to know that religion is sacred to me. It's a sacred thing and I respect people who believe in whatever religion they want to believe in. No one needs to answer to me, or to anyone else. You and God know, you are one and the same, and nobody needs to know what you say or what you do. It is this thing that I strive for, this thing that I carry in my heart. And I'm already 80 years old and I've been like this for many, many years. And that's how we can change politics in the world, how we can exercise democracy more. I know what happened to Martin Luther King to achieve human rights in the United States, which are often still disregarded today. Every day we see in the press a white soldier killing a black man in the streets of New York. Because when you approach a white person, you approach them in a civilized manner. When it's a black person, they're immediately told to lie down on the ground. It 's the same here in Brazil. Here, people often ask questions of white people, but shoot at black people. And it's not for lack of laws, it's because there's a law greater than the brain matter in our heads that needs to be purified to remove prejudice. In this country, after 350 years of slavery, when slavery was abolished , it was to throw black people out onto the streets without any rights, to treat them like vagrants. It's possibly the same in the United States as in several other countries. So, my dear colleagues, pastors, senators, there's only one female senator here. I wanted to tell you all, you can be sure of one thing. I am motivated by the cause. I have a cause, and it's not a small one. I have a cause, which is to fight relentlessly so that we can end inequality on planet Earth. This is my fight [applause] and this fight will be part of my speech on the 20th at the UN, on the 23rd. On the 23rd I will give a speech at the UN to draw the attention of the five most important members of the UN Security Council. You are disrespecting the very reason why the UN Security Council was created. It was created to bring peace, to bring harmony, and not to wage war. If you abstain when you have to make a decision, you are cowards. If you don't make decisions at the right time, it means you don't deserve to be considered safe. If we don't say this, loud and clear, it's not worth pretending to play politics when what the world really needs is truth. So, my love, thank you for this meeting. May God continue to evangelize. And one important thing, okay? One important thing, in this country, you can be sure that we fought [clearing throat] very hard so that the poor are treated with dignity. I always tell the story of an American journalist who lives in Rio de Janeiro and was taking a stroll on a beach [clearing his throat] in São Paulo called Ilha Bela. He was perhaps with his wife and son on Ilha Bela when his son became ill, and he went to the car to get some medicine for his son. He opened the trunk of the car, and the trunk fell on his head, causing him to bleed profusely. And then an ambulance came to pick him up, and he started to get scared. How am I going to pay for that ambulance? In the United States, it takes many thousands of dollars to pay for an ambulance. How am I going to pay? Put him in the ambulance. He went to the hospital, treated his son, and received eight stitches in his head. When he asked, the payment was zero, because the SUS, our public health system here in Brazil, doesn't ask if you're black or white, American, Brazilian, or Portuguese. He arrived at the hospital and was treated for free, with great respect. [applause] We are, we are the only country in the world with more than 100 million inhabitants that has a single health system, a single system that distributes 41 medications for continuous use to people free of charge. You can be rich or you can be poor. If you show up at the pharmacy with a prescription, it will be free, just like it's for the poor. The world could do that. The world has the money for this [snoring] and they don't do it. They don't do it because the poor aren't taken seriously. The poor are not respected. There's only one day when the poor are truly valued. It's election day. After the election, the poor become poor again. You don't see anyone speaking ill of poor people on election day. People speak ill of bankers, they speak ill of businessmen, they speak ill of everyone, but they don't speak ill of the poor. But after the election, he goes back to having lunch with the banker, dinner with the businessman, and the poor man wants to be forgotten again. The day that poor people become aware and start voting for people from their own world, perhaps we can do what happened in South Africa. 27 million black people were governed by 6 million white people. Then Mandela came along, the apartheid system fell, and black people learned that returning as black meant keeping black people in control of that country. I tell Janja, the day women realize they are just a majority in society, we could have a congress with a majority of women, with a majority of workers. We don't have it, because changing consciousness isn't easy . Often, poor people don't believe in themselves, and trying to convince them that nobody likes being poor, nobody is proud of being poor, nobody was born to be poor. What we lack is opportunity. If we have the opportunity, we will stop being poor. And I want to tell you something, we are going to need the churches a lot next year , because I'm going to create a care policy for the elderly. I'm going to create a care policy, [applause] not just for the person who is sick, because for the person who is sick, we're going to have a health worker who will go to their house and take care of them, but we want to create a care policy to get men and women out of isolation. People who are at home alone in front of a television, who have no company anymore, who are no longer taken to birthday parties, just sit there on the sofa. Do you know when that person actually needs to have a place? There needs to be a place to walk around, to watch movies, to swim if you want, to watch whatever you want, to dance, and even to date. Because nowadays, at 70, even at 80, you can still date well. So I'm going to... this is the world we're going to create, folks. And I can tell you, I know the work of the Catholic Church, I know the work of the Evangelical Church. I've already had the opportunity to speak to Pope Francis, and as long as the Catholic Church doesn't end celibacy and allow women to be priests, to be bishops, women can speak, you know? We're going to see the Catholic Church face difficulties. This is an advantage that the evangelical church has. Women are treated equally. A woman can be whatever she wants to be. And that's what has made the evangelical church grow so much in Brazil. And I have no problem with that, buddy. People who aren't serious are already known to the public. No lie can fool the people for a lifetime. A lie has short legs. And truth. What is important is that we exercise our faith and our spirituality with respect for Him, the Almighty, who is the reason for our existence. Thank you all very much. [applause]