The early retirement of a judge left the position on Brazil’s Supreme Court vacant a month ago, and this Thursday, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva appointed Jorge Messias, a 45-year-old evangelical jurist. Messias, who currently serves as the Union’s attorney general, is also the government’s main emissary in its attempts to mitigate the rejection that the president and the Workers’ Party generate among evangelicals, a community that gains political clout with each election. If the Senate ratifies his nomination, Brazil’s highest court will have two evangelicals and only one woman among its eleven members.
Evangelicals make up 27% of the population, more than 47 million evangelicals. Messiah, who from the beginning was the favorite to fill the vacancy, had to undergo a hearing before the Senate and be confirmed by their lordships. So he would be the youngest of the togados and would have three decades ahead of him in the position because they retire at 75.
Although he is not a member of the Workers’ Party, he is considered very close to its governments. Ten years ago he already occupied an important position in Dilma Rousseff’s government.
Since Lula appointed him attorney general of the Union, in 2023, he has carried out some delicate missions, such as representing the president in the March for Jesus, the largest evangelical festival in Brazil, organizing meetings with leaders of Protestant churches or hiring a law firm in the United States to defend the government against the tariffs imposed by Donald Trump.
Considered cautious and discreet, Messias was born in Pernambuco, like Lula. He belongs to the Batista Church and attends weekly services.
Messias is the third Supreme Court judge appointed by President Lula since he returned to power in 2023. On all three occasions he turned a deaf ear to the campaigns launched by black and feminist movements to nominate a woman, a person of color or a woman of color.
Lula has once again made it clear that, above questions of identity or representation in this multiracial country, he gives priority to the closeness and trust of the candidates. The judges of the Brazilian Supreme Court are the interpreters par excellence of the Constitution, but in recent years, in addition to exercising this function, they have acquired political influence.
It was the Supreme Court that ordered Lula’s incarceration, release and annulment of his sentence. And it is the same court that last September tried and sentenced the previous president, Jair Bolsonaro, to 27 years in prison for leading a coup plot against Lula. In retaliation to the trial, the United States imposed sanctions on nearly all members of the Supreme Court.
Messias entered the political history of Brazil and the inexhaustible universe of Brazil memes– years ago as a supporting character in a conversation between Rousseff and Lula, which was illegally recorded. The then president told his mentor that he had the decree ready to appoint him as a minister and protect him from the judges, and that Messias would take it into his own hands. Since he had the flu, she called him Bessias. A nickname that the now appointed Supreme Court justice was unable to shake off in the following decade.
