Father Luiz Cesar Moraes only wanted to bless his congregation.
It was March 2020 in Itajubá, Minas Gerais, and like so many priests in the early days of the pandemic, he decided to livestream his prayer on social media. He was recording with the phone’s rear camera, so he had no way of seeing what was really happening on screen: a filter had given him dog ears and a nose, then a bandana, and had even made him lift invisible weights while he continued preaching with complete seriousness.
The faithful watching from their homes could not believe it, and the video filled with laughter and screenshots. The priest later had to explain what had happened and humbly asked that no one use the images to make fun of him or his work as a priest. Five years later, when he died at 73, that moment was still the first thing many people remembered about him.