Candelária massacre

The church itself and the buildings around it in Pius X Square became known as a popular location for possibly hundreds of Rio de Janeiro's street children to form a makeshift home at night.

In the early 1990s, the area around the Candelária Church developed a high crime rate as street children increasingly began to commit criminal activities such as pickpocketing and robbery.

[2] The names of the eight victims are inscribed in a wooden cross, erected in the garden across the church: The investigation led the police to Wagner dos Santos, one of the teenagers that survived, even though he was hit four times.

According to studies conducted by associations connected to the Amnesty International, forty four of the seventy children that slept in the streets of that region lost their lives in a violent manner.

[3] In 2023, 30 years after the massacre, the majority of the survivors had already died or was missing, most famously Sandro Barbosa do Nascimento, that in 2000 orchestrated the bus 174 hijacking and was killed by police; and Elizabeth Cristina de Oliveira Maia, known then as Beth Gorda ("Fat Beth") and one of the leaders of the group of young people that lived in the vicinity of the Candelária Church, that was killed in 2000 by drug dealers, according to the Rio de Janeiro police.

The event was addressed by the Brazilian death metal band Lacerated and Carbonized in the song "The Candelária Massacre" from their 2013 album The Core of Disruption.

Blaggers ITA did the same in their 1993 single "Oxygen" [6] It is also portrayed, in a flashback, by the protagonist of the book O Imperador da Ursa Maior by Carlos Eduardo Novaes.