The rector of the Sanctuary of Our Lord the Holy Christ called yesterday for public security to be stepped up to avoid the feeling of fear that pervades life in the city of Ponta Delgada.
“Public security is failing and the police may not be fully fulfilling their duties. I think the problem is not the laws but the way we read them,” said Canon Manuel Carlos Alves at the end of yesterday’s morning Mass at the Shrine and following the stabbing of a man that took place late yesterday morning in the vicinity of the building.
“What happened was in broad daylight, in such a busy street and place,” said the priest, calling for a ‘commitment from everyone’ so that this problem can be resolved.
“It doesn’t matter who is responsible, who should or shouldn’t act, or who is to blame. All of us, from those who make the laws to those who enforce them, to us Christians, are socially responsible and that’s why we can’t back down in the fight against evil,” he said, highlighting concrete situations of destitution and drug use that happen every day in Campo de São Francisco and around the shrine.
“Let’s not shy away from our responsibilities and let’s call on the authorities to act within their powers. We need to solve the problems,” he said.
“People can’t live in fear,” he said, stressing that the ‘authorities must fulfill their duties to protect the safety of citizens and public spaces’.


The increase in indigence and drug use in the city of Ponta Delgada is daily evidence, as is the increase across the region. More than a third of the new psychotropic substances seized in 2021 in Portugal were collected in the Azores, where substances “never seen before” in Europe have already been recorded, the Polícia Judiciária revealed in 2022.
The number of users of these drugs in the region is not accounted for, but in March 2023, there were 937 users in opioid substitution programs, and “many of them use synthetic drugs in parallel”, the regional secretary for Health, Mónica Seidi, told Agência Lusa in an interview in 2023.
A study by the Novo Dia association in 2020 identified 493 homeless people in the Azores and “a higher proportion of homeless people per thousand inhabitants (2%)” than on the mainland (0.84%).
In the last three years, “more than 53,000 doses of synthetic substances for consumption” were seized in the region and imported.
In 2023, a very significant quantity of methamphetamine was also seized, close to 20,000 doses, an “ultra-potent synthetic drug that is also marketed in the region”.

in Correio dos Açores – Natalino Viveiros, director

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL) as part of Bruma Publication and ADMA (Azores-Diaspora Media Alliance) at California State University, Fresno, PBBI thanks Luso Financial for sponsoring NOVIDADES.