Agda Conceição Silva says that she needed all the help she could get when her newly born son started to have breathing difficulties. A recently arrived migrant from the poor north-eastern Brazilian state of Bahia, Ms Silva had few friends or relatives to turn to for help in Santo Amaro, a down-at-heel working class suburb on the southern edge of São Paulo, Latin America’s biggest city.

But a neighbour – a member of the rapidly growing Universal Church of the Reign of God – provided comfort and advice and within weeks Ms Silva had become the latest recruit of Brazil’s most rapidly growing Pentecostal churches. Twenty years on, Ms Silva, now 49, is one of the church’s most active members and donates 10 per cent of her $600 (£300, €440) salary to it each month. “They helped me sort myself out and now I feel the presence of God,” says Ms Silva, displaying all the fervency of a more recent convert.