This is a letter we published in our online newsletter on October 13, 2022, but the needs of Julio’s widow and children continue, so we have published it here as-is to give potential donors some background information.
Pure and undefiled religion before our God and Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress (James 1:27).
EMERGENCY HELP NEEDED FOR THE JULIO SEVERO FAMILY
This Pro-Family Activist Hero Lived for the Cause of Christ and Died Suddenly in 2021 Leaving a Widow and Seven Young Children
Donate HERE and select the option
Emergency Help for Julio Severo Family
Scott Lively Ministries is a small organization with a relatively small support base typical of long-term missionary families. We rely entirely on month to month donations and have no extra funding to cover the needs of the Severo Family. In fact, by fundraising for Julio’s family we risk not being able to cover our own expenses, but we’re willing to take that risk out of love for a brother who gave his all for the global pro-family movement and the defense of the biblical family. We therefore hope that whatever you give will be above and beyond your regular support to us, but if you lack the means to do both, please give to support Sarah and the children this month.
If you send a check, write it to Redemption Gate Mission Society
(a church, so your donations are tax deductible).
The mailing address is on the donate page.
Some background:
Julio was one of my closest international ministry allies who translated many of my articles into Portuguese and distributed them all over the world. We became friends when he was in his native Brazil during the period when the LGBT fascists were taking over the government and trying to pass a horrific “anti-homophobia” law under whose terms Julio would have been jailed for boldly speaking biblical truth. Even thought it wasn’t passed into law, the corrupt powers tried to prosecute Julio anyway, and he fled Brazil for an undisclosed neighboring country, taking his young family into the jungle as “illegal aliens” in hiding from his very dangerous enemies. There he and his wife Sarah had several more children and they all endured the travails of poverty, being sustained only by their love for each other and the meager income Julio received from his work as a pro-family missionary and freelance writer.
I didn’t know just how difficult life really was for the Severo family until Anne and I went to their country to finally meet them in person. I determined then to do whatever I could to help them, but only a couple of years later Julio died suddenly of health conditions he did not disclose to anyone (even me) nor get treatment for, for lack of funds and fear of alerting the government to his status as an illegal.
Julio’s death was a blow to all who knew him. He was such a bold witness for Christ and the cause of the biblical family. But, of course, it was an unmitigated disaster for his wife and seven young children (the oldest being just 15 then, I believe).
As soon as we learned of Julio’s demise, several of us Americans who were closest to him formed an ad-hoc group called Friends of Julio Severo and organized a fundraising drive to support Sarah and the kids. I offered to collect and manage the funds under our Redemption Gate Mission Society (church) umbrella and we raised a little over $40,000 that I then disbursed to the family in monthly support payment sufficient to sustain them at survival level (the cost of living is surprisingly higher there than one would expect), and we also helped them get legal help to become legal residents of their adopted country and some much-needed medical help for Sarah. We are still not disclosing the country in which they now reside out of concern about Julio’s political enemies (because as you know the hatred and vindictiveness of the far left is boundless and implacable.)
When the balance of the Severo support account got low I did another fundraiser — twice now — raising a greatly diminishing amount each time to the point that our efforts seem unsustainable.
As of today there is less than one month’s support left in the Severo fund, and if the downward trend continues we’ll barely get them through the winter from what comes in from this appeal. It’s crunch time for the Severos.
Whatever you donate is tax-deductible because we are a church and caring for widows and orphans is a high biblical priority. So this is my appeal. If you donate by mail, please make your checks to Redemption Gate Mission Society and put “Severo family support” in the memo.
Again, because we’re a small ministry with a small support base, optimally, whatever you give would be above and beyond your regular support to this ministry, but if your ability to give is limited, I ask that you donate to the Severo family this month instead of us. 100% of what you give will go to them. We are covering all the overhead costs for managing the funds.
Julio and Sarah’s dream was to immigrate to America — legally — and our initial appeal included that fact and a hope we would raise enough to make it possible. But we raised only enough to sustain them where they are. We remain hopeful that one day a wealthy donor will step forward and make their dream come true, but our part will remain one focused on their simple survival until the children grow old enough to support themselves. The two older ones are getting closer to that time, but they’re still in school now, and frankly there is very little work available where they live. Sarah has no special skills to draw upon other than being a full-time Mom to a house full of little ones and no husband or extended family to help. They do, thank God, belong to a local native church.
God bless you as you give to help them survive.
Carrying on Julio’s Work
Following is an article that gives additional background on Julio’s ministry, and Dr. Lively’s intention to carry on his work in Brazil and around the world.
To give to support the continuation of Julio’s pro-family activism by Dr. Lively donate HERE and select the option “Julio Severo Fund (to carry on his work).”
The Homofascism of the Lula Regime in Brazil (published 10/23/22)
On October 30, 2022, the people of Brazil will chose a new president in a run-off election featuring the conservative incumbent Jair Bolsanaro, and the Marxist former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, aka Lula. Current polling in the corporate media shows Lula in the lead raising the nightmare specter of a return to the extreme homofascism that marked the Lula regime from 2003-2010. It was during Lula’s regime that Brazil’s LGBT Brownshirts drove my friend and ministry ally Julio Severo and his young family into hiding in a foreign country. He died there in 2021, partly in consequence of the dire poverty they faced as Brazilian ex-pats living illegally in exile. My ministry has taken up the task of helping his widow, Sarah, and seven young children to survive without him.
In 2007, while I was on a 50-city tour of the former Soviet Union warning people about the coming wave of US-backed homofascism across the world, Julio Severo was already suffering it in Brazil. My recent article citing my battle with the Bush 43 US Embassy in Riga Latvia in the summer of 2007 alongside the late great Ken Hutcherson is evidence that globalist agenda had already been launched – even before Obama made it the top priority of the State Department from 2008-2016. And Julio’s experience showed that Brazil under Lula was part of the leading edge of that anti-family tsunami.
I first learned of Julio’s ministry in a Lifesite News article by Matthew Hoffman that was emailed to me in June of 2007. The following three paragraphs, edited for length, are from that article:
“During its second year in office, the Lula regime initiated a program, “Brazil Without Homophobia” which teaches that homosexual orientation is unchangeable, and seeks to construct “a culture of peace and values for promoting human diversity.” … Since the initiation of Brazil Without Homophobia, the government has spent millions of dollars funding “Gay Pride” parades and TV programming, and is promoting pro-homosexual “education” programs in the public schools. …
“In addition, the Lula administration is promoting a new “anti-homophobia” law that would prohibit any expression contrary to the homosexual agenda, forbidding Brazilians “To practice, induce or incite discrimination or prejudice of race, skin color, ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender, sex, sexual orientation and gender identity…What is determined in this article involves the practice of any kind of violent, constraining, threatening or humiliating action, of moral, ethical, philosophical or psychological order.” … The Brazilian legal system has also begun to allow homosexual adoptions.
“Brazil Without Homophobia” also promises to promote the homosexual agenda at the international level, a commitment that the Lula regime has fulfilled with a rare enthusiasm.”
Julio Severo became a target of the Lula anti-“homophobia” campaign, but was spared prosecution because pro-family conservatives in the Brazilian legislature prevented the bill from passing. So instead the Lula regime went after him for refusing to vaccinate his children. Julio was an “anti-vaxer” long before the Covid clot-shot debacle awakened the rest of the world to the evils of Big Pharma. According to the Hoffman article “a homosexual government official used his refusal to involve his children with vaccines against him and had a court order to remove his children from their home.” This was technically the catalyst for Julio fleeing Brazil, but make no mistake, it was an act of homofascism on the government’s part, not a concern for the Severo children.
Allow me at this point to remind the reader that the slur “homophobe” is an invention of the LGBT movement to characterize literally ALL disagreement with its political agenda as mental illness. A phobia is a anxiety disorder, and the purpose of the “homophobia” slur is to frame disagreement as hateful bigotry driven by an irrational fear of homosexuals.
“Homophobia” was originally a psychiatric term for a person’s fear of his own homosexual inclinations back in the days when “science” admitted the truth about sexual health and actually helped people overcome same-sex attraction disorder. But after the LGBT movement took permanent control over the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in a political coup in 1973, the “science” was edited to serve the new agenda. And the term “homophobia” was re-purposed to create an anti-Christian/anti-naturalist pejorative equivalent to the anti-homosexual slurs “fag” and “dyke.” All such slurs are dehumanizing and antisocial, and “homophobe” should be condemned alongside the other two, but of course the only standards upheld by the left are double-standards.
“Homophobia” was part of a package of words and concepts designed to advance the newly contrived theory of “Sexual Orientation” which has since fully supplanted self-evident objective truth and reason regarding innate binary heterosexual complementarity in Marxist-controlled academia and the popular culture. So successful have the LGBTs been in brainwashing the public that even many of those fighting the current battle against transgenderism have swallowed hook, line and sinker the sexual orientation theory that justifies transgender ideology: it is a form of cognitive dissonance on the right that (if not overcome) guarantees their eventual defeat (after a string of temporary diminishing victories – just like on “gay marriage.”) No one can win a debate once they stipulate that the opponents’ presuppositions are true.
Julio was one of the few Christian heroes who both knew these truths and devoted his life speaking them despite great personal cost. He is, in the truest sense of the word, a martyr for the cause of Christ.
And Lula, the LGBTs Goliath on the Brazilian battlefield, is as evil and corrupt a figure as anyone in the pantheon of principalities and powers ruling America today, which includes even Obama himself.
I am urging Christians around the world to join me in prayer that Lula does not return to power in Brazil. But either way, I intend to carry on Julio’s pro-family work in Brazil, starting with a mission to that country in early 2023.
