In the early morning, even before ovens were turned on, people started to form the line. By the time the Franciscans brothers from Santo Antonio do Pari Parish were ready to distribute the food containers, there were thousands waiting for a meal.

“Hunger came before the fever (a main COVID-19 symptom),” Franciscan Brother Jose Francisco de Cassia dos Santos told Catholic News Service.

Santos, who heads the Franciscan Solidarity Service, has been distributing meals to the homeless in the centre of Sao Paulo for more than 13 years. The traditional solidarity service, dubbed the Priest’s Tea, usually drew a few hundred homeless people, who congregated the St Francis rectory. Now, said Santos, the majority of people in line waiting for the Priest’s Tea are those who lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Santos said since March 24, when the city installed stay-at-home measures to combat the new coronavirus, the number of people seeking food more than quadrupled, forcing his team to set up another distribution center to feed the population: The Franciscan Tent.

“We used to distribute about 350-400 meals per day at the Priest’s Tea, now the line has maybe 3,500 to 4,000 people on a daily basis, and it continues to grow,” he said.