 Hundreds of people, among them victims of crime, families affected by violence in one form or another, and Cariocas fed up with the current state of things participated in a mass at the notable downtown cathedral, the Igreja da Candelária, in the Centro part of Rio.Catholic leader Nixon Bezerra de Brito, mentioned other brutal acts of violence that had occurred in recent years in Rio and declared that João Hélio was "a martyr in a city that doesn't know how to respect life.