Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday thanked Argentine President Alberto Fernandez, Pope Francis and other world leaders for his “solidarity”, in his first appearance since his prison sentences were canceled.

In his first statement of his new legal status, Lula also cited a long list of “thanks” to former Spanish government president Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, former Bolivian President Evo Morales and the São Paulo Forum, which brings together parties from the left in Latin America.

Of all of them, he said that he received “solid evidence of solidarity,” especially during the 580 days he spent in prison because of the rulings that were overturned last Monday by the Supreme Court judge, who considered that the court that sentenced Lula did not have the legal capacity to judge him.

The first mention of the Argentine president, who said that in 2019 he was “fit and courageous, as a candidate for the presidency of his country against the extreme right”, to visit him in the cell he occupied at the police headquarters. Federal headquarters in Curitiba.

“I asked him not to conduct interviews so that he would not be hurt by the right, but he told me: Lula, I have no problem with what they will say, because I know you are the biggest victim of a lie in Latin American politics.”

He also revealed that Fernandez “was the first” to call him last Monday, after Supreme Court Judge Edson Fashin canceled all prison sentences against him and decided to retrial, but in the courts of Brasilia.

Regarding Pope Francis, Lula noted that while he was in prison, he “sent someone” to visit him with a letter and then received him in the Vatican, as soon as he regained his freedom due to a change in jurisprudence in the rules governing the imprisonment of a convicted man.

“The fact that the Pope welcomed me to the Vatican was not for a long conversation about my condition, but about fighting inequality, which is the greatest evil that exists today on the planet,” said Lula.

The abolition of the provisions, which added nearly 26 years in total, restored the former president to his political rights and opens up the possibility that he will again be a candidate for the presidency in 2022, when the current president is away. – Right, Jair Bolsonaro, he intends to renew his mandate.