Pastor dies trying to fast for 40 days to imitate Jesus

The man was trying to go for 40 days without food or water. Photo / Getty Images

A pastor has died after going 25 days without food and water while trying to fast like Jesus.

Francisco Barajah, 39, died in Mozambique attempting to fast for 40 days, the BBC reported.

After 25 days, the founder of the Santa Trindade Evangelical Church lost so much weight he could not stand up.

According to media reports, his loved ones saw how sick he had become and insisted that he go to hospital, where he was given serums to get rehydrated, according to the BBC.

But his digestive organs failed as he had developed acute anaemia and did not have enough healthy red blood cells to carry sufficient oxygen.

He died in hospital in the country’s capital, Beira.

Barajah was also a French teacher in the town of Messica in the central province of Manica, next to Zimbabwe.

According to the BBC, members of the Santa Trindade Church said the pastor and his followers often fasted, but not for so long.

His brother Marques Manuel Barajah reportedly changed his medical diagnoses to low blood pressure after the death, despite admitting the pastor had fasted.

The dangerous attempt to imitate Christ’s 40-day fast in the desert – as described in the Gospel of Matthew – has been made before.

According to Insider, in 2006, a 34-year-old woman in London died after going 23 days without food or water while trying to mimic Christ’s fast.

The global news publication reported that if Barajah did indeed go 25 days without any water, that would be longer than The Guinness World Record for the act.

It reported that the longest amount of time a human has survived without food and water is 18 days, when an Austrian teenager was forgotten by police after being put in a holding cell in 1979.