Taking place in Rio in Brazil every year before the ascetic rigours of Lent kick in, Brazil's Rio Carnival attracts more than 2 million people, half of these coming from all over the world.

It has been a magnet for party-goers since first held in 1723.

But now it could be under threat, after the new Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Marcelo Crivella, elected on a platform that included pledges to support the carnival, halved funding for the city's 13 top samba schools that organise the event.

And critics fear that his evangelical Christianity that might lie behind the funding cuts.

Crivella is a bishop of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God that was founded by his uncle Edir Macedo in 1977.

'The schools have concluded that with this 50 per cent reduction in their funds for preparing and producing Carnival, it will not be possible for them to parade,' Jorge Castanheira, the president of the samba schools association, told Globo.

The cuts will save about £250,000 for each samba school, and Crivella intends to use this cash to pay for free meals for kids in daycare.

Unlike all his predecessors since 1984, Crivella did not attend this year's carnival.

Crivella, who believes homosexuality is a sin, is also refusing to fund Rio's Gay Pride marches, the Telegraph reports.

Crivella denied his decision was to do with his Christian faith.

'Not at all. It is only to do with the recession that Rio is going through,' he said.  he told reporters this week.

The Telegraph reports that Rio's carnival is one of the few remaining bright spots in the local economy. Since the Olympic Games, the home city of Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf Mountain has descended ever deeper into economic chaos, compounded by a decline in royalties from offshore oil and an increase in pension costs.