RELIGION/RIGHTS-BRAZIL: Time Conspires Against Progressive Church

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 31 1999 (IPS) - The death of Bishop Helder Cámara signifies more than the loss of one of the great defenders of the poor for the Roman Catholic Church of Brazil and all of Latin America.

His death also marks the disappearance of a generation that put the Church on the side of the oppressed, through the “option for the poor,” Liberation Theology, and in a few cases even support for the armed revolutionary struggle.

These were the bishops, theologians and priests who, like Cámara, contributed decisively to formulating and putting into practice the Church’s social doctrine, made official during the Second Vatican Council, from 1962 to 1965.

That clergy, labelled progressive for its social and political concerns, began to lose ground and many voices last decade, especially in Brazil, in the face of a Vatican offensive to restore the supremacy of the work of evangelisation.

The Base Ecclesiastic Communities organised by Cámara as a broad movement of faithful that enabled the Church to mobilise and communicate directly with the people, lost the recognition and backing of the Church hierarchy.

The most prominent of Brazil’s Liberation Theologians, Leonardo Boff, watched as his own works were rejected by the Vatican, and was submitted to several years of silence before he left the Church, “tired of an unproductive struggle.”

Upon his retirement in 1985, Cámara – dubbed “the brother of the poor” by Pope John Paul – was succeeded in the archdiocese of Olinda and Recife, in Brazil’s impoverished northeast, by conservative Bishop José Cardoso Sobrinho, who reoriented the Church’s labour in the area and dismantled a school that produced progressive priests.

Indeed, throughout the papacy of John Paul II, the Vatican has designated new bishops, cardinals and directors of institutions of religious instruction and transferred bishops from one diocese to another to dilute the work of the progressive clergy.

Sao Paulo, the country’s largest archdiocese, was divided, which diminished the clout of Archbishop Paulo Evaristo Arns, a cardinal who defied the 1964-85 military regime by defending human rights and revealing the practice of torture.

When he retired last year, Arns was replaced by Claudio Humes, a moderate among Brazil’s bishops.

Time, which takes shape in retirements, is conspiring against the progressives. But the 21 years of John Paul’s papacy have not been sufficient to erase their influence in Latin America.

Brazil’s National Conference of Bishops, founded by Cámara and likeminded clergy in the 1950s, continues expressing itself on social and political questions and harshly condemning the economic model adopted by the government.

Agrarian reform and the Movimento dos Sem Terra (Landless Movement), which have the strong backing of the progressive clergy in Brazil, are frequently praised by Pope John Paul.

The Church’s pastoral commissions denounce human rights violations and remain active in favour of poor peasant farmers, the hungry, indigenous peoples and others who suffer discrimination.

Priests throughout the country are keeping alive the option for the poor, many of them risking their lives standing up to landowners in defence of the landless.

Cámara’s ideas “could germinate even stronger with his death,” said one of his longtime collaborators in Olinda and Recife, friar Aloisio Fragoso.

The late bishop’s international influence feeds that hope.

On the military regime’s list of “subversives,” Cámara was barred from giving conferences and interviews in Brazil, and government censorship forced the local press to ignore him for many years. But he was still heard abroad, denouncing rights violations such as torture committed in his country.

Nominated by the episcopate of West Germany for the Nobel Peace Prize in the early 1970s, his candidacy was resisted by the Brazilian military, which did not want to see his voice take on even greater international reverberation.

“If I give food to the poor, I’m called a saint, but if I ask why they don’t have food, I’m accused of being a communist,” declared Cámara during the dictatorship.

Leonidas Proaño, the “bishop of the Indians” in Ecuador, “mentioned Don Helder Cámara first when listing the names of those who were building a Church that is closer to those who have nothing,” said Miguel Lluco Tixe, coordinator of the indigenous rights Movimiento Plurinacional Pachakutick (Pachakutick Multinational Movement).

The Ecuadorean indigenous leader described Cámara, who died last Friday at age 90, as “one of those who worked hardest for a revolution within the Church, in order for it to cease being elitist.”

“He was the champion of the episcopal stance, an exceptional bishop, a man who gave new life to evangelical justice in Latin America, and above all a man committed and devoted to the neediest,” said Luis Alberto Luna Tobar, Archbishop of the Ecuadorean city of Cuenca.

Brazilian Vice-President Marco Maciel said Cámara’s ideas had an influence at an international level, and “contributed to updating the Church’s social doctrine.”

A message by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso stated that “he was a saintly man, who dedicated his life to ecumenism, human rights and the struggle for peace and solidarity.”

It is a mystery that a bishop of such stature and prestige was never appointed as a cardinal. The irreproachable conduct of Cámara, who continued living a simple lifestyle in Olinda after retirement, proffering constant expressions of faith in the Church and avoiding controversy, granted further strength to his message.