Catholic archbishop Helder Camara, four times Nobel Peace Prize candidate, and twice the target of assassination attempts, died peacefully on August 27th, in Recife, north-east Brazil. He died, aged 90, as he would have wanted, lying in a hammock, surrounded by close friends.
Helder Pessoa Camara, born on February 7th, 1909, was the second youngest of 13 children born to Adelaide Pessoa, a schoolteacher, and Joao Camara, a journalist and theatre critic, in Fortaleza, an impoverished city in north-east Brazil.
An epidemic of whooping cough wiped out five members of his family, a tragedy which left a lasting mark on the young boy, who said later that he had known that he would become a priest from the age of four. His mother was a devout Catholic, his father a freemason, modest parents of modest means who taught him tolerance in the face of different religious traditions. "My father taught me that it is possible to be good without being religious," he said.
At 14 he entered a seminary where he quickly established himself as a gifted student and was ordained at the age of 22. Although he later regretted it, the young priest became active in the Integralist movement, a nationalist party with fascist tendencies, which considered communism to be the worst of all evils. His local bishop asked him to become an election agent for church candidates in the 1934 elections, a task he completed in style, his slate winning all the seats. His political talents led to an invitation to join the Education Ministry, to run for mayor of Rio, and even to the suggestion of a vice-presidential candidacy in future elections.
He left the Integralists and renounced direct participation in electoral politics, working instead in the favelas or shanty towns of Rio, where he witnessed appalling poverty and marginalisation. "When you live with the poor you realise that even though they cannot read or write, they certainly know how to think," he said, beginning a radical new departure in church activism, later enshrined as Liberation Theology.
In 1952 he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Rio de Janeiro, where he played a key role in the formation of the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops (CNBB), going on to establish himself as an outspoken critic of Brazil's unjust social and political order.
He lived simply, rejecting the pomp and ceremony associated with important church office. He wore a threadbare brown cassock and ate at worker canteens, developing a keen ear for the concerns of the common citizen.
In 1955 he helped establish the Latin American Bishop's Conference (CELAM), which organised the landmark 1968 bishop's conference in Medellin, Colombia, at which church activists formally adopted the "preferential option for the poor" as a social doctrine.
Appointed Archbishop of Olinda and Recife in 1964, he put the traditional gilded throne into storage and replaced it with a simple wooden chair. His appointment coincided with the beginning of military rule, which lasted until his retirement in 1985.
The army banned him from the airwaves, tapped his phone and called him the "Red Bishop", while unidentified assailants sprayed his home with gunfire, although he was out of the country at the time. One of his closest collaborators, Fr Enrique Pereira Neto was shot dead.
"When I feed the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor they call me a communist," commented the archbishop who refused to tone down his criticism of army rule.
When Pope John Paul II went to Recife in 1980, he greeted Helder Camara with an embrace that probably guaranteed his life: "This man is a friend of the poor. He is my friend," declared the pontiff.
Archbishop Helder Camara was a lively, charismatic figure, just five feet tall and nine stone in weight, acquiring a solid reputation in Europe as a champion of the poor, the voice of the voiceless. He wrote 40 books, many of them banned by the military, but which circulated secretly among opponents of the regime. Since his retirement he dedicated his time to prayer and reflection, frequently travelling overseas, using his public platform to demand a more equitable distribution of land and wealth in his country.
Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso described Camara as a holy man and declared three days of national mourning in his honour.
One suspects that the deceased archbishop would have been far happier to hear the news that his funeral coincided with the biggest popular protest in years, as 100,000 Indians, workers and peasants marched in demand of economic and political reform.
Archbishop Helder Camara: born 1909; died August, 1999.