Over 2,000 people filled São Paulo’s cathedral on the morning of Monday 28 August for the requiem Mass of Archbishop Luciano Mendes de Almeida, a former leader of the Brazilian bishops’ conference (CNBB), who died on 27 August. According to the local press, the majority were people from the poor suburbs, street people and Church activists, paying tribute to the archbishop’s tireless work for the poor, street children and the elderly.

Dom Luciano, as he was always known, entered the Jesuit order in 1947 and was ordained priest in 1958. In 1976, during the Brazilian military dictatorship, he was chosen by Cardinal Arns of São Paulo as auxiliary bishop for the working-class area of Belém. In 1979, the Brazilian bishops first elected him for what were to be 14 years guiding the CNBB, six as general secretary and eight as president. It fell to him to manage relationships with a Vatican increasingly hostile to attempts to develop the “preferential option for the poor”, whether by training priests in the community or by publishing works of liberation theology. Since 1988 he had been Archbishop of Mariana in the state of Minas Gerais. 

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