Helder Câmara

OBITUARY 

HELDER CAMARA, former Archbishop of Olinda and Recife in north-east Brazil, who died on 27 August, aged 90, can justly be called one of the shapers of the Roman Catholic Church in the second half of the twentieth century. He invented the concept of the bishops' conference, and was responsible for the creation of the first, in Brazil, in 1952. With his Chilean colleague, Manuel Larraín, he established the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM). Through his behind-the-scenes discussions at the Second Vatican Council, he helped to open the Roman Catholic Church to the needs of the modern world.

Helder Pessoa Câmara was born in Fortaleza, capital of the north-east Brazilian state of Ceará, on 7 February 1909. His father was a journalist, his mother a primary school teacher. In the seminary, staffed by the French Lazarists, he acquired a command of French and Latin that was to be invaluable to him in his later international work. Ordained priest in August 1931, he soon showed his organising ability in the organisation of the Young Christian Workers in Ceará, but at that time his social and political concerns led him into the Brazilian integralist movement, inspired by the fascist ideas of the Portuguese dictator Salazar.

His organisational abilities brought him a transfer to Rio de Janeiro, first as national assistant to Specialised Catholic Action, and later also as auxiliary bishop. Here Câmara's social ideas evolved. His post with Catholic Action placed him in close contact with the laity and gave him a vision of Brazil as a whole. It was also his springboard for action in the wider Church. In Rome with the Brazilian delegation for the Holy Year of 1950, Câmara met Pope Pius XII and the then Secretary of State, Giovanni Montini. The friendship that grew up between him and Montini enabled Câmara to lobby Montini in support of his idea of a National Conference of Bishops of Brazil, which was set up in 1952, with Câmara as its first secretary general, a post he held for 12 years. In 1955 there followed the creation of CELAM, with Miguel Larraín as its first president and Câmara its first vice-president.

By the time the Second Vatican Council was called in 1959, Helder Câmara was one of the Brazilian bishops with the best contacts in Rome. He was among the six Brazilian bishops appointed to the preparatory commissions. Câmara's almost daily letters from the council, only now being studied and published, show him frustrated by the control exercised by the Curia over the preparations and the agenda, and one of the most energetic organisers of the revolt of the council Fathers that broke this stranglehold. In this work he was a close collaborator of Cardinal Suenens, Archbishop of Malines-Brussels, and one of the most influential figures on the progressive wing of the council, and with the then secretary of the French bishops' conference, Roger Etchegaray. Câmara never spoke in the council chamber, but he was a tireless networker behind the scenes. Among his projects were a regular meeting of representatives of different bishops' conferences, and a forum for dialogue between First and Third Worlds.

Another movement, which foreshadows his concern in the last phase of his life, was known as "the Church of the Poor", a group bringing together Third World bishops, priests from the Mission de France and the Little Brothers of Charles de Foucauld. This group's concern that the Church should address itself to the gulf separating the rich and poor worlds, and symbolise its commitment by austerity in its life, was expressed in a manifesto written by Yves Congar, Pour une Eglise Servante et Pauvre.

Meanwhile in Brazil the populist rhetoric of President João Goulart provided the pretext for a military coup on 31 March. The next day Helder Câmara arrived in Recife as Archbishop. He had come home to the north-east, but as a more rounded figure, able to relate this abandoned region to the wider world. As he said in his first message to the diocese: "I am a north-easterner talking to north-easterners, with his eyes fixed on Brazil, Latin America and the world. A human creature who considers himself a brother in weakness and sin of all people of all races and all corners of the world. A Christian addressing Christians, but with my heart open, ecumenically, to all people of all creeds and all ideologies. A bishop of the Catholic Church who, in imitation of Christ, has not come to be served, but to serve."

In Recife he attempted to implement the vision of the "Church of the Poor". He avoided wearing the archbishop's purple sash, abandoned the palace in the pretentious suburbs for the aptly named "church of the frontiers", tucked away behind the city's inner ring road. He had his supper at the taxi-drivers' stall across the road and hitched lifts around the city instead of running an official car. Nor were these mere gestures. Câmara gave away church land to provide a settlement for the landless, set up a credit union, brought clergy and laity into the running of the diocese, took the region's church students out of the seminary and put them in small communities in the parishes. He set up a theological institute in which future priests would study alongside lay people, and even receive lectures from women.

One of the few bishops critical from the outset of the 1964 military coup in Brazil, he was made a non-person for nine years, with all references to him banned. A young priest assistant, Henrique Pereira, was brutally murdered by the agents of the dictatorship, but it seems that those sent to kill the archbishop, disguised as beggars or taxi-drivers, could not bring themselves to do the deed, but confessed and asked forgiveness of their intended victim.

Censored in Brazil, Câmara began to travel the world, preaching his vision of a non-violent movement, the "Abrahamic minorities", to work for an end to injustice through peaceful pressure and dialogue. It was then that this diminutive figure, doubled in size by his eloquent gestures, became known to a world audience. His influence increased as his speeches were collected and published in books such as Spiral of Violence, Church and Colonialism and The Desert is Fertile.

But times were changing in the Roman Catholic Church. In 1985, when Helder Câmara reached 75, his resignation was promptly accepted, and the Church of Olinda and Recife was placed in the charge of a dour canon lawyer, José Cardoso, apparently with the mission of dismantling the "Church of the Poor". The resulting acrimony and disillusion have become a scandal in Brazil, and the bishops' conference has tried on numerous occasions to negotiate a transfer of Cardoso, but to no avail.

Dom Helder, or "the Dom", as he was known to his friends, made no public comment on the changes in his archdiocese, but those close to him are convinced that the destruction of his work accelerated the deterioration of his physical and mental health in the last ten years of his life. For the second time, he became a non-person, never sought out, consulted or celebrated by his successor, and, notoriously, passed over for the cardinal's hat that many thought he more than deserved.

On the other hand, no public activity in Recife in these last few years in favour of social justice or welfare was complete without the presence of "the Dom", smiling serenely. It was now that his inner resources and piety came to his rescue, and the support of a loyal group of friends. One of them was the Franciscan Aloísio Fragoso, who commented after Dom Helder's death that for such a communicator it was a source of anguish no longer to be able to find the words to express himself; seen in this light, his peaceful death had now brought him blessed release.

© The Tablet Publishing Company