HERO
DOM HÉLDER PESSOA CÂMARA
1909 – 1999
“ The Red Bishop”

If you subscribe to Commonweal, be sure to read the article about Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara in the January 30th issue titled “The Red Bishop” by author Flavio Rocha.

Although Câmara was a man who was small in stature, his size did not prevent him from confronting powerful people and corporations who were exploiting millions of poor people in Brazil. In 1964 just after a coup that put Brazil under military rule for 21 years, Pope Paul VI made him Bishop of Olinda and Recife.

Rocha writes, “Under the guise of combating communism, the nation’s rulers clamped down on the press, arrested union leaders, and persecuted student leaders, many of whom were assassinated. Dom Helder consistently raised his voice in defense of human rights. He so outraged the government that he was barred from public speaking for more than ten years and the media were forbidden to mention his name. His friends called him ‘the bishop of the poor, his critics ‘the red bishop.’”

Dom Helder lived among the poor. He had no car and no chauffeur. He slept in the sacristy of a church and ate with the workers in a small restaurant nearby. He wore a simple black cassock and wooden cross instead of a gold pectoral cross which many bishops wear.

I liked the conclusion of Rocha’s article:

“Dom Helder died in 1999, but his memory lives on. Next month [this February] people from all over Brazil and around the world will gather in Recife to celebrate his centenary. They will use the words that Sirach used to describe the prophet Elijah, words applied to Câmara in his lifetime. ‘During life he feared no one, nor was any man able to intimidate his will.’ (Sirach 48:12)”

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