Two weeks ago a Brazilian archbishop, known in many parts of the world as a champion of the poor and oppressed, died at age 90. I count as one of many spiritual blessings the opportunity to have spent some time with him when he visited the Boston area in 1969 and 1974. His memory will remain with me as an inspiration.
Helder Camara was small in stature but large in spirit. He dressed in a simple soutane, wore a cross made of wood rather than silver or gold, and lived in a small house in Recife instead of the palace reserved for the archbishop of that city.
Dom Helder (as he was called by almost everybody) believed that the Catholic Church in Latin America had to change its priorities and champion the millions of people forced to live without decent food, clothing, education, and other necessities. Together with other bishops in the late 1960s, and the 1970s and 1980s, he attempted to turn the attention of both church and secular society toward those left out.
Dom Helder saw the United States as having a vital role in this mission. Our nation’s power over Third World governments was one thing; another was the part that giant American corporations played in the life of other countries.
When Dom Helder visited at my invitation in 1969 he came to Harvard University where I was chaplain, and spoke to students, faculty members, and others about our responsibility toward the impoverished peoples of the world and our opportunities to influence our country’s policies to make them more just and humane.
He liked to speak of “Abrahamic minorities,” people who, like the great patriarch Abraham at the dawn of sacred history in the Hebrew Bible, “hoped against hope.” Even though the chances of ever changing the condition of the world’s poor always seem hope-less, Dom Helder believed that even a minority of people who place their hope in God can make a difference.
If all of this makes Dom Helder seem an ideologue, I have given the wrong impression. In going around my impoverished Boston neighborhood, as well as at Harvard, I noticed the marvelous warmth he showed to the people he met. He made himself fully present to each person, a reality that made me think of him as another Pope John XXIII, whose effect on people in the 1960s had been similar.
The second visit of Dom Helder came at the invitation of Harvard. The university gave him an honorary degree at the 1974 commencement. He seemed an unlikely choice, this man whose style of life clashed with so many of the university’s wealthy associates. But he told me that he found hope in the assurance given him by the Harvard president, Derek Bok, that the university would respond to his calls for help.
Another person who showed himself willing to help Dom Helder was Cardinal Cushing, who was then archbishop of Boston. When I took the visitor over to see the cardinal, the latter gave him a check for a thousand dollars, not in itself a large sum but enough to signify Cushing’s support.
As this century comes to an end, Dom Helder’s style of leadership within the Lat-in American church has become rare indeed. His successor in Recife promptly moved into the archiepiscopal palace and has shown little regard for Helder Camara’s social values. Liberation theology seems, if not dead, at least on a respirator.
However, I like to think myself not alone in continuing to hold in high regard the life and work of a church leader who brought Gospel values to bear on behalf of the dis-possessed. I will not ever forget the way he taught me to link the teachings of Jesus with the real-life situation in which so many people of the world are forced to live. I also ap-preciate the way Dom Helder chose to live simply himself so as to be closer to the poor.
I also continue to draw inspiration from some of the things he said. Writ large on a truck used in my city by people who distribute groceries to those in need are these words of Helder Camara: “When I give food to the poor, they called me a saint; when I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.”
Richard Griffin