Ordinary Men - #1 Dom Hélder Camara
With this article we inaugurate the "Ordinary Men" column in which we wish to rediscover some personalities and their testimony of life. "Normal Men" are human beings; they therefore include both males and females. At times when we perhaps find in ourselves a propensity to grasp of life and the world "bad examples," we believe it is important to rediscover people who have lived responsible lives leaving marks that we can grasp and make our own today.
To say in a few lines about Hélder Camara is a simply impossible feat. Too enormous and still largely misunderstood was his figure to be summarized in one writing.
Fr. Hélder was one of the protagonists of the most recent era in Church history, the one that began with the Second Vatican Council. A Brazilian, Archbishop of Recife, Secretary General of the Brazilian Bishops' Conference, and repeated nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, Hélder Camara was a witness to a Church for the poor and with the poor.
Appointed bishop first he sold the episcope (the bishop's residence) moving to a small room adjoining the church that was his home until his death, the ring, the gold pectoral cross devolving the proceeds of these sales to the countless works of justice on behalf of the least of the poor of which he was a promoter and active protagonist.
Nicknamed the "bishop of the favelas," he was an enormously inconvenient man for the established power that tried in every way to bend him. Perhaps too well known for him to be assassinated as was done in San Salvador with Monsignor Romero, he was nonetheless subjected to continued threats and intimidation. Many of his collaborators were attacked, tortured, and murdered, and there was never a shortage of threatening writing and machine gun discharges to adorn the walls of his poor home.
His vicar for Olinda, Dom Marcelo Carvalheira, was imprisoned for a long time in a prison in which he testified that he heard the screams of the tortured every day; one of his secretaries was murdered and literally torn to pieces; and many lay people who collaborated with him were kidnapped and disappeared or returned home annihilated by horrendous torture.
It was inspiring and fertilizing in areas of life of the most diverse. He inspired the music of "The Symphony of Two Worlds" set to music by Swiss Pierre Kaelin and the ballet, "Robot: with whom will you dance?" staged by French choreographer Maurice Béjart.
He died peacefully in 1999. Just as for Monsignor Romero, no cause for beatification is currently underway for him.
In 1974 Oriana Fallaci gave him a long interview. For those who still feel the "burn" of his experience and for those who will get to know him for the first time by reading it, we give below an extensive excerpt.
ORIANA FALLACI. Rumor has it, Fr. Helder, that Paul VI called you "my red archbishop." And actually you must not be a comfortable man for the Vatican. You must scare a lot of people in there. Shall we talk about that a little bit?
HELDER CAMARA. Look, the Pope knows very well what I do and what I say. When I denounce torture in Brazil, the Pope knows. When I stand up for the poor and political peetents, the Pope knows it. When I travel abroad to urge justice, the Pope knows it. My views he has known for a long time because we have known each other for a long time. To be exact, since 1950, when he was secretary of stateI don't hide anything from him, I have never hidden anything from him. And, if the Pope felt that I was doing what I do wrong, if he told me to stop, I would stop. Because I am a servant of the church and I know the value of sacrifice. But the Pope doesn't tell me that and if he calls me "his red archbishop" he does it jokingly, affectionately, certainly not the way they do it here in Brazil where anyone who is not reactionary is called a communist or in the service of the communists. The accusation doesn't touch me. If I were an agitator, a communist, I could not enter the United States and receive honorary degrees there from American universities. After that premise, however, I must clarify that with my ideas and speeches I do not commit the authority of the Pope: what I say or do is my exclusive personal responsibility. Which does not turn me into a hero: it is not like I am the only one speaking. The tortures in Brazil, for example, were denounced first and foremost by the papal commission which commits the authority of the Pope. The Pope himself condemned them, and his condemnation counts more than that of a poor priest who does not scare anyone in the Vatican.
OF. A poor priest who is a prince of the Church, who is one of the most respected and admired men in the world. A poor priest who they are thinking of giving the Nobel Peace Prize. A poor priest who when he talks about torture manages to fill the entire Palace of Sports in Paris and awaken the conscience of millions of people in every country. Shall we talk about that, Don Helder?
HC. Well, it went like this. I was in Paris and I was asked to tell the truth. I replied, sure, the duty of a religious person is also to inform, especially about a country like Brazil where the press is controlled or enslaved to the government. I began by recalling that I was going to talk about a crime very familiar to the French who were guilty of it during the Algerian War: torture I added that such infamies also occurred because of the weakness of us Christians, who were too used to bowing before power and institutions or keeping silent. I explained that I would not tell anything new because it was no longer a secret that inhuman, Middle Ages-style suffering was inflicted on political prisoners: irrefutable documents had already been published everywhere. Then I described methods of torture: from electric shocks to pau de arara. And I narrated episodes that I myself had checked out. For example, the case of a student to whom such horrible things had been done that he had thrown himself out of the window of the Polizi Luis De Ledeiros headquarters is his name. And the story, in its essentials, is this here. As soon as I was informed that Luis De Ledeiros was in the hospital, I rushed to him together with one of my advisors. And I was able to see him. Apart from the suicide attempt, he was in a frightening condition: among other things, four of his fingernails had been pulled out and his testicles crushed. The doctor who treated him confirmed and told me: go to the governor, who is a doctor, tell him to come here and examine the bodies of the tortured. That was what I was looking for: to have in my hand, finally, a direct testimony. Immediately I went to the governor's palace, with my auxiliary bishop, and made a complaint. Then I sent the complaint to all the parishes, all the bishops, and to the conference of bishops.
OF: Don Helder, there is no word exploited like the word justice. There is no utopia like the word justice. What do you mean by justice?
HC: Justice does not mean imposing an identical amount of goods on everyone in an identical way. That would be atrocious. It would be like everyone having the same face and the same body and the same voice and the same brain. I believe in the right to have different faces and different bodies and different voices and different brains: God can afford the risk of being judged unjust. But God is not unjust and wants there to be no privileged and oppressed, He wants everyone to receive the essentials to live: by remaining different. So what do I mean by justice? I mean a better distribution of goods, both nationally and internationally. There is internal colonialism and external colonialism. To demonstrate the latter just remember that eighty percent of the resources of this planet are in the hands of twenty percent of the countries, that is, in the hands of the superpowers or nations serving the superpowers. Just to give two small examples, suffice it to say that in the last fifteen years the United States has earned as much as eleven billion dollars on Latin America, it is a figure provided by the statistics office of the University of Detroit; suffice it to say that for a Canadian tractor Jamaica has to pay the equivalent of 3200 tons of sugar... To demonstrate internal colonialism, on the other hand, it is enough to deal with Brazil. In the north of Brazil there are areas that to call underdeveloped would be generous. Other areas that are reminiscent of prehistory: in them people live as in cave times and are happy to eat what they find in the garbage. And what do I tell these people? That they have to suffer to go to heaven? Eternity begins here on earth, not in Paradise.
(...)
OF: Don Helder, to that justice some intend to arrive by violence. What do you think about violence as a tool of struggle?
HC: I respect that. But there is an argument to be made here. When we talk about violence, we should not forget that the number one violence, the mother of all violence, comes from injustice. It is called injustice. So young people, who try to play the oppressed, react to violence number one with violence number two, that is, current violence, and this causes violence number three, that is, fascist violence. It is a spiral. I, as a religious person, cannot and must not accept any of these three forms of violence, however, violence number two I can understand: precisely because I know that it is arrived at through provocations. I detest those who remain passive, those who keep silent, and I love only those who fight, those who dare. The young people in Brazil who react to violence with violence are idealists whom I admire. Unfortunately, their violence leads nowhere, and so I must add: if you play with weapons, the oppressors will crush you. To think of confronting them on their own level is sheer folly.
(...)
OF: In the history of the world, those who dared the unbearable have always won. And the young people...
HC: If you knew how I understand young people! I, too, was impatient as a young man: in the seminary I was such a protester that I could not become a son of Mary. I used to chat in the hours set aside for silence, I used to write poetry although it was forbidden, I used to argue with my superiors. And the new generations today, they fill me with admiration, because they are a hundred times more disobedient than I was, a hundred times more courageous than I was. In the United States, in Europe, everywhere. I don't know anything about the Russian youth, but I am sure they are trying something too. Yes, I know that for young people today everything is easier, because they have more information, more communication, they have the road that my generation paved for them. But they use that road so well! There is in them such a thirst for justice, for revolt, such a sense of responsibility. They are demanding of their parents, their teachers, themselves. They turn their backs on religion, because they have realized that religion has betrayed them. And they are sincere when they encounter sincerity, sensitivity. Some time ago some young Marxists came to see me, and, with a certain arrogance, they said they had decided to accept me. Look look, I replied, suppose then that I do not accept you. A heated, indeed harsh, discussion ensued, but it ended in an embrace. The youth of today I not only love them, I envy them: since they have the good fortune to live their youth together with the youth of the world. But she cannot stop me from being old, and therefore from being wise, not impatient.
OF: All right. So, Don Helder, I ask you, what are the solutions that your wisdom has found to erase injustice?
HC: Anyone who has the solution in his pocket is a conceited fool. I don't have solutions. I only have opinions, suggestions, which are summed up in two words: peaceful violence. That is, not the violence chosen by young people with guns in their hands, but the violence, if you will, already preached by Ghandi and Martin Luther King. The violence of Christ. I call it violence because it is not content with petty reforms, revisionism, but demands a complete revolution of current structures: a society remade from the ground up. On socialist foundations and without bloodshed. It is not enough to fight for the poor, to die for the poor: it is necessary to give the poor the knowledge of their rights, and of their misery. It is necessary for the masses to feel the urgency to liberate themselves and not to be liberated by a few idealists who face torture as the Christians faced the lions in the Colosseum. Getting eaten by lions serves little purpose if the masses sit back and watch the spectacle. But how do we get them back on their feet, she will retort, this is a game of mirrors! Well, I may be a utopian, a naive one, but I say, it is possible to "conscientize" the masses and, perhaps, it is possible to open a dialogue with the oppressors. There is no man who is completely evil, even in the most infamous of creatures one can find valid elements: what if we could somehow manage to have a talk with the most intelligent military? What if we could even get them to revise their political philosophy? Having been a fundamentalist, a fascist, I know the mechanism of their reasoning: it might well be that we could convince them that that mechanism is wrong, that torturing and killing do not kill ideas, that order is not maintained by terror, that progress is achieved only by dignity, that underdeveloped countries are not defended by putting them at the service of capitalist empires, that capitalist empires go hand in hand with communist empires. It must be attempted.
(...)
OF: Den helder, if you were not a priest....
HC: You can spare the question: I can't even imagine being anything outside of a priest. Think: I consider it a crime to be unimaginative, and yet I don't have the imagination to imagine myself not a priest. For me being a priest is not just a choice, it is a system of life. It is what water is to a fish, the sky is to a bird. I really believe in Christ, Christ for me is not an abstract idea: he is a personal friend. Being a priest has never disappointed me or given me regrets. Celibacy, chastity, the absence of a family in the way you lay people understand it, all this has never been a burden for me. If I have missed certain joys, I have had and have others all the more sublime. If you knew how I feel when I say Mass, how I empathize with it! Mass for me is really the ordeal and resurrection, it is a crazy joy! That's it, some people are born to sing, some are born to write, some are born to play ball, some are born to be a priest. I was born to be a priest-I began to say that at the age of eight and certainly not because my parents put it in my head. My father was a Freemason and my mother went to church once a year. In fact, I remember one day my father became frightened and said, "My son, you always say you want to become a priest. But do you know what that means? A priest is someone who does not belong to himself because he belongs to God and men, someone who has to distribute only love and faith and charity..." and I said, "I know, that's why I want to become a priest."
OF: Not a monk, though. His phone rings too often, and that little wall hit by machine-gun blasts doesn't fit in a convent
HC: Oh, you are wrong! I carry a convent within me. Perhaps there is a little mystic in me and even in my direct encounters with Christ I am as insolent as Christ wants me to be. Yet there is always a time when I isolate myself in the manner of a monk Every night at two o'clock I wake up, get up, get dressed, and put back together the pieces I have scattered during the day: an arm here, a leg there, my head who knows where. I stitch myself together, only alone, think or write or pray, and get ready for massDuring the day I am a park man. I eat little, I detest rings and precious crosses, as you see, I rejoice in gifts at hand: the sun, the water, the people, the life. Life is beautiful, and I often wonder why to sustain life one must kill other life: be it an egg or a tomato. Yes, I know that by chewing the tomato I make it into Don Helder and thus idealize it, make it immortal. But the fact remains that I destroy the tomato: why? It is a mystery I cannot penetrate and I set aside saying patience, a man is more important than a tomato.
OF: Thank you, Don Helder. I think almost everything has been said, Don Helder. But now what's going to happen to you?
HC: Boh! I don't hide, I don't defend myself, and taking me down doesn't take much courage. However, I am convinced that they cannot kill me if God does not want to. If, on the other hand, God does want it, because he thinks it is right, I accept this as a grace: my death, who knows, might even serve. I have lost almost all my hair, the few I have are white, and I don't have many years left to live. Their threats therefore do not frighten me. I mean, it's kind of hard with those that they can shut me up. The only judge I accept is God.
From "Interview with history" RIZZOLI (1974)