Claudio Hummes, the Roman Catholic cardinal who championed placing employees of their struggle towards Brazil’s navy dictatorship and who some believed might have turn into historical past’s first Latin American pope earlier than Francis earned that distinction, has died. He was 87.
One in every of Brazil’s most vital spiritual leaders, Hummes died Monday “after a protracted sickness, which he endured with persistence and religion in God,” Cardinal Odilo Scherer, the archbishop of Sao Paulo, mentioned in an announcement.
Hummes was a detailed affiliate of Francis, an Argentine with whom he shared South American roots and a particular concern for these in poverty, for the Amazon rainforest and for Indigenous peoples. The Brazilian was mentioned to have whispered phrases of encouragement when it turned clear that then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was about to be elected to the throne of St. Peter, on the 2013 conclave of cardinals, and to have impressed him to decide “Francis” as his pontifical title, after St. Francis of Assisi.
“An ideal pal, an ideal pal,” Francis mentioned of Hummes at his first information convention after being picked to succeed Pope Benedict XVI. “When issues began getting a bit harmful, he cheered me on. And when the vote got here to two-thirds, the same old applause started, because the pope had been elected.
“He hugged me, kissed me and mentioned: ‘Don't forget concerning the poor.’ These phrases had been carved on my thoughts.”
A lifelong cleric, Hummes shot to nationwide prominence within the Nineteen Seventies as a staunch defender of human rights and social justice below Brazil’s repressive right-wing navy regime. He publicly supported and shielded placing metalworkers, one among whom, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, went on to turn into the nation’s first leftist president a quarter-century later.
“His unconditional love for his neighbor introduced him to place himself at all times on the aspect of the poor, even in essentially the most hostile conditions,” Lula — who's working for president once more, in October — wrote on Twitter on Monday.
Worldwide consideration centered on Hummes in 2005 upon the demise of the person who had appointed him cardinal, Pope John Paul II. A veteran Vatican insider, Hummes, then 70, shortly turned one of many most-talked-about candidates to imagine the papacy, backed by those that noticed him as a frontrunner able to therapeutic a few of the church’s inner divisions and shoring up the devoted in poverty-stricken Latin America, dwelling to half the world’s Catholics.
“He's a person of dialogue who has a transparent inclination towards the poor,” Frei Betto, a Dominican friar and social activist, mentioned on the time.
“He respects each liberation theology and Opus Dei,” Betto mentioned, referring to liberal and conservative streams inside the Catholic Church. He described Hummes as “a reasonable with a social sensibility.”
In the long run, Hummes’ fellow cardinals elected the German-born Joseph Ratzinger, one among John Paul’s closest aides, as the brand new pope, disappointing those that had hoped for a pontiff from the creating world.
Hummes labored for the brand new Pope Benedict from 2006 to 2011 as prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, the Vatican workplace answerable for the priestly training and coaching. He left the job due to age limits.
In Sao Paulo, South America’s largest metropolis and Brazil’s industrial powerhouse, Hummes’ lengthy service as a bishop and cardinal earned him a fame as an lively, fair-minded, accessible chief who cared deeply for his flock and knew the diocese’s monks by title.
However he was additionally a reserved determine, mental and cerebral, as comfy along with his books as with individuals. He lived the straightforward life anticipated of a member of the Franciscan order and spoke at the least 4 languages — Portuguese, French, German and Italian — along with having mastered Latin.
A prolific author, Hummes expounded typically on the necessity for the church to remain socially related by participating with science and with trendy expertise, akin to within the debate over stem-cell analysis.
He additionally spoke of the have to be extra aggressive in reaching out to Catholics whose solely contact with the church was at start, marriage and demise, or who had abandoned Catholicism in favor of the Evangelical Protestant sects which have turn into more and more well-liked in Latin America.
“‘They had been baptized in our church buildings — they’re our youngsters, and now we have to care for them,'“ Msgr. Dario Bevilacqua, one among Hummes’ aides, as soon as quoted his boss as saying. Hummes, he mentioned, lamented “how we Catholics have misplaced the behavior of evangelizing.”
Hummes’ personal spiritual coaching began when he was a younger boy. Born Aug. 8, 1934, right into a household of German immigrants in southern Brazil, Auri Afonso Frank Hummes was enrolled in a seminary faculty at age 9.
He stored up his spiritual research, adopted Claudio as his spiritual title and was ordained to the priesthood 5 days earlier than his twenty fourth birthday. Hummes went on to earn a Ph.D. in Rome, then labored in varied church posts in his dwelling state of Rio Grande do Sul till 1975, when he was given the task that may launch him into the nationwide highlight.
On the fringes of Sao Paulo, the hard-bitten suburb of Santo Andre was already a serious manufacturing heart by the point Hummes first juddered into city, a newly minted bishop in a dilapidated outdated automobile.
“It was a used Volkswagen Bug,” mentioned Father Antonio Moura, Hummes’ shut assistant for the subsequent 21 years. “It was sort of embarrassing. He mentioned, ‘I can go anyplace on this automobile — I don’t want something fancier.’ And he at all times drove himself.”
Hummes quickly started visiting the metalworkers who had been organizing strikes in defiance of the navy regime, demanding higher wages and larger freedom. Regardless of his naturally unassuming nature, in August 1976 Hummes got here out with the next message: “It’s time for politics.”
All through 1978 and 1979, he was vocal in his help of the employees, refusing at one level to behave as an middleman within the battle. “The church can not have the function of mediator as a result of it's firmly behind one aspect — that of the employees,” he mentioned.
In 1980, the federal government cracked down onerous, arresting greater than a dozen union leaders. Hummes responded by opening up Santo Andre’s church buildings, together with its ornately painted cathedral, as sanctuaries, giving the motion a spot to fulfill and, greater than as soon as, to cover from riot police.
In homily after homily, Hummes preached of the employees’ proper to dignity and even allowed their most fiery consultant, Lula, the longer term president of Brazil, to make political speeches throughout Plenty. Ever the non secular shepherd, Hummes as soon as led a soccer stadium filled with persecuted employees in reciting the Lord’s Prayer.
“It was the church that allowed us to stay organized,” Jair Meneguelli, a former labor chief, as soon as recalled in an interview with The Instances. “I take a look at [Hummes] as heroic. In such a troublesome second as throughout the navy dictatorship, he wasn’t afraid of opening up the umbrella of the church’s safety for these he understood to be most in want.”
The employees’ strikes helped convey down navy rule in 1985. In 1996, Hummes was appointed archbishop of the northern capital of Fortaleza. After greater than 20 years in Santo Andre, he took with him simply two suitcases of garments.
In 1998, he returned to Sao Paulo as archbishop.
Though he wouldn't regain the nationwide fame he loved throughout the Nineteen Seventies and ‘80s, Hummes remained dedicated to the employees of Brazil, serving to to discovered a job-placement heart to assist Sao Paulo’s swelling ranks of unemployed.
His advocacy on behalf of the downtrodden seemingly put him according to left-wing clerics who supported liberation theology, a Marxist-tinged stream inside the church that Pope John Paul II rejected and tried to root out. However Hummes spoke out towards the theology, saying that the church shouldn't be tied to any explicit political ideology.
He was elevated to cardinal in 2001.
When the throne of St. Peter turned vacant in 2005, many spiritual commentators felt that selecting Hummes to fill it could give the church a extra conciliatory chief prepared to listen to dissenting opinions and undertake a extra collegial, decentralized energy construction inside the Vatican than had existed below John Paul II.
However after the Faculty of Cardinals elected Ratzinger, Hummes joined his colleagues in pledging his help to the brand new pontiff.
When Benedict introduced his retirement in 2013, Hummes was not amongst these thought-about frontrunners to turn into pope. However in Francis he had a like-minded new chief.
Hummes is to be interred within the cathedral in Sao Paulo.
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