On December 14th, the world lost an authentic leader and an authentic Christian. His name was Paulo Evaristo Arns and he was Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church during and after the Brazilian military junta ran the country. He dared to challenge the brutal dictatorship which reigned from 1964 to 1985 (often with American warships anchored offshore supporting the regime). It was he who kept the files on the many political prisoners caught, tortured and murdered under that regime. These files were made public after the military was overturned. He fought strongly against torture and protected activists in his churches. He threatened to excommunicate police investigators who refused to provide information on political prisoners.
In 1975, at the height of the dictatorship, he organized in the Sao Paulo Cathedral an open act of defiance of Brazil’s government when he invited other religious leaders for a prayer service and accused the regime of assassinating journalist Vladimir Herzog. Herzog had been taken as a political prisoner and the official explanation was that he had committed suicide in jail, but Arns publicly rejected that lie during the Mass, while tanks and soldiers surrounded the Cathedral. He was a man of genuine courage.
Arns was a strong supporter of Liberation Theologian Leonardo Boff, with whom he shared a brotherhood in the Franciscan Order. When Boff was called to Rome for a dressing down and silencing by the new Inquisition set up by Pope John Paul II and headed by Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), Arns accompanied Boff to his trial, but was not allowed into the proceedings. Arns stood up for liberation theology and base communities and theologians all over Latin America long before the appointment of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as archbishop of Argentina (later to become Pope Francis). He was Bergoglio’s elder.
How did the Vatican respond to Arns leadership on behalf of the poor? They chose to cut his diocese in two and put a conservative prelate in charge of overseeing the poorest section of the diocese, while putting Arns in charge of the newly created diocese of the wealthy. An action of profound cynicism – not untypical of the reigns of JPII and Cardinal Ratzinger.
The Vatican also silenced Bishop Casigalida, the prophetic and mystic-poetic bishop in the Amazon who was a close ally of Cardinal Arns. One of the charges against Casigalida, who was personally close to Archbishop Romero of El Salvador, was that he called Romero a “saint” after his assassination. One needs to remember that the Vatican fought tooth and nail against Archbishop Romero and his support of the poor and his standing up against the military, right up to the time that his life was ended by a military assassin while he was celebrating a public mass.
It was my distinct privilege in 1990, the year that I was silenced by the Vatican, to have a 50-minute private sit-down meeting with Cardinal Arns in his office in Sao Paulo. His English was excellent; indeed, he was fluent in nine languages. He spoke very bluntly to me, brother to brother, and I believed then as I do now that I was in the presence of a brave and truthful man, one who felt pressured to share the truth of his experience in the church with this young Dominican theologian (I was about 50 years old and had not yet been expelled from the Order by the Vatican).
Among my recollections of our conversation were the following.
Arns said that Pope John Paul II actually was fluent in very few languages and was a terrible listener. It was as if he had nothing to learn from anyone. When as bishop Arns made the customary annual report of his diocese, the Pope’s eyes would wander on the ceiling and he seemed utterly bored and uninterested. One time, in an effort to get his attention, Arns delivered his message in Polish believing JPII might respond. Nothing. No interest whatsoever.
He said JPII was not at all interested in running the church, but very much enjoyed going on the road and being adulated by fans and the press—he was an actor by aspiration after all. (This very much corresponded with a story I had heard from an American Dominican source who was told not to be upset if JPII would bring up troubling issues over a meal, but rather to remind him how much he was venerated in Yankee Stadium or at Youth Conventions in Ireland and this would take him entirely off subject as he reminisced of being loved and lionized on the road.)
Arns said JPII turned over the running of the church to “the German mafia” who were making all the important decisions. And Pope JPII wanted it that way. This of course paralleled information I learned from Penny Lernoux who lived and worked as a journalist in Latin America.
She told me that the German church provided the most money to the Vatican (yes, more than the American church) and lots of leadership. This included of course Cardinal Ratzinger, who not only silenced the most–read Catholic theologians in Latin America (Boff), North America (myself), and Europe (Father Eugene Druerrmann of Germany), but also led the charge to destroy liberation theology and base communities. He did this both through theological attacks and by replacing prelates who were living out the values of justice for the poor with far-right church men from the uber-conservative orders, Opus Dei and the Legion of Christ (the former founded by Josemaria Escriva, a fascist who praised Hitler; the latter founded by Marcial Maciel, a serial molester of his seminarians and even his four secretly-sired children[1]).
“What is the future of the church in Latin America?” I asked Arns, and his reply was striking to me. He said: “Ecumenism. The future of the Church is linking up with other churches and other religions.” He saw no other way and no other avenue for authentic reform within the Catholic Church itself. This particularly made an impression on me at the time, because up to then I had never associated Latin America with ecumenism as such. It was so heavily Roman Catholic, having been conquered by Spanish and Portuguese missionaries furthering the imperial military ambitions of the kings in the 16th century. As I have learned since from Native peoples, those missionaries claimed as their mandate the infamous “Doctrine of Discovery” written by two popes in the 15th century, justifying the slavery of conquered peoples when so-called “Christian empires” encountered them. The present pope has yet to denounce that horrible document but one prays that he will and with haste.
Two years ago, I was in a public dialog with Leonardo Boff in a large conference in Monterrey, Mexico and one question posed us was this: “Is Roman Catholicism dying in Latin America?” Replied Boff: “Yes.” And he too called for more ecumenism. I heard at that moment echoes of this very intelligent, very thoughtful, very forward thinking prelate, Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, a loyal friend of Leonardo.
I left my meeting with Arns deeply moved and feeling I was in the presence of a true leader and a holy man, one whose courage was everywhere to be seen—courage vis-a-vis both “secular” and “ecclesial” powers. Truth mattered to him. The Gospel mattered to him. And the poor mattered to him, along with the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and of Liberation Theology regarding a preferential option for the poor. I wondered then and since: What if he had been named pope instead of the CIA’s right hand man, John Paul II? How would history have been changed?
Since then, of course, the first Latin American Cardinal has been named Pope and Pope Francis does seem to be attempting to change much in the Roman Catholic Church. One prays for him and wishes him well. And we can all be grateful for his elder, Cardinal Arns, who was far ahead on so many issues in his day.
We can all still learn from Cardinal Arns—his candor and his courage and his standing up for justice and truth. In this time of the rise of the right in politics and in much religion, we can all carry on his genuinely Christ-like spirit. Here was a man who walked his talk. And his talk was of Good News of the Gospel and hope for the oppressed.
It seems like a fitting message at Christmas time, 2016. We do not have to sentimentalize a baby Jesus in a manger. Instead we can honor the Divine Presence wherever the poor and oppressed gather to see their dignity respected, whether it be Black Lives Matter, or soup kitchens feeding the hungry, or LGBTQ people seeking their right to be themselves in the face of governmental powers overreaching their constitutional limits.
We can follow the path of Sister Dorothy Stang who was martyred in Brazil 11 years ago for daring to act with the peasants in the Amazon, standing up and being counted when powerful land owners tried to dispossess their lands and rights. She is one of thousands who have met premature death because they lived by the same principles that Cardinal Arns lived by and supported so generously.
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[1] Further information on these organizations and goings-on can be found in my book, The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and What can be Saved.