When this article appeared, Claude Pomerleau taught comparative government at the University of Notre Dame and served as Dom Helder Camara’s host when he was recently on campus to receive an honorary degree. In his private journal, Pomerleau recorded his responses to Camara:
Dom Helder is scheduled to arrive unaccompanied at the St. Joseph County Airport at midday on Saturday. I was assigned to be his host for the weekend because of research I did in Latin America and Brazil. I am wondering if I will recognize him from photographs, just as a short, frail cleric enters the baggage depot. He is wearing a plain cassock. He extends a hand to me in greeting; he wears no ring. A small wooden cross hangs from a simple chain around his neck. He wears a woolen topcoat that is nearly floor-length. He carries a crumpled handbag. He is unshaven and looks tired. Curious bystanders are staring at us. Dom Helder looks like the leader of a religious sect from California.
Campus - Saturday Afternoon
The conversation ranges from the beauty of nature, mutual acquaintances and his homeland, to poverty, violence and the anarchy of the world economy. He is absorbed by all these preoccupations but laughs easily. He talks about the Brazilian church, his own diocese of Recife-Olinda, the expanding repression and growing authoritarianism of Latin American governments, of torture and the growing helplessness and hopelessness of poor nations and of the lower classes of all nations. He interrupts his reflections about multinationals and imperialism to comment on the beauty of the campus, the singing of the birds, the tameness of the squirrels, the carefully arranged flowers, the variety of trees, the freshness of the Indiana air after heavy rains. His spirituality is quite Franciscan but filtered through the eyes of a passionate social reformer. He communicates with nature spontaneously and enthusiastically. However, there’s very little pastoral escapism here. He is concerned with the problems of industrial society, the responsible and creative use of power, imperialism, and violence, justice and compassion for prisoners, exiles, unemployed, the price of raw materials, and the dangers of arbitrary government. These problems are as immediate to him as are his interests in the natural environment and in the beauty of nature.
Dom Helder is often dismissed as a Marxist ideologue who knows little about politics and less about theology. That could be, but after four years of teaching social science at Notre Dame and attending conferences throughout the country, I find that he is as sophisticated about the organization and administration of governments and multinationals as the average academic or administrator. He knows intuitively who has what power, how it is used, and why. Furthermore he is one of the least ideological persons I have met. His contact with institutions and structures is always through persons, especially the poor, with whom he identifies immediately and intensely.
Conversation with Dom Helder is easy. He uses many anecdotes and stories that have apparently been repeated many times. He listens closely to others but doesn’t always respond.
Mass and Banquets
Saturday afternoon, Dom Helder celebrates the Eucharist at the Commencement Mass in the huge athletic center. These facilities are always “reconsecrated” with a triumphant Commencement liturgy at the end of the year. During the year, the great domed auditorium is filled with spectators for circuses, rock concerts, Ice Capades, conferences, basketball games. And now, ladies and gentlemen, the Last Supper. The band, a brass choir, the glee club, dozens of concelebrants, trays of chalices, baskets of bread, incense. Father Hesburgh addresses the students and blesses the flag. No Smoking signs hang in a circle from the center of the dome in the shape of an ellipse, reminding us of the hazards to our health. Dom Helder stands quietly, relatively motionless in the center of all this activity. He seems strangely remote, withdrawn, in spite of the liturgical extravaganza ...
After the celebration of Mass on Saturday, it is time for the President’s Banquet. Dom Helder again looks somewhat incongruous in his cassock and with the wooden cross. He mixes easily with the guests. He wants to know who they are, whether or not they have a family, what they do for a living. I imagine that he is touring one of the favelas of Recife. He is attentive, concerned, even playful. He genuflects while being introduced to the wife of one of the guests. She is alarmed -- but he is only stooping to pick up her name tag which has fallen to the floor. He enjoys her surprise.
After the meal, each honoree of the evening offers a toast. Great deeds and great persons are acknowledged. In turn, Dom Helder thanks his colleagues, praises the university and its president, and then offers a toast to the cooks, waiters and waitresses, their families and loved ones. They smile with appreciation.
The following day, there is another luncheon, another extravaganza. Dom Helder is asked to give the closing prayer. He mentions the poor, the imprisoned, the exploited. He reminds the citizens of the most powerful and prosperous country in the world that they have a corresponding responsibility and a great opportunity ... Amen.
Each short prayer that Dom Helder makes is part of a larger message. The message slowly takes shape. It consists of America as the world focus of military forces, transforming industrial power, multinationals, a powerful magnet for consumer obsessions. A corresponding moral force must be developed. A force that will attract passions for truth and service -- instead of arms and consumer products. The university too must become a symbol for compassion. Students and faculty must be sensitized to a larger world with its problems of hunger, violence, and repression. Even when people are sincere, Dom Helder believes that institutions can become unjust and repressive, thus necessitating reformation and transformation. Fragments of a vision emerge. Everything is organized around his compassion for and obsession with the poor. It is necessary to guide governments and multinationals into greater responsiveness to human needs and the promotion of all that is genuinely human.
PhD, Honoris Causa.
The conferring of the PhD on Dom Helder appears to be somewhat anti-climatic. He has already received degrees from Harvard, Louvain, the Sorbonne, and many other universities. Returning to the airport on Sunday afternoon, he displays his degree. He has never attended a university. He enjoys reminding people that whereas many of his colleagues entered the university “by the front door,” he had to “crawl in through the window.” He declares in a solemn voice that this is his 16th honorary PhD. “I am very intelligent, you know.”
He relishes the opportunity to visit another Christian community, to affirm its commitment to justice and truth and to strengthen his own. At times, he seems to be embarrassed by his own personal freedoms, privileges, and honors that others do not have.
Poverty. That word comes to his mind frequently. Especially as he visits the U.S. True poverty, he asserts, is not a matter of personal choice, like selecting vegetables from the marketplace or clothes from the store. Poverty is most real when it is a gift from God, a surprise from the Father. It is relatively easy to adjust to poverty chosen by ourselves. It is more difficult to accept and to live with the poverty sent by God. Dom Helder’s poverty is not his own choice. It is his circumstances: favors from God.
His own poverty and mission are inseparable. He is a missionary from the poor South sent to speak to the rich North. He is loathe to accept money gifts or charity for the poor he represents. “If we have become brothers,” he declares “then I can tell you to keep the money and use it for the poor in your own country.” He explains to would-be benefactors that if they want to help the poor of the entire world, then the social, political, and economic institutions of the rich nations must be transformed. These changes are the gifts most appreciated by the poor of his diocese. It is more akin to justice, which then gives meaning to charity.
New Nazism
On Sunday afternoon, Dom Helder leaves for California. He speaks often of his homeland with great loyalty and affection, at times even with longing. He has a mixture of love and sorrow for Brazil, of helplessness and passionate concern.
He decries American complicity with the new Nazism arising in Latin America. While American businesses are supersensitive to fascism of the left, they are blind to the fascism of the right. The church is articulate and vigorous in its attack on Communist dangers and Marxist abuses. However, it has few defenses against identical dangers and abuses from repressive regimes on the right.
Dom Helder is a religious exile. Politically, he has become a foreigner in his own land, suspect by many even in his own church, accused of naiveté, of Marxism, and even of treachery. He is not allowed to celebrate the Eucharist or to preach at the Catholic University of Recifie. His name is censored in all major newspapers. Elie Wiesel reminds us that both murderers and those favored by God are chastised by Him. In terms of punishment, it is often impossible to distinguish who is for and who is against God.
A Missionary
Dom Helder sees himself in the role of a traditional missionary but with certain differences. Since the 19th century, Europeans and North Americans were sent to Latin America to win converts and to strengthen the institutional church. At first, the goal was to combat liberalism and positivism. Later, the goal was to fight communism. Meanwhile, some Latin Americans began to suspect that the real objective was to make the region congenial to American investments and safe for tourists. It was eventually noticed that the missionaries came from a Europe that was dechristianized and a North America that was materialistic and secularized. The missionaries hardly noticed that they were introducing paganism along with evangelism.
Dom Helder is suggesting an ironic twist to centuries of Western missionary efforts. We are accustomed to seeing the right and powerful evangelize the poor and the weak. Western missionary efforts accompanied national flags. In the words of Simone Weil, “Our missionaries, even the martyrs, are followed too close behind by cannons and warships to bear veritable testimony to the Lamb of God.” Today, instead of the warship, it is the multinationals that follow the missionaries. And occasionally the CIA. Latin Americans are now suggesting that it should be the poor, the “underdeveloped,” the dependent who evangelize the rich and powerful. With patience, humor, and humility, Dom Helder suggests that Christians of the Third World have a message of salvation and liberation for North Americans.
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!