Inside
NCR
The first time I met Cardinal Paulo
Evaristo Arns was in the mid-1980s at a Catholic Press Association Convention.
I remember going off for a private conversation. During the exchange he pulled
an envelope from his bag that contained a letter from the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith. It was correspondence, if I recall correctly, having to
do with the silencing of Franciscan Fr. Leonardo Boff, a Brazilian liberation
theologian and friend of Arns.
“For 21 years, I worked for the right to free
expression,” he said, referring to the work he had done to maintain
communication throughout his diocese during a period of brutal dictatorship
(1964-1985) in Brazil. “And now my brothers in Rome are doing
this.”
Boff -- whose work, in other circumstances, might have generated a
healthy debate among the theological community -- eventually left the
priesthood, another statistic in this papacy’s campaign against thinkers
it doesn’t like.
I discovered, quite by accident, how
vile and mean-spirited the “brothers in Rome” could be during a visit
more than a dozen years ago. I happened to get an appointment, off the record,
with a young priest who was working at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith at the time. I was with another journalist, and we met in a little room
somewhere in the congregation compound. The other reporter asked a question
about Brazilian Bishop Pedro Casaldáliga, and that question evoked a
torrent of invective and vicious language.
Arns’ name was thrown into the stew of this nasty monologue,
during which the young priest labeled such bishops as “ignorant little
men” who were “naive.”
Rest assured, Arns is neither ignorant nor naive. He is gracious
to a fault, and can look back on a life of considerable courage. He didn’t
take the easy or safe way out during the period of a crushing dictatorship. He
was in and out of prisons, attempting to keep track of and minister to those
considered enemies of the government. He was active in aiding the small
communities that developed in his diocese to counter the effects of the
dictatorship. He gave the cardinal’s mansion over to the poor, and he
worked tirelessly on behalf of those on the margins. Journalists from outside
Brazil would talk about seeing him riding city buses and working at fostering
the base communities that became a hallmark of the São Paulo archdiocese
before Rome carved up the archdiocese in 1989.
Arns has a keen sense of the value of historical record.
Immediately after World War II, Arns studied in Paris where many of his
classmates had lived through the Nazi terror. One friend allowed him to read a
notebook “with the record of everything that had gone on in
there.”
Years later, Arns would be instrumental in compiling a record of
the deeds of the military regime in Brazil. It makes an enormous contribution
to the field of human rights, since the book, Brasil Nunca Mais!
(Brazil Never Again!) preserves the details of more than 1,800 reports
of torture by the Brazilian military, with the names of the victims and their
torturers.
A small team of lawyers secretly copied the transcripts of
military court proceedings, which, for some unknown reason, the dictatorship
not only made but kept. Arns and others arranged to have them smuggled out of
the country so they would not be destroyed.
Arns’ life presents an example of what church can be, even at
the highest levels of leadership. His life of relentless service to the gospels
may seem, to some, naive. You can take the measure of this wonderful man
yourself. His Lenten reflections begin on Page 12.
The series of reflections is printed
so that all readers -- even given the vicissitudes of the U.S. Postal Service
-- should receive the segments at least a week early so they can be used for
study or prayer groups who might wish to do so. Extra copies will be printed
and available for sale. Anyone interested in additional copies should contact
Jo Ann Schierhoff at extension 2239 or e-mail to ncrsub@natcath.org
-- Tom Roberts
My e-mail address is troberts@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, February 28,
2003
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