Leonardo Boff

José Maria Pires: the barefoot Bishop1 Leonardo Boff Fernando Altermeyer Júnior Fr. José Oscar Beozzo 1 Translated by V. S. Conttren, November 2019. The original is available at << https://leonardoboff.wordpress.com/2017/08/28/jose-maria-pires-o-bispo-de-pes- descalcos/ >>, accessed in November 2019. Leonardo Boff: brief words. Don José Maria Pires was one of greatest prophetic bishops the Brazilian Church had. Brazilian and black, he had always defended the Afro-descendant cause. He stood at the origins of the Basic Ecclesial Communities (CEB) and as a great defender of Liberation Theology. Affectionately, the people called him Don Pelé and later Don Zumbi. He died in his prime, at the age of 98 years, while still helping with the popular pastoral work in the city of Belo Horizonte. We publish here two texts that show this Bishop's relevance: Prof. Fernando Almeyer Jr of PUC-SP and Father José Oscar Beozzo, the Brazilian Church’s best historian. We were friends for many years and together we participated in countless meetings of Bishops, of the Basic Ecclesial Communities and in theological-pastoral renewal courses. Another Prophetic Bishop leaves, one of those which we lack so much nowadays. He continues to be a reference of a bishop pastor, prophet, great preacher and friend to all, especially the poorest. Fernando Altemeyer Júnior: Go in peace, Quilombola of God2 Don José Maria Pires died on the 27th of August 2017, in Belo Horizonte, at the age of 98 years old. He was an Emeritus Archbishop of Paraíba, born on March 15, 1919, in the small city of Córregos in Minas Gerais, northeast of the state, and participated in the four sessions of Vatican II. At the time, being the only Brazilian black Bishop, and one of the most important voices of the Brazilian episcopate, he was to assume the new Church image proposed by the Council. With his preaching, he would awake the will of so many brothers to effectively help those who suffer injustice. He would listen to God's call in history and not remain impassive before the cry of those who suffer. He realized the Church was changing and happily followed with courage! Such a simple act, done by such simple people that allow the world to be transformed. This child of the poor had Eleuterium Augustus Pires and Pedrelina Maria de Jesus as his parents, and would learn from an early age that he would have to keep his feet on the ground. In an emotional testimony at the funeral of President Juscelino Kubitscheck de Oliveira, on August 29, 1976, he would say: I walked through the same streets that Juscelino walked. He walked barefoot and so did I. It was common for poor children to walk barefoot on the street. As he walked on the floor of his hometown, he would learn the permanent lessons of how to be a priest, bishop and pastor. He would never forget that he 2 Master in Theology and Religious Sciences by the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Graduated in Philosophy. PhD in Social Sciences from PUC-SP (Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo), Professor at PUC-SP. was someone with barefoot feet. And it is this contact with the ground which makes one a faithful Shepherd. He was ordained priest in Diamantina, Minas Gerais on 20/12/1941 (he completed 70 years of priesthood!), serving as a parish priest, school director, and diocesan missionary. He was consecrated Bishop in Diamantina, Minas Gerais, on September 22, 1957 (in 2017, he celebrated his 60th anniversary of episcopacy), beginning his ministry in the diocese of Araçuai, Minas Gerais, as its third Bishop, from 1957 to 1965. His episcopal motto would be Scientiam Salutis (the science of salvation). Appointed by Pope Paul VI, he became the fourth metropolitan Archbishop of Paraíba from December 2, 1965, to November 29, 1995, when he resigned because of his age. Since then, as a pilgrim Emeritus Bishop, he has lived as an itinerant preacher carrying the Gospel with enthusiasm and causing a holy envy. From an early age he learned the art of speaking well: silence first, proper word later. He then took on with exquisite delicacy the certainty of being a shepherd Bishop: friend, evangelical, simple and, above all, servant of the impoverished. His action in favor of the simple is a program of life. Let us see his inaugural speech as metropolitan archbishop of Paraíba, seconded by Bishop Helder Pessoa Câmara, in the midst of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship, with its ideology of national security which denied the freedom and dignity of the human person. Don Helder expressed himself in this manner about him: “Don José Maria goes to the causes, to the roots... And he speaks clearly, without losing his serenity, while calling things by their names. Whoever wants to get rid of a disembodied Christianity, whoever wants to get rid of odorless, colorless teachings, preached in a vacuum, read his pages” (preface to the book Do Centro para a margem [From the Center to the Margin], Ed. Acauã, Paraíba, 1978, p. 7). These are his coherent words when he took office as Archbishop: “I do not want to bring you a mentality from Minas Gerais — a custom or a civilization of the state in which I was born — in which this civilization, this mentality, these customs are different from those of the state of Paraíba. Just as Christ, becoming man, assumed human nature and, so to speak, concealed, kept what he was, as God, and presented himself to us without ceasing to be God, but began learning with us about being human, to live like humankind, so the new Prelate comes here not to teach, but, first, to learn to be from Paraíba. I will begin my ministry by learning from you. Only by integrating myself will I be able to fulfill my mission of service. It is holy the ground on which I walk.” (João Pessoa, PB, 26.03.1966, In: Sampaio Geraldo Lopes Ribeiro, Dom José Maria Pires—Uma voz fiel à mudança social [A voice faithful to social change], Ed. Paulus, 2005, p. 17). The dialogue, as recommended in the beautiful programmatic letter of Pope Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam, and even better expressed in the Constitution Lumen Gentium, became for Don José Maria the criterion of pastoral life. He would become an excellent defender of black people, being dubbed in his life by two affectionate and densely symbolic nicknames: at the beginning of his episcopal life he would be called as Bishop Pelé (by Don José Vicente Távora, the Workers' Bishop), linking him to a Brazilian football player of international fame. Pedro Casaldáliga (Emeritus Prelate of São Felix do Araguaia, Mato Grosso) would rename him Bishop Zumbi, connecting him to the struggles of black people in Brazil and remembering the leader of the Brazilian Quilombos, Zumbi dos Palmares. The nicknames did not succeed in removing his innermost identity, which was that of someone who had always assumed his origin, his ethnicity, and his love for the poor as an interpretive key to the world and an effective form of Christian incarnation in northeastern Brazil, immersed in so many injustices and contradictions that demanded radical fidelity to Christ. Don José was not a man of half words or half actions. Those who listened would always perceive him to be wholly – to what, with and within – that which he dreamed of and shared with his interlocutors. Listening to him, one would feel that before them stood a true shepherd: there was no arrogance in his words. One felt encouraged and challenged, never frightened. Don José was a true brother and shepherd, one who did not give up on dialogue, for he both believed and loved his interlocutors. We can follow in his footsteps, in every corner of the Brazilian land, always animating small grassroots communities, the causes of the impoverished and the struggles for social justice, without extremism. When the Pastoral Land Commission (Comissão Pastoral da Terra, CPT) was created, he was among its first hour workers, as well as among the supporters and enthusiasts of the Indigenous Missionary Council (Conselho Indigenista Missionário, CIMI) and also with each one of the dozens of social pastoral works, created by the people and welcomed by the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (cNBB) when Don Aloísio Lorscheider, Don Ivo Lorscheiter and Don Luciano Mendes de Almeida presided at a prophetic moment – the golden age of the Brazilian Church lived between 1970 and 1980. He saw the birth, with the pains of childbirth, of the poetic Mass of the Quilombos, later forbidden, and would be among the animators of the Mass of the Land Without Evil, also proscribed, which nonetheless intended to open new liturgical paths in acculturation and inter- religious dialogue. He would face the greed of farmers and colonels from the Northeast region, with the simplicity of doves. He would not ask for favors from political or economic powers, always placing his trust in the Word of God and in the compassion of the poor. Such path may be slower and simpler, but the roots will always reach deeper in safety. He would cry out against the landowners like Naboth did against King Ahab. On March 5, 1976, he would say in his pastoral letter to all the diocesans: “When the patience of the poor who are being crushed by the powerful is tired, God's patience will also be tired and God will enact the justice men have refused to” (Pastoral Letter of March 1976). Don José saw, understood and spoke of the farmers' suffering.

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