1999: Death of Dom Helder Camara

“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.”

Dome Helder Camara

Dom Helder Camara (1909 – 199) was a Brazilian archbishop from 1964-1985. Richard Rohr explains that “under his guidance, the Catholic Church in Brazil criticized the country’s military dictatorships and worked for social change. Camara spoke and wrote against using violence to repress rebellions that resulted from injustice and poverty in other countries as well. In 1971, he published Spiral of Violence, which shows how basic structural injustice leads to escalating rebellion, which then leads to new repression. If you don’t nip this spiral in the bud, recognizing violence at its lowest structural level, it is much harder to stop it at the later stages.”

The process for recognising Dom Helder Camara as a saint has begun.