Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara is a Brazilian church leader and human rights defender and archbishop of Olinda and Recife in 1964–1985.
He was born in 1909 as the second youngest of 13 children in Fortaleza, in the poverty-stricken northeast region of Brazil. At the age of 14, he entered a Catholic seminary with the intention to become a priest and was ordained in 1931, only 22 years old. Strongly committed to social change, he started to organize worker’s groups and was appointed director of the Department of Education in Ceará, his home state. In this period, he supported the Integralist Party which had strong fascist tendencies, a mistake that he later deplored, but that his critics would hold against him (Piletti and Praxedes 1995).
Câmara was transferred to Rio de Janeiro in 1936, where he in 1952 became auxiliary bishop. He was strongly involved in the movement Catholic Action (Ação Católica) and its initiatives of educating young workers and students, based on the conviction that...
References
Patrick, Maria Bernarda et al (1983) Dom Hélder, pastor e profeta. Edições Paulinas, São Paulo
Piletti, Nelson & Walter Praxedes (1997) Dom Hélder Câmara: Entre o poder e a profecia. Edições Ática, São Paulo
Câmara, Hélder The desert is fertile. (1974) Orbis Books, Maryknoll
Câmara, Hélder The spiral of violence. (1971) Sheed and Ward, London
Câmara, Hélder A thousand reasons for living. (1981) Fortress Press, Minneapolis
Câmara, Hélder Through the Gospel with Dom Helder Câmara. (1986) Orbis Books, Maryknoll
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this entry
Cite this entry
Nordstokke, K. (2015). Câmara, Dom Hélder Pessoa (Bishop). In: Gooren, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08956-0_195-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08956-0_195-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-08956-0
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities