Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Humes has died A spokesman for the indigenous people, he was a major promoter of Bergoglio’s election as pope.

Cardinal and archbishop emeritus Claudio Humes of São Paulo (Brazil) died at the age of 87 in the Brazilian city where he exercised ecclesiastical government and had a great pastoral work in perspective. A religious commitment to the poor supported by a theological vision of liberation, with a special focus on the indigenous peoples of the Amazon. He was appointed Archbishop of São Paulo by John Paul II in 1998 and canonized as a Cardinal by the same Pope in 2001.

The news of Hummes’ death was reported “with great sadness” by the current cardinal of São Paulo, Archbishop Odilo Pedro Scherer. The deceased priest, a member of the Franciscan order, chose precisely a phrase from Saint Francis for his pastoral coat of arms: “Omnes vos fratres” (“You are all brothers”).

Hummus was there One of the main promoters of George Bergoglio’s candidacy for the papacy During a conference held in 2013, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires, in a meeting with journalists on March 16, 2013, admitted that “Dom Claudio”, as he was affectionately called in his native country, was the inspiration for choosing the name. Francisco fulfilled his ecclesiastical “Next to me was the archbishop emeritus of São Paulo and the rector of the Congregation for the Clergy. Cardinal Claudio Hummes: A great friend, a great friend! When things got a little rough, he comforted me. And when the vote reached two-thirds, there was the usual round of applause as the Pope was elected. He hugged and kissed me and said: Don’t forget the poor! The word entered here: poor, poor. So, immediately, in relation to the poor, I thought of Francis of Assisi,” Bergoglio recounted.

During the same days and speaking through Vatican radio microphones, Cardinal Humes congratulated the new Pope on “a lasting pontificate” because “the Church needs this Pope, the Church needs this plan that he has revealed and that he has started”.

At the Synod for the Pan-Amazon Region (2019), in an event in which he was appointed General Rapporteur, Cardinal Hummes became spokesperson for the indigenous peoples of the Catholic Church in the region. With Bergoglio’s vision, Cardinal Humes spoke out against abuses against Amazonian peoples, deforestation, predatory schemes and land diseases. “We must return to indigenous peoples the right to be the protagonists of their history“The spirit and activity of whose colonialism is not the objects, but the subjects,” he told that ecclesiastical tribunal.

In addition to his commitment to the poor and indigenous, Humes was a bishop who supported liberation theologians from the Catholic hierarchy. But when attacks on Francisco and internal and external threats against Bergoglio began, Dom Claudio came to his defense. “The Church preserves its unity as a plural unity. Divisions are evil”He said, referring to those who questioned the authority of the Pope.

And beyond his own borders, Dom Claudio is remembered as a man with a Latin American vocation and joined the efforts of the Catholic Church to contribute to the building of the fraternity of the peoples of the region.

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