He is survived by his sisters, Irene Maria, Lurdes, Dulce, Alaíde and Marlene, and his brothers, Inacio and Artêmio.
Auri Hummes entered spiritual coaching at 9, turned a Franciscan friar at 22 and was ordained a priest simply days earlier than his twenty fourth birthday, taking Cláudio as his spiritual title. He went to Rome to review philosophy on the Pontifical University Antonianum and obtained his Ph.D. in 1963.
He returned to a Brazil in tumult: The navy seized management in a coup in 1964, instituting a repressive dictatorship that was to final 21 years. At first, Cardinal Hummes appeared blissful to sit down out the battle, instructing on the pontifical college in Porto Allegre and holding quite a lot of different provincial educational posts.
That modified in 1975, when he arrived in Santo Andre driving a beat-up Volkswagen. The area was dwelling to among the largest car and metalworking crops in Latin America, and its tons of of 1000’s of employees had been starting to show towards the low wages and poor labor circumstances imposed by the federal government.
Cardinal Hummes was referred to as in to mediate, however he instantly took the employees’ facet. When the federal government tried to take over the unions, he provided them house in Santo Andre’s church buildings to prepare, and if vital to cover. The strikes he supported helped deliver an finish to navy rule in 1985.
Though lots of his allies from that period expressed disappointment along with his flip to conservatism within the Eighties, he gained new mates on the left after getting back from Rome in 2010, when he took up the dual causes of Indigenous rights and local weather change.
As the top of the Episcopal Commission for the Amazon, he insisted not solely that the Brazilian Catholic Church enhance its efforts to assist the area, however that it achieve this by placing Indigenous individuals in cost, constructing an area church “with an Amazonian face and also an Indigenous face.”
Flavia Milhorance contributed reporting.
