Casalinge Maturescopano

Comblin Joseph died, theologian and priest

Rio de Janeiro, March 27 (EFE) .-


The Belgian priest Joseph Comblin , one of the most important representatives of the liberation theology that came to be expelled from Chile and Brazil for their ideas, died today at age 88 in Simoes Filho Brazilian city of natural causes, church sources said.
Comblin, a scholar of Latin American Church and author of works such as "Liberation Theology," Theology of Azada "and" Ideology gives Homeland Security, "died in the small town of Simoes Filho, in Bahia State (northeast) and where he had gone to take a basic course communities.
The priest, who had heart problems and wore a pacemaker, was found dead in the room that was hosted by other priests who were waiting for morning prayer and that they missed their delay.
The Belgian religious body will be watched today in the city of Salvador, near the regional capital and Simoes Filho, and buried in a small town in the impoverished Brazilian state of Paraíba according to your wishes, Efe said spokesmen for the Archdiocese of Bar also in the state of Bahia, where he lived.
Comblin was one of the main supporters and aides Brazilian bishop Helder Camara, defender of human rights and the choice of the Church for the poor became known during the Brazilian dictatorship as the "Red Bishop."

addition to specializing in studies of the Latin American Church, the religious Belgium contributed to the construction of liberation theology, especially that directed at poor farmers and rural dwellers.
Comblin, born in Brussels on March 22, 1923, was ordained in 1947 and earned his doctorate in theology at the Catholic University of Louvain.
The priest first came to Brazil in 1958 to meet the request of Pope Pius XII European priests to act as volunteer missionaries in regions with a shortage of priests.
initially was established in Campinas in the interior of Sao Paulo where he served as a teacher and went to the Young Catholic Workers, where he worked as a consultant.
In Sao Paulo, where he remained until 1962 before traveling to Chile, he taught at the Theological School of the Dominican friars and theologians would highlight after the liberation and resistance to the dictatorship in Brazil, including and Frei Betto Frei Tito.
After three years teaching at the Faculty of Theology of Chile, returned to Brazil in 1965 to receive an invitation from Helder Camara, then bishop of Recife, to serve as professor of Theology Institute of Recife.
His controversial works and his work with the liberation theologians made him the target of the Brazilian military regime, which ordered his arrest and deportation in 1971.
lived for 8 years in exile in Chile where he helped create a rural workshop in Talca, but after the publication of a book on the ideology of national security, was expelled by the regime of Augusto Pinochet in 1978.

The Belgian priest then returned to Brazil to work in the state of Paraíba, where he founded a workshop in rural areas but, as he entered the country on a tourist visa, was forced to travel abroad every three months to renew the authorization.
Their legal status was regularized only after the 1979 amnesty law.
Besides his theological works and seminars that helped to found, Comblin also created several lay movements such as Missionaries and Missionaries in the Middle Country People. EFE