In Common Suffering and Hope

In everyone's life there are important turnings in the road that offer a new perspective. My first encounter with liberation theologian Leonardo Boff in his homeland, Brazil, was one such experience.

I had met Leonardo in Venezuela during a religious conference, and his description of Brazil's first national meeting of Christian base communities intrigued me. The meeting was to be held in the coastal city of Vitoria, north of Rio de Janeiro, and Leonardo said I would be welcome.

Apart from the location and date of the meeting, I had no idea what would occur when my plane landed in Vitoria. It was nearly an hour by taxi to the remote retreat house where the conference was in progress, and I missed the opening. Three young Brazilians were seated at the entrance, and they politely but firmly refused to let me join the meeting on the second floor until lunchtime, when Boff could approve my presence. "Security," they said.

I was a bit annoyed. Still, it was 1975, and church people had reason to be cautious. Brazil was in the grip of a military dictatorship that had singled out the Catholic Church as its foremost enemy, and bishops as well as clergy and laity had suffered threats, arrests, and other abuses.

Sure enough, a half hour after my arrival, a white jeep with military plates pulled up at the entrance, and out jumped three large police types in civilian dress. They were so obviously goons they seemed caricatures. But the young people were frightened by their questioning: "Who is at the meeting? What are they discussing? Where is the list of participants?"

In the middle of this increasingly ominous interrogation appeared Dom Luis Gonzaga Fernandes, the auxiliary bishop of Vitoria; Leonardo; and other organizers of the meeting. All smiles and graciousness, they offered the goons coffee, prattled on about the weather and how nice it was to see them, and sent them off with God's blessing.

I think it was then that I began to have some understanding of what Brazil's church means to the people. Upstairs were gathered peasants and workers from all over Brazil - humble people representing Christian communities that had organized over the previous decade with the church's support. The military believed the communities to be subversive, since poor people were not supposed to question the regime's semi-feudal system and the communities kept insisting on their civil rights.

Had it not been for the firmness of Dom Luis and the others, I have no doubt the military would have rounded up the entire lot of peasants. But that was why the bishops and theologians were there - to provide a protective space in which the communities could breathe and grow.

In this new role as servants of the people, the bishops made no attempt to direct the agenda but listened to the communities' needs and agreed to support their priorities, the first of which was agrarian reform. Leonardo, who was serving as "animator," said that one of the greatest challenges was learning to listen to the people in their own halting language.

THAT CONFERENCE WAS the first of many successful encounters of base communities which Leonardo helped organize. Gentle and soft-spoken, he seemed particularly suited to the role of listener. That ability also explains his success as a liberation theologian - as well as his recent troubles with the Roman Curia, which does not want to hear new ideas, or challenges, from the Third World.

Unlike some intellectual strains of liberation theology, Leonardo's writings come from the heart of the Brazilian poor - people like the barefoot, grizzled workers on that second floor. He sees Christianity from their view as a source of liberation from spiritual and physical debasement.

Attending the final Mass of that first encounter of base communities, I could understand why Leonardo often harks back to the early communities of the pre-Constantine church. While at least a dozen bishops and archbishops were present in the primitive, barn-like setting, there was nothing to distinguish the princes of the church from the 3,000 people crowded into the place. It was a joyous celebration in which the peasants and workers enthusiastically participated. Rome would probably not have approved of the liturgy, which dealt with the peasants' need for land, but the sense of solidarity in Christ made it one of the most moving Masses I have attended.

Like the early church, those present were not concerned about the disapproval of the political powers or the institutional clutter of ecclesiastical pomp and rank. Everyone was equal, each with a different gift to share. And when the ceremony was over, those poor Brazilians took the church with them, into the bright Vitoria sunlight, to be lived in common suffering and hope.

Brazil's base community movement is rooted in such experiences, but they are alien to a European church with no memory of the poverty and oppression of earlier centuries. Nothing in modern-day Europe - even southern Italy - can compare with the squalid shanty towns of Sao Paulo, rife with tuberculosis and other diseases which have long since been eradicated from the First World, or the parched wastelands of the Northeast, where millions of people die of hunger every year.

I think of the horror stories of leprosy in the Bible and how many leper colonies I have visited in Latin America - every country there has them. And I share the Brazilians' frustration because so many Christians in the First World cannot understand that we live in a different world which, because of its suffering, is far closer to the biblical reality of Jesus.

That early church was like the church I have come to admire and love in Brazil - poor, prophetic, and communitarian.

THE CHURCH IN BRAZIL was not always this way. As elsewhere in Latin America, the Brazilian church was until recently concerned primarily with the needs of the upper and middle classes. Politically and theologically conservative, it seemed an unlikely candidate to become the Third World's most progressive church, yet in the space of only two generations the Brazilians have taken the lead in pastoral, theological, and liturgical innovations.

Like other churches in the region, the Brazilians were strongly influenced by the Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II (1962-65), which sparked reforms throughout the universal church. But unlike sister Latin American churches, the Brazilians were already embarked on such reforms a decade before the council took place, and thus Vatican II represented a confirmation of their policies rather than a new direction.

Church historians agree that the catalyst for the changes in Brazil was a short, frail-looking priest with enormous vision - Dom Helder Camara. Archbishop Camara later became internationally famous for his resistance to his country's 21-year military dictatorship, for his poetry, and for his prophetic denunciations of the Third World's bondage to the First World. But his greatest contribution was the formation of the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops (CNBB) in 1952, at a time when bishop's conferences were unusual (not until Vatican II did they receive official sanction) and the Brazilian church lacked a unified voice to speak to the political and economic challenges facing the country.

The CNBB subsequently became the principal motor for social change in Brazil, and, indeed, all of Latin America, through its leadership role at the bishops' hemisphere conferences in Medellin, Colombia, in 1968 and Puebla, Mexico, in 1979, when the region's church made a preferential option for the poor. It also supported the growth of Christian base communities, which today number more than four million members in Brazil alone.

Born in Brazil's impoverished Northeast, Dom Helder had firsthand experience of the most poverty-stricken, feudal region in the country. During the 1950s, when he was involved in national education programs, he supported attempts by reformist governments to achieve a modicum of social justice. The charismatic Brazilian was popular with two successive papal nuncios, or ambassadors, to Brazil, including the liberal Dom Armando Lombardi, who virtually reshaped the Brazilian hierarchy through appointments of progressive bishops. Thanks to the nuncios' influence, the Vatican supported Camara's initiative to establish the CNBB, and for 12 years he ran the conference as its secretary general.

The CNBB played a key role in persuading the hierarchy to promote national and regional organizations of the laity concerned with social justice, such as the Movement for Grassroots Education (MEB) in the Northeast. Founded as a Christian alternative to Communist peasant leagues, the MEB developed more than a thousand church-sponsored radio schools that brought poor people together in literacy circles in which they critically examined the region's poverty, malnutrition, and illiteracy. The basic tools were the Bible and the consciousness-raising techniques of Brazilian educational philosopher Paulo Freire, which helped "conscienticize" the people about their rights and responsibilities.
Through such schools the peasants learned that it was not God's will that they should be poor and oppressed but that their suffering was caused by human-made
structures that were changeable. The most important discovery, as one slum mother put it, was that "I am not a nothing, because God loves me. If God chose his son to be born poor and humble like us, that must be so we could realize that we are important."

Meanwhile, in Barra do Pirai, near Rio de Janeiro, Bishop Angelo Rossi had begun experimentation with "popular catechists" to baptize, aid the sick and dying, and act as coordinators of small communities without priests. Although Rossi's idea was a narrow one - he saw the coordinators as a way to strengthen the church's presence among the poorer classes in areas where Protestant churches were active - the communities soon developed a momentum of their own by adopting the conscientization techniques of the MEB.

These seeds of the base community movement spread rapidly, greatly augmenting the Brazilian church's influence in society but also changing the church itself, so that it gradually became the "People of God" described by Vatican II. The expression conveys the biblical image of the Hebrew people in exodus; and for the church of Vatican II, it symbolized a community on the move in search of a deeper understanding of faith.

No longer could Rome claim a monopoly on grace and truth; no longer could the traditional order of pope, bishops, and priests deny participation to the laity. All were to contribute equally in love and service. When translated into Spanish and Portuguese, "People of God" took on an even deeper meaning for it became Pueblo or Povo de Deus - and in Latin America povo has always been understood as the masses, the poor.

Brazil's movement of base communities also became a model for other churches in the region, which quickly adopted the idea, as well as for churches in Africa and Asia, which created their own versions of community. By 1979, when the Latin American bishops held their third general conference in Puebla, Mexico, the Christian base community had become the most popular vehicle for evangelization, particularly among the poor. The spread of hundreds of thousands of such communities, from the Rio Grande to Patagonia, proved that the movement was not a passing fad. As the Brazilian bishops pointed out, the communities are the living cells of a new kind of church more faithful to its biblical, communitarian roots.

THE COMMUNITIES' SUCCESS in Brazil - as in other Latin American countries - derives from several factors. One is that they fill a need by giving the laity responsibility for pastoral work in areas with a shortage of priests. Although the progressive direction of the Brazilian church has encouraged an upsurge in priestly vocations in recent years, the priest-to-population ratio is still only 1 to 10,000; and because of the population explosion, that ratio is not likely to improve.

The base community not only deals with this problem but also offers an imaginative alternative to the cumbersome parish structure, which encompasses large numbers of people from different classes and with different goals and interests. Most parishioners do not relate to a church community, and thus the local church is, in the words of the liberation theologians, no more than a "supermarket for the sacraments." The communities, in contrast, are small - usually 15 to 20 families per group - and are composed of people from the same village or neighborhood slum. The overwhelming majority are poor, and many are strengthened by the communitarian traditions of the Brazilian poor, particularly the practice of mutirao, a form of communal barn-raising in which the village or neighborhood joins forces for the construction of a school, house, or health center.

Although the Brazilian church has attempted to attract members of the middle and upper classes to such communities, few have joined the movement because of class prejudices and the indifference of affluent Brazilians to social injustice. For the poor, on the other hand, the communities have served as the motor for social change and, in the slums, as a means of bringing together impoverished rural migrants from different parts of the country. "Alone, life is hard, but in a group things begin to get easier," explained a member of a base community in a Rio de Janeiro slum, or favela. Slum mothers in Sao Paulo spoke similarly of how the base community was a rock of unity in the midst of hunger, sickness, and frequent repression by the police and military.

Though small, the groups are like mustard seeds, spreading to the next street or village, crisscrossing the country in 80,000 communities. In a country in which the poor have never had a voice, the growth in a relatively short time of a movement with more than four million poor Brazilians is politically and socially significant. Through their promotion of a multitude of other popular groups, from street theaters to labor unions, the communities also show how faith can be the leaven in society. As one European observer of the communities said, they give "real meaning to the Lord's words, 'For where two or three meet in my name, I shall be there with them.'"

USUALLY THE COMMUNITIES begin through the work of evangelizing teams of priests and nuns and/or lay people, sometimes from existing communities, who encourage the people to gather in small groups for Bible study and to celebrate the sacraments. Unlike traditional parishes, the priest does not function as the "boss" but as an "animator" of the group who stresses the intrinsic worth, courage, and ability of the poor despite their lack of professional qualifications, including literacy.

As at the meeting in Vitoria, the animator spends most of his or her time listening and encouraging the people to express themselves. When church leaders, including cardinals, show that they are genuinely interested in hearing the opinions of the poor, they give the latter a sense a confidence - a belief that they do matter - that is crucial in the conversion from religious fatalism to a new, more mature faith. "When the members of the community have more confidence in our help than in each other, we are doing something wrong," Sao Paulo's Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns told his priests. A strong supporter of the base communities, Arns sees the communities as a means of popular empowerment, within the church as well as in the larger society.

Vatican II encouraged the communities by sanctioning Catholic rituals, including the Mass, in the local vernacular. The use of Portuguese in the celebration of the sacraments sparked new interest in the Bible, which is the chief instrument for reflection at community meetings. Using the church's now traditional methodology of "see, judge, act," community members apply Bible readings to their own reality, such as the sickness of a relative, the death of an infant from malnutrition, or the eviction of a peasant family by a large landowner.

Religious awareness is reinforced by ritual celebrations in which the people are encouraged to express their popular traditions, such as dancing the liturgy, in contrast to the church's earlier disdain for such "popular religiosity." Unlike the traditional parish Mass, which is often cold and remote, community celebrations are joyful events, with much clapping, singing, and embracing. During the Vitoria Mass, for example, every one of the 3,000 people in the church personally welcomed me with a hug and a kiss.

As pointed out by the Brazilian priest Frei Betto, who has worked closely with the base community movement, the communities have also gained from their spontaneity. There was no single founder, constitution, set of rules, or timetable for the communities' formation (most go through a slow consciousness-raising process that takes several years, sometimes a decade, depending on the political and social awareness of the members). Because there is no clerical caste to direct them, the communities take responsibility for themselves, apportioning religious and social work such as catechism classes or soup kitchens among its members, according to ability and the will of the majority.

For most poor people, the communities offer the first genuine experience of democracy at the local level. "Fundamental in this experience," said Frei Betto, "is liberty to think, to speak, to discuss, to decide, and to create. Here people can discover their own worth and exercise a communitarian participation. This affirms the individual's selfhood and self-respect as each participates in a dialogue."

The interaction, equality, and opportunity within the community not only enhance self-respect among the poor but have helped build a collective conscience previously missing in Brazil's church and society.

IRONICALLY, THE BASE COMMUNITIES received a substantial boost from Brazil's right-wing military, which outlawed political parties, student and labor groups, peasant leagues, and other democratic organizations following the 1964 coup. The only institution able to withstand the repression was the Catholic Church, although such progressive church leaders as Dom Helder had a hard time of it - one of his closest advisers was assassinated by a paramilitary group, and the archbishop was repeatedly threatened. For nine years, between 1968 and 1977, Camara was banned from the Brazilian press, radio, and television. Several of his most important projects, such as the Movement for Grassroots Education, were destroyed, and Camara lost his influence in the CNBB because of a conservative backlash in the hierarchy that paralleled the military crackdown.

Nevertheless, the bishops protected the base communities because of their ties to the institutional church. In many areas where popular movements were destroyed by the military regime, the communities became surrogates for democracy, enjoying a boom in membership. And by the end of the 1960s, a growing number of bishops had become disenchanted with the regime because of its brutal repression. Dom Helder, they said, had been right to take a strong stand against the dictatorship. "The harshness and cruelty of the socio-economic conditions caused the church to align itself with the people," explained Dom Jose Luis Fernandes, the bishop of Petropolis.

The more the church protested, the more its leaders were persecuted; by the mid-1970s church and state were virtually at war. Yet even during the worst period of persecution, when priests were being murdered and bishops threatened, the generals were unable to cow the hierarchy. Thus the churches - and particularly the base communities - became the only place in society in which the people could express themselves.

Although the communities have played an important role in the political awakening of the Brazilian masses, their primary function is religious. The Brazilian poor join the communities for religion - not to pave a street, elect a city council representative, or change the government. These concerns may - and often do - later fuse in projects to improve the community and such offshoots as civic associations, but the glue that holds the community together, regardless of different political ideas, is religion.

"People do not come to the base communities when there is no praying or singing," said Cardinal Arns. "They may come four or five times to organize practical things, but nothing further will come of it. When, however, people pray and sing, when they feel themselves together, when the gospel is read and, on this basis, concrete actions are organized and the national situation is analyzed, then the groups remain united. Along with the gospels, this religiosity is the most valuable element in the base communities."

"The specificity of the base communities lies in their religious character," agreed Frei Betto. "The people who participate in these communities are not motivated by professional, educational, or political interests. They are there because of their faith. Asking the base communities to also become the union movement, a grassroots organization, or a social center is a mistake."

Nevertheless, studies of the communities in Brazil and elsewhere show that the faith conversion brought about by community membership also produces greater social and political awareness and encourages identification with unions, peasant federations, and political parties that uphold the cause of the poor. The wide-spread persecution of community leaders by the Latin American military and its allies in the upper classes underscores the oligarchy's fear that its strangle hold on political and economic power may be undermined by the growth of such awareness.

As long as the church practiced traditional charity for the poor, it had nothing to fear from the rich, but conscientization is a different matter. As Archbishop Camara observed, he was called a Christian when he fed the hungry but a communist when he questioned the reason for hunger.

"EXPLOSIVE" IS A GOOD description of the situation in Brazil, where church and state have continued to engage in a bloody war despite the return to "democracy" in 1985. Dom Tomas Balduino, the bishop of Goias in the Amazon and a leader in the church's struggle for peasant and Indian rights, believes that persecution of the church has been worse under an elected government than it was during the previous 21-year military regime.

Contrary to expectations that the bishops' social activism would become less urgent after the military's departure, it soon became apparent that the Brazilian poor would get nothing from the bureaucracy without the church's help. Lacking strong democratic institutions or broad-based reformist political parties, Brazil has experienced only cosmetic changes under a civilian government that panders to the same economic groups that flourished during the military regime. Corruption is as widespread as ever, and police brutality, particularly in rural areas, continues unchecked. Consequently, church leaders feel they cannot withdraw from the struggle for social justice.

Such work "can affront many interests," admitted Bishop Ivo Lorscheiter, recent president of the CNBB, but the church has an obligation to "speak like the prophets" - not as the voice of any political party but on behalf of the common good, which is "another way of engaging in politics." Brazil's political and economic elites do not see the difference. They argue that the church is involved in issues, including agrarian reform, a new constitution, voting, and party platforms, that are the business of politicians.

But religious leaders insist that the church is trying to teach the Brazilian poor the elements of democracy, not directing them to vote for a specific party, as was the Catholic Church's earlier practice. "The great task ahead of us is to become an organized people," explained Dom Mauro Morelli, bishop of two sprawling urban areas in northeastern Rio de Janeiro and an advocate of the base communities. "Our challenge is not to overthrow the government; it's to help people to stand up and become aware and struggle for a new society."

The base communities evolved into the primary instrument to achieve that end during the long military regime. While many popular organizations existed at the time of the coup, they depended for the most part on the patronage of the political elites and were only marginally successful in extracting benefits from the state. Under the military most of them, especially the labor unions, were repressed or co-opted. The base communities filled the gap, creating and reactivating neighborhood groups under the church's protection, but with a radically different approach.

Instead of being appendages of local politicians, the new organizations became independent pressure groups - a Brazilian variation of the New England town meeting. Their success depends on the large number of poor people attracted to such groups and on an organizational network that integrates thousands of neighborhood associations, such as the Movement Against the High Cost of Living, which represents more than a thousand neighborhood associations in Sao Paulo.

THE PHENOMENAL GROWTH OF the communities reflects the strength of the CNBB, which has made them a national priority. As the best organized and largest bishops' conference in Latin America today, the CNBB not only has a vast network of church institutions, such as schools, clubs, and publications, but has also created national pastoral commissions to deal with human rights, land rights, slum dwellers, workers, Indians, blacks, abandoned children, and prisoners. The commissions work on both regional and local levels, interreacting with civil associations that address the same problems, such as peasant federations and labor unions, many of which came into being through the influence of the base communities, which transmitted the experience of collective and democratic leadership to the larger social movements.

At the same time, thousands of pastoral agents carry the commissions' messages to the base communities. For example, the Pastoral Commission for Human Rights is subdivided into local networks that include civil organizations, such as lawyers' and journalists' groups and neighborhood associations, as well as the base communities. It not only defends prisoners from physical abuse and torture and obtains for them legal defense, it also campaigns for better housing, schools, health facilities, and decent wages, since these too are human rights.

"It is not an exaggeration...to state that these widespread social movements would not have been possible without the support and active engagement of Catholic agents and lay people through the networks of the CNBB," said Maria Helena Moreira Alves, a founder of the Workers Party, itself an example of such movements.

Like the communities, the neighborhood associations are not concerned with national politics but with such immediate issues as running water, health facilities, roads, and sewage systems. Nevertheless, they provide lessons in rudimentary democracy through the election of boards and councils that represent families on each street and through a variety of complementary activities, such as neighborhood newspapers and drama clubs, which also contribute to political awareness. Some associations have even elected their own political representatives at the federal and state level.

Frei Betto describes the communities as connected but independent cells that are now in the third of four phases. The first was the establishment of the communities; the second, that of the popular organizations. By the end of the dictatorship, the process had already entered the third phase, in which members of the communities and popular organizations helped to strengthen labor unions, for example, by participating in strikes either as workers or as support groups. "Now there is a fourth phase," said Betto, "that of the reorganization of the political parties in search of political representation."

Surveys of the base communities by Thomas C. Bruneau, a U.S. political scientist and an expert on the Brazilian church, show that although the communities frequently lack a specific political identification, both the communities and their spin-offs in popular associations usually hold progressive socio-political opinions. Bruneau's study of an Amazon church coincides with informal surveys of Sao Paulo base communities in showing that at least half the members identify with no party, but that most of those with a political affiliation favor the left-of-center Workers Party because it supports such church priorities as agrarian reform and independent labor unions. But the influence of the Workers Party is limited to certain areas, particularly Sao Paulo, where it was born of union struggles. Like all young movements, it lacks organization and money and has yet to develop a nationwide presence that could challenge the traditional parties.

Of course, the church itself has a national network, but for political as well as religious reasons the bishops are reluctant to become identified with any party. While it is one thing to work for the common good, church leaders believe it would be a mistake to inject partisan politics into the base communities.

Nor do the bishops want to direct - or appear to be directing - any political party, said Cardinal Aloisio Lorscheider, the progressive archbishop of Fortaleza. As pointed out by the bishops, the re-emergence of the church in partisan politics would deny the principle of popular empowerment that is at the heart of the base community. The church should encourage the process of participation, say the bishops, but not direct it.

That belief is shared by Dom Adriano Hypolito, the bishop of Nova Iguacu, a sprawling slum of one million inhabitants on the northern periphery of Rio de Janeiro. Despite severe military repression, including Hypolito's kidnapping and beating by a parapolice squad, Nova Iguacu's church was amazingly successful at promoting neighborhood associations through the base communities and with the bishop's support.

But once the association had become viable, the diocese withdrew, although the church continues to provide minor financial and organizational aid. "The diocese recognized that it did not have any special competence in the political decisions facing popular movements," said Scott Mainwaring, a U.S. political scientist who has followed the Nova Iguacu process.

Many priests who work with the base communities place their hopes in a Christian form of socialism whereby the majority could participate in the country's political and economic life. But such a democracy would demand a radical change in structures that would be bitterly fought by the Brazilian elites and their allies in Europe and the United States. Indeed, the threat of a mild agrarian reform and the proposed nationalization of a U.S. mining company were among the chief reasons for the U.S.-supported military coup in 1964. Although the base communities have increased the political awareness of a new generation of poor Brazilians, the outlook, say the bishops, is for a "long, hard struggle."

MEANWHILE, THE BRAZILIAN CHURCH has not only helped to deepen the faith commitment of millions of poor Brazilians - the original goal of the base communities - but has also achieved an influence unparalleled in its history. Before the coup, two-thirds of the Catholic university students polled in Rio de Janeiro called themselves "atheist" because the church "is on the side of an order that is unjust and anti-people." In 1978, three-fourths of the students declared themselves "believers" because the church had become the voice of the voiceless. An additional 15 percent said they "believed in the Brazilian church but not in religion."

Slum dwellers expressed similar feelings. "In '78, seeing that the church was helping the people, I began to participate again," said a lapsed Catholic who was active in the Nova Iguacu popular movement. "It wasn't that I stayed away from the church for all those years, but rather the church that was removed from the people." Three decades ago the Brazilian church was seen as an institution that "didn't need the poor." Today it is trusted as the one organization that "will not betray the poor in pursuit of its own self-interests," said a woman leader of the base communities in Sao Paulo.

A primary reason for the change is the base community itself. By taking up the cause of the people, the Brazilian church has evolved into a new kind of church, adopting the same democratic style that it has encouraged in civil society. Although the base communities were originally intended to convert the poor, in the end the poor converted the church.

Leonardo Boff speaks of the communities as "reinventing the church." He points out that the "principal characteristic of this way of being church is community" and that the early church was also understood primarily as communitas fidelium, the community of the faithful. As in the early church, all members of the communities participate in all things, including evangelization; often, one community creates another. More lay oriented, the communities have given rise to different lay ministries - or what Paul described as "charisms" - to serve the community.

Thus the church becomes "a living organism that is recreated, nourished, and renewed from the base," says Boff. Dom Helder describes this new/old way of living faith in terms of the cross, for as he observes, it is both vertical and horizontal, serving God and the community.

Penny Lernoux was a Sojourners contributing editor who had lived in Latin America for 25 years. She was the author of In Banks We Trust (Doubleday, 1984).