The Most Reverend Duarte Leopoldo e Silva, archbishop of São Paulo, who supported Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira’s apostolate in Brazil.
A few months later the archbishop of São Paulo died. His successor, Archbishop José Gaspar de Afonseca e Silva,54 was a very different person. If Archbishop Leopoldo e Silva’s character was that of a man who was unflinching, who commanded respect and even fear, Archbishop José Gaspar’s nature was pleasant and attractive. It was not always easy to understand his real thoughts and interpret his choices, which were often inspired by a strong sense of politics and diplomacy. His first actions did not fail to arouse surprise. On 11 March 1940 he entrusted Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira with the most prestigious of roles: that of President of the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Action of São Paulo. During the same period Father de Castro Mayer was nominated Assistant-General of Catholic Action of São Paulo, while Father de Proença Sigaud was appointed Archdiocesan Assistant of the male and female Student Youth. Thus Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira came to assume all the direction of the forces of the Catholic laity of São Paulo, which then included the student organizations, the men and women of Catholic Action and the auxiliary associations such as the Religious Unions, the Third Orders, the Marian Congregations.55
This did not necessarily mean the new archbishop and the head of Catholic Action appointed by him held identical viewpoints. Archbishop José Gaspar’s strategy consisted in binding men to him, through collaboration rather than confronting them face to face, especially in the case of a strong personality such as that of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira. The premature death of the archbishop of São Paulo makes it impossible to reveal the true nature of the relationship that existed between the two men.
What is certain is that in the person of Dr. Plinio Archbishop José Gaspar had chosen someone who had a deep and sure knowledge of the evils that had begun to infect the great organisations of the lay apostolate. Thanks to the role he now occupied, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira who, since 1938, had already begun to denounce these evils in the Legionário,56 had the chance to embrace with a wide and serious glance the chequered Catholic reality of the country. The young president governed the association with great energy, repressing the doctrinal errors that arose and trying to modify the new ways of thinking. After three years of activity, the results were already obvious: the Paulista Catholic Action group was going through a period of unprecedented development. The magnificent Eucharistic Congress of 1942 in São Paulo demonstrated to the whole of Latin America the potential of the Brazilian Catholic movement.
On this occasion, in his role of diocesan president of Catholic Action, giving the official speech before a million people, Dr Plinio thus outlined the historical role of his homeland:
“The providential mission of Brazil consists in growing within its own borders, to unfold here the splendours of a genuinely Roman Catholic and Apostolic civilization, and to lovingly bathe the whole world in this great light which will really be the ‘lumen Christi’ that the Church irradiates. Our meek and hospitable nature, the plurality of races living in fraternal harmony, the providential co-operation of the immigrants who blended in so well into national life, and, above all, the rules of the Holy Gospel, will never transform our yearnings for grandeur into a pretext for narrow-minded jacobinisms, for doltish racisms, for criminal imperialisms. If Brazil be great one day, it will be so for the good of the whole world. ‘Let those among you who govern, be as those who obey’, says the Redeemer. Brazil will not be great through conquest, but through Faith. It will not be rich with money, but rather through its generosity. Really, if we know how to be faithful to the Rome of the Popes, our city could become a new Jerusalem, of perfect beauty, the honour, glory and joy of the whole world.”57
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira wished however to see his work through to the end. He therefore decided to write a book in defence of Catholic Action, offering a careful diagnosis of the ills from which it was suffering.
These ills were not unknown to the Apostolic Nuncio in Brazil, Archbishop Benedetto Aloisi Masella, who for some time had been following and appreciating Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, although he was not acquainted with him personally. He sent him a trustworthy man, the Italian Jesuit Cesare Dainese,58 then rector of the Colégio Loyola of Belo Horizonte, who smoothed the way for a meeting with the Nuncio. The meeting took place, a short time later, in Rio de Janeiro. The Nuncio was a sixty-year-old man, with a reserved nature and with perfect diplomatic manner. He listened in silence to the description of the President of the Paulista Catholic Action, he tacitly encouraged him and charged Father Dainese to maintain contact with him. Shortly afterwards, Father Antônio de Castro Mayer was promoted to Vicar-General of the Archdiocese of São Paulo. The intervention of the nunciature was clear and acted as an encouragement for Dr Plinio’s project. He submersed himself in the study of his documents to finish his work as soon as possible.
Bishop de Castro Mayer remembers witnessing the whole writing of the book and the author’s efforts so that it should be perfectly objective.59 The authorization of the Archbishop of São Paulo was, however, required. Having received the draft of the book, the archbishop was puzzled at the firmness of the positions of the Paulista leader. Faced with the tergiversations of Archbishop José Gaspar, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, through the channel of Father Dainese, turned to the Nuncio explaining the difficulties that his book was encountering and asking him to write a preface to overcome the impasse. Having carefully read the work and understood its importance, Archbishop Aloisi Masella willingly accepted, while urging the archbishop of São Paulo not to procrastinate over the publication any further. Archbishop José Gaspar then sent the text to Father de Castro Mayer, his vicar, in order that he should finally grant, in his name, the long-awaited imprimatur.
Notes:
54. Archbishop José Gaspar de Afonseca e Silva, second archbishop of São Paulo, was born in Araxá, in the state of Minas, on 6 January 1901. He was ordained to the priesthood on 12 August 1923 by Archbishop Duarte Leopoldo e Silva. After studying in Rome at the Gregorian University he was consecrated a bishop and on 28 April 1935 he received the appointment as auxiliary to the archbishop of São Paulo. On the death of Archbishop Duarte Leopoldo e Silva in August 1939, José Gaspar succeeded him as archbishop of São Paulo. He died in a plane crash on 27 August 1943. In memoriam de José Gaspar de Afonseca e Silva, São Paulo, Editora Ave Maria, 1944; P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Probreza edificante”, O Legionário”, no. 578, 5 September 1943.
55. “Our programme can be summarized in a motto that we accept with enthusiasm, because it is dictated by the very nature of things established by Providence. It is the saying on the Archbishop’s coat of arms: ‘that all be one’. (…) Union among Catholics is the tranquil juxtaposition of heterogeneous elements. It is the pacific co-ordination of persons united because of a communion of ideas, by a common action. What ideas? What life? What action? Ideas can only be those of the Church. Life, the supernatural life of grace. Action, Catholic action”. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Ut omnes unum sint”, O Legionário, no. 392, 17 March 1940.
56. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Burocracia”, O Legionário, no. 310, 21 August 1938; ID., “Sociologite”, O Legionário, no. 311, 28 August 1938. The titles of these articles speak for themselves!
57. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Saudação às autoridades civis e militares”, O Legionário, no. 525, 7 September 1942.
58. Cesare Dainese, born in Luvigliano (Padua) in 1894, joined the Society of Jesus in Brazil in 1912, beginning his new noviciate in Vila Mariana (State of São Paulo). After studying philosophy in Rome and theology in the Heythrop College in England, he was ordained to the priesthood in 1927 and in 1930 he returned to Brazil, where he held the positions of Rector of the Colégio Anchieta in Nova Friburgo (in 1934-5) and again in 1940-5), of the Colégio Antônio Vieira in Salvador (Bahia) of which he was provincial (1953-7) and of the Colégio Santo Inácio of Rio de Janeiro (1963-4). He died in 1986.