Dom Helder Camara Archbishop of Recife in Brazil Quotes

“When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist. Dom Helder Camara – one of the great prophets of Christian "Liberation theology".”

“Weak people pretend they're perfect. Courageous people acknowledge and confront their weaknesses.”

“Surround yourself with people who will believe in you, challenge you and encourage you.”

“Learning how to forgive helps us grow spiritually because it acknowledges only God truly controls our destiny.”

“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”

“For me, it's a real shock to see American mainstream films. I can't see these films because it's always the same thing to me. This is very American. Violence is very American, and I can't understand these films. Why do they use violence? To show what? Masculinity? To show fear? Defense? What are you showing with all this violence?”

“In the developed countries of the capitalist world, the mass media are beginning to become businesses, and huge businesses at that. The freedom of journalists is now becoming, in most cases, a very relative thing: it ends where the interests of the business begin... In socialist areas, it is enough to recall that the means of social communication are the monopoly of the party.”

“When we are dreaming alone it is only a dream. When we are dreaming with others, it is the beginning of reality.”

“The capitalist empires, with their affirmations of sacrifice for the free world, of defence of private enterprise, of safeguarding order from subversion and chaos, are in fact defending their political prestige and the economic interests arising from it; they are indeed at the service of economic power and the international trusts. The socialist empires for their part are hard and intransigent, they do not allow pluralism, they impose dialectical materialism, demand blind obedience to the party, set up a regime of total and permanent insecurity and fear, just like the fascist dictatorships of the extreme right.”

“Keep your language. Love its sounds, its modulation, its rhythm. But try to march together with men of different languages, remote from your own, who wish like you for a more just and human world.”