Eugênio de Araújo Sales

Cardinal Eugênio de Araújo Sales (2012)

Coat of arms of Cardinal Eugênio de Araújo Sales

Cardinal Sales (2nd from right) with his family (1927)

Eugênio Cardinal de Araújo Sales , also Dom Eugênio , (born November 8, 1920 in Acarì , Rio Grande do Norte , Brazil ; † July 9, 2012 in Sumaré , São Paulo ) was Archbishop of São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro .

Life

Eugênio de Araújo Sales studied philosophy and Catholic theology at the Seminário da Prainha in Fortaleza and was ordained a priest on November 21, 1943 . His brother Heitor de Araújo Sales later also became a priest and Archbishop of Natal .

On June 1, 1954, Pope Pius XII appointed the 33-year-old Eugênio de Araújo Sales as titular bishop of Thibica and auxiliary bishop in Natal. The episcopal ordination received his Archbishop José de Medeiros Delgado on 15 August 1954 co-consecrators were Elizeu Simões Mendes , bishop of Mossoró , and José Adelino Dantas , Bishop of Caicó . His motto Impendam et Superimpendar comes from the 2nd Corinthians ( 2 Cor 12.15  EU ).

He was appointed Apostolic Administrator sede plena of the Archdiocese of São Salvador da Bahia on July 9, 1964 , after having previously held the same function in the Diocese of Natal from February 9, 1962. He was the council father of all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council and was a member of the Commission for the Apostolate of the Laity ( Apostolicam actuositatem ) and the mixed commission that worked out the general framework for Gaudium et Spes . Sales rose to become one of the leading figures of the Catholic Church in Brazil on October 29, 1968, when Pope Paul VI. appointed Archbishop of São Salvador da Bahia . On April 28, 1969 Sales was accepted as a cardinal priest with the titular church of San Gregorio VII in the college of cardinals .

On March 13, 1971, de Araújo Sales was appointed Archbishop of São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro.

Cardinal Sales' three decades in office as Archbishop of São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro was largely shaped by the dispute over the theology of liberation . In the relevant debate, Sales, in contrast to other Brazilian cardinals such as Paulo Evaristo Arns and Aloísio Lorscheider, always supported the position of the Holy See , which suspected at least some liberation theologians to be close to Marxism . Because of his commitment to the working class and rural population, he was also known as the “Red Bishop” (bispo vermelho).

From 1976 to 1982 he worked for more than four thousand people who were persecuted by the military governments of South America, especially Argentina. He organized the papal visits of John Paul II in 1980 and 1997 to Brazil. For many years he was President of the Commission for Social Action of CELAM , the Council of Latin American Bishops.

Even after his resignation from the office of Archbishop of São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro a few weeks before his 81st birthday, Cardinal Sales performed important ecclesiastical tasks. He was instrumental in the reintegration of a group of Catholics in the diocese of Campos , who were attached to the traditionalist Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, into the Roman Church. Most recently, Sales appeared in public on the occasion of a funeral service he led for Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Basilica in April 2005.

Since the death of Stephen Kim Sou-hwan in 2009, Sales was the last living cardinal to be created in the consistory in 1969 , the longest serving cardinal priest and thus cardinal proto-priest .

Eugênio de Araújo Sales died as a result of a heart attack in the Residência Assunção in Sumaré. Sérgio Cabral Filho , governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro, imposed a three-day state mourning ; Dom Eugênio was considered the most important religious leader of the state in the last decades of his life.

Web links

• Sales, Eugênio de Araújo. In: Salvador Miranda : The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church. ( Florida International University website), accessed October 28, 2016.
• Entry on Eugênio de Araújo Sales on catholic-hierarchy.org ; accessed on October 28, 2016.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Morre cardeal Dom Eugenio Sales, aos 91 anos , accessed on July 10, 2012 (Portuguese)
2. ^ Araujo Sales, Eugênio de , Catholic News Agency, accessed July 10, 2012 (English)

predecessor	Office	successor
Augusto Álvaro Cardinal da Silva	Archbishop of São Salvador da Bahia 1968–1971	Avelar Cardinal Brandão Vilela
Jaime Cardinal de Barros Câmara	Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro 1971–2001	Eusébio Oscar Cardinal Scheid SCJ
Jaime Cardinal de Barros Câmara	Full Professor for the Byzantine Believers in Brazil 1972–2001	Eusébio Oscar Cardinal Scheid SCJ
Stephen Kim Sou-hwan	Cardinal Protopriest 2009–2012	Paulo Evaristo Arns