Renowned theologian and advocate of the poor, Joseph (José) Comblin, died on March 27, 2011 in Salvador, Brazil of natural causes. He was 88.
Comblin, a leading exponent of liberation theology, was once a follower and an adviser to the Brazilian bishop, Dom Helder Camara, a defender of human rights and the church’s option for the poor.
In 1958, having completed his studies, which included a doctorate, and working for a few years in a parish in Belgium, Joseph Comblin responded to an invitation by a Brazilian Bishop. He claimed that this was the first real decision he had made in his life: “I … reached the conclusion that in Europe the church had no more future. … I didn’t want to waste my life impotently watching the decline”1. He went to Latin America to be part of a church with a future, not to save it from Communism and/or Protestantism. His analysis questioned the conventional appreciation of Latin America. He wanted to be part of something that was alive and on the move.
Comblin was a quiet, studious man2 but very much a man of action. He maintained from his early years in Latin America that theology is oriented towards action, and not just the church’s pastoral action, but actions to humanise our world. He insisted that ‘right’ theology helps Christians respond to the issues of our times, and that ‘wrong’ theology impedes us from accepting our social responsibility, perhaps by allowing us to put our head in the sand.
In 1965 Comblin worked with Archbishop Helder Camara as a member of the local seminary staff. They developed a formation program to help seminarians reflect theologically from experience and then act on their conclusions. From 1964 to 1985 Brazil was ruled by the military. Organised protest against injustice and extreme inequality was increasing and so too was government repression. Comblin, along with many church leaders at all levels, was committed in the struggle for greater justice, which soon made him persona non grata with the government.
In 1972 he was refused re-entry into Brazil and accepted an invitation from a Chilean Bishop. Comblin sensed that Chile was headed for a coup so he kept a low profile and was able to remain in Chile after the military coup, which replaced President Salvador Allende with General Augusto Pinochet. He helped the Chilean church challenge the inhuman ideology of national security that underpinned the military government’s project for Chile.
At that time in Chile, communists with their allies and sympathisers were indentified as the enemy. Comblin helped the local church resist the military government’s attempt to coopt the church as an ally in its war against its own citizens. By way of response to national security ideology the church throughout Latin America promoted a variety of community building programs, a focus which has helped many Columban missionaries integrate into the life of the Latin American church.
Just as he was refused entry into Brazil in 1972 Comblin was also debarred from entering Chile in 1980. He was able to return to Brazil where he worked in seminary formation but spent most of the rest of his life preparing lay men and women for mission. Comblin thought from the grassroots; he remained in close contact with the poor; he preferred to live in the country; he was a realist in the sense of being in touch with reality.
His broad understanding of the many ways the church has gone about evangelising throughout its 2,000 year history informed his vision for evangelisation in our own time.
Joseph Comblin spent his life in the service of a vibrant church searching for ways to evangelise from the perspective of solidarity with the poor.
Fr Peter Woodruff SSC first went to Peru in1968 and is now based in Australia.
- A esperança dos pobres vive - coletânea em homenagem aos 80 anos de José Comblin, Sao Paulo: Paulus, 2003. P. 722.
- Over the course of his life he published over 60 books and 300 articles on a great variety of topics.
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