LEME DA SILVEIRA CINTRA, SEBASTIÃO

Second Brazilian cardinal; b. Espirito Santo do Pinhal, São Paulo, Jan. 20, 1882; d. Rio de Janeiro, Oct. 17, 1942. After becoming a priest on Oct. 10, 1904, he served in São Paulo as assistant pastor, seminary professor, director of the Catholic daily, A Gazeta do Povo, and cathedral canon. He was consecrated auxiliary bishop to Cardinal Joaquim arcoverde de albuquerque cavalcanti, of Rio de Janeiro, in 1911. In 1916 he became archbishop of Olinda, Pernambuco, where he actively supported the press and religious instruction. He did much to promote priestly vocations and Eucharistic weeks, founded the Catholic Confederation to coordinate Catholic Action associations, and rebuilt the cathedral and episcopal palace. His pastoral letter of 1916 on religious ignorance and its remedies aroused nationwide concern for its frankness in the treatment of religious indifference and the inefficiency of the Catholic majority.

As coadjutor bishop of ailing Cardinal Arcoverde, he launched, in 1923, the Catholic Confederation of Rio de Janeiro, which, together with the significant manual, Acão Católica, set the policy of future Catholic Action. The same year he was the president of the first National Eucharistic Congress, which invigorated the Catholicism of Rio de Janeiro. In 1924 he was instrumental in reopening the diocesan seminary, which had been closed for 16 years. He organized spiritual retreats for the laity, instituted the Social Week of Catholic Action in 1928, and promoted the construction of the huge statue of Christ the Redeemer overlooking the city from Mount Corcovado. Dom Leme succeeded Arcoverde as archbishop of Rio de Janeiro in 1930 and went to Rome to receive the cardinal's hat. During his difficult term, he sought to attack directly the evils already outlined in his 1916 pastoral letter, and his principal fighters were intellectuals transformed into defenders of the faith. These intellectuals, stimulated by the cardinal, associated themselves with the "Centro Dom Vital" and the periodical Ordem, founded by Jackson Figueiredo, and extended their influence into various sectors of national life.

During the revolution fostered by the state of São Paulo against Getúlio Vargas in 1932, Leme acted with diplomatic decision. The cardinal obtained promises from the Constitutional Assembly for the abolition of certain anti-Catholic laws and their replacement by Catholic ones. He founded the Catholic Electoral League (LEC), which supported candidates who attacked divorce and secularism in the schools and who favored chaplaincies for the Armed Forces and hospitals. Owing to pressure from the cardinal's Catholic Confederation, women received the right to vote, and the Constitution of 1934 acquired a Christian foundation. Leme organized and was named papal legate of the important Brazilian Plenary Council of 1939, which modernized ecclesiastical legislation for the Church in Brazil. His last important act was the foundation of the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro in 1941.

Bibliography: l. pessoa raja gabaglia, O cardeal Leme, homem de coração (Rio de Janeiro 1945). g. schubert, ed., A província eclesiâstica do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro 1948). i.m. r. do santo rosario, O cardeal Leme (Rio de Janeiro 1962).

[i. silveira]