Heard this a few days ago from a story on Júlio Lancellotti, a Brazilian priest and activist:
Lancellotti has worked among São Paulo’s street people for 40 years. Yet if you suggest he actually helps them, you get a prickly reply.
“I don’t help anyone,” he says. “I live with them. I share what I can with them.”
For Lancellotti, this is about faith and about pushing back against intolerance and injustice.
“Society has to find a better way of living together.”
It’s since stuck with me. He spoke so much about the ideals of communal living, mutual aid, classlessness with just a few sentences.
I heard this story on NPR as well. And of course, some far right asswipes say he’s a communist. Just some guy trying to help the most vulnerable and they have to make it political.
Disclaimer: i didn’t read the article
I believe you’re missing the point, that the priest does not help people from a privileged/comfortable position (charity) but rather lives and struggles with communities (solidarity). This is eminently political and sounds a lot like communist/anarchist approach to mutual aid.
Na, it is this Latin American thing of accusing catholic priests that follow the liberation theology of being closet communists. Just more right-wing christian hypocrisy…
Super cool approach to poverty, rather than the usual system of rich flight and wealthier individual run off to ‘better’ neighborhoods, making some neighborhoods the pure distilled essence of poverty.
