Leonardo Boff: Theologian, Activist, and the Voice of the Common Home
- Paulo Pereira de Araujo
- há 2 dias
- 3 min de leitura
I was there with Botox snoring at my feet when a book by Leonardo Boff fell into my hands. I do not remember which one. Old age does that the spines blur, the ideas mix, only the voice remains. And the voice of Leonardo Boff… Ah, that one was never lost!
He is one of those rare figures who manages to irritate conservatives, religious hierarchies, overly serious activists, and even convinced atheists, all at the same time. And irritating so many different people is, to me, an excellent calling card. It means he did not play with anyone’s grandstand. It means he thought.
And more than that, he dared to say what he thought, even when it pushed him out of the religious institution that formed him. I envy that courage. I, who spent a lifetime trying to look wise without being excommunicated from any social circle, peering over my glasses to hide my fear.
Leonardo Boff was born in 1938, in Concórdia, Santa Catarina, Brazil. Concórdia is a fitting name for someone who spent decades trying to reconcile faith, social justice, and care for the Earth, and who mostly found discord with Rome instead. He was a Franciscan, professor, theologian, philosopher, activist, and the author of dozens of books blending spirituality with social criticism.
A man who spoke of Jesus as if speaking of a friend still sitting beside him, with dusty feet and simple clothes. And that, imagine, was already enough to be seen as a threat.
I have always found this institutional insecurity curious: a Church with two thousand years of history, monumental cathedrals, and a state of its own still trembles before a man sitting in Petrópolis with a pen in his hand. Maybe because the pen was sharper than many sermons. Or maybe because Boff reminded, like few others, that Christianity was less about punishing sinners and more about alleviating suffering.
When he published Church: Charism and Power in 1981, he struck directly at the rigid structure that tried to control spiritual experience as if it were private property.The result: he was silenced for a year.
Obsequious Silence Imposed by the Church
“Obsequious silence.” To this day, I consider this expression one of the funniest things ever produced by religious bureaucracy. Obsequious to whom? To God? To the Pope? Or to the illusion of order itself? The fact is that Boff was not born for silence. In 1992, he preferred leaving the Franciscan order to betray his own conscience.
And that is when the “Boff without cassock” era began which, to me, is the most interesting. Not because he left the Church, but because he freed his theology from institutional restraints, expanding it into ecological ethics, human dignity, and what he called the “Common Home.”
When I read that expression for the first time, I closed the book and scratched my beard:This man forces me to think!And an old man who thinks too much loses sleep, and I value my sleep more than any doctrine.
But I must admit, his ecological sensitivity touched me. Maybe because, living with Botox, I learned to observe the world the way a dog does: attentive to scent, wind, and passing sounds. An animal senses the planet is sick before humans do.
Boff said that caring for the Earth means caring for the poor, and caring for the poor meant caring for the Earth. It sounds simple, but only sounds. The simple is always the most revolutionary.
He received awards, titles, honors, but I think Leonardo Boff’s greatest merit does not fit on a medal. His greatest merit was keeping the flame of compassion alive at a time when compassion became synonymous with naivety. And honestly, I am far too old to mistake cynicism for intelligence.
If you ask me who Leonardo Boff is, I will say this: A man who disobeyed to keep listening. And in today’s world, my friend, listening is the rarest of miracles.
Comentários