Brazil is mourning the death of the former Catholic Archbishop of Recife, Dom Helder Camara, who fought abuses by the 1964-1985 military dictatorship in a relentless crusade for human rights and agrarian reform.
Dr Camara died late on Friday at his home in the north-eastern city of Olinda. He was 90.
Branded "the Red Bishop" by opponents, Archbishop Camara was one of the key articulators in Brazil of liberation theology, which swept through Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s. Liberation theology challenged inequality and human rights abuses in the name of gospel values and urged the poor not to wait until the afterlife to free themselves from misery. Dr Camara distanced the church from its traditional role as the supporter of the privileged classes and the ally of state power in South America. The Vatican disciplined some priests involved in liberation theology who it felt promoted violent class struggle.
Dr Camara founded Brazil's National Bishop's Council (CNBB) and helped create united church pressure to restore democracy in Brazil and to publicise rights abuses, including torture in prisons.
President Fernando Henrique Cardoso called Dr Camara "a blessed man who dedicated his life to ecumenical human rights," and declared three days of national mourning in his honour. National television rebroadcast interviews with Dr Camara, where he advocated better conditions for the poor and spoke candidly of his opponents in the government and the military.
"I believe in the force of the truth. I believe in what is called a moral liberating force," Dr Camara said in an interview rebroadcast by O Globo television.
"A lot of people have for a long time wanted to take me away . . . but it is going to be difficult because as long as God does not take me away, I will be vigilant."
The passing of the archbishop was mourned worldwide.
"It was with great sadness that I learned of the death of Helder Camara. During his whole life, he fought against poverty and for the defence of human rights. The world has lost a great humanist and a free man," the French Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, said.
"I remember his great capacity to work for the poor . . . when there was a need to contact institutions, people or the government itself in favour of the poor, he would do it," Cardinal Lucas Moreira Neves, prefect of the Bishops' Congregation, said in an interview with Vatican Radio.
Born in Brazil's impoverished northeast in the city of Fortaleza on February 7th, 1909, Dr Camara is said to have declared at the age of four he wanted to become a priest. He entered the seminary at 14 and was ordained at 22.
Dr Camara received tributes from universities stretching from Harvard to the Sorbonne and was nominated, but never won, the Nobel Peace Prize for his social reform efforts.
Dr Camara retired in 1985, but still took part in services at his church in Igreja das Fronteiras, where he lived until his final illness.
Thousands of Brazilians flocked to the city of Olinda on Saturday for a day-long vigil and city-wide procession, also attended by Vice-President Marco Maciel of Brazil.
Dr Camara's body will be buried at Olinda's Igreja de Se church, where he also used to preach, after a funeral Mass expected to stretch well into the night.
"The parting of Helder Camara brings great sadness to us," Dr Enrique Dussel, an Argentine philosopher and theologian in Mexico, told Vatican Radio. "He was short in height, but huge in stature when he spoke to the crowds. He was one of the first to criticise the dictatorship . . . and he dedicated his life, along with other bishops . . . to the poor in Latin America."