José Maria Pires (March 15, 1919 – August 27, 2017) was a Brazilian

bishop A bishop is an ordained member of the clergy who is entrusted with a position of Episcopal polity, authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance and administration of di ...

of the

Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

. Pires was the oldest living Catholic bishop in Brazil at the time of his death at age 98.

Biography

Pires was born in

Córregos Córregos is a neighborhood in the municipality of Conceição do Mato Dentro, Brazil. History According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (; IBGE) is the agency res ...

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

and was ordained a priest on December 20, 1941. Pires was appointed bishop of the Diocese of Araçuaí on May 25, 1957 and consecrated on September 22, 1957, becoming the first black bishop in the history of Catholic church in

. On December 2, 1965, Pires was appointed archbishop of the Archdiocese of Paraíba until his retirement on November 29, 1995. He died in Belo Horizonte on 27 August 2017, at the age of 98, due to a respiratory failure caused by

pneumonia Pneumonia is an Inflammation, inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as Pulmonary alveolus, alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of Cough#Classification, productive or dry cough, ches ...

Publishing

* ''O grito de milhões de escravas: a cumplicidade do silêncio'' (1983)Livros de dom José María Pires
/ref> * ''A cultura religiosa afro-brasileira e seu impacto na cultura universitária'' (2014) * ''Meditações diante da cruz'' (2015) * ''O sacerdote, imagem de Cristo'' (2016)

References

External links

Diocese Site
(Portuguese) 1919 births 2017 deaths 20th-century Roman Catholic archbishops in Brazil Participants in the Second Vatican Council Roman Catholic bishops of Araçuaí Afro-Brazilian people Roman Catholic archbishops of Paraíba {{Brazil-RC-bishop-stub