Cláudio Hummes Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

Hummes died at his home in São Paulo on 4 July 2022 following a bout of lung cancer. He was 87.

On 29 November 2015, ahead of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference Cardinal Hummes appeared again on the world’s global media stage when he and Avaaz campaigner Oscar Soria displayed a pair of shoes donated by Pope Francis to support a climate demonstration in Paris that had replaced a planned march after French authorities had banned public protests in the aftermath of the November 2015 Paris attacks. Parisians and others from around the world donated shoes and set them up at Place de la Republique, in a symbolic march organized by the civic movement Avaaz which gained the support of the pope.

A year later, Hummes was appointed honorary president of the Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network (REPAM), established in 2014 in Brasilia, Brazil, during a meeting of bishops whose territories include Amazon regions, priests, missionaries of congregations who work in the Amazon jungle, and national representatives of Caritas and laypeople belonging to various Church bodies. In his message, he reiterated that the creation of the Pan-Amazon Ecclesial Network “represents a new incentive and relaunch of the work of the Church in Amazonia, strongly desired by the Holy Father. There, the Church wishes to be, with courage and determination, a missionary Church, merciful, prophetic, and close to all the people, especially the poorest, the excluded, the discarded, the forgotten and wounded. A Church with an ‘Amazonian face’ and a ‘native clergy’, as Pope Francis proposed in his address to the bishops of Brazil”.

In 2013 he served as one of the 115 cardinals in the conclave that elected Pope Francis. When the new pope won the conclave ballot, Hummes whispered to him, “Don’t forget the poor”. Francis said that immediately he remembered Francis of Assisi, “the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who loves and protects creation,” and “the name Francis came into my heart”. When Francis appeared on the balcony shortly after his election, Hummes was among the cardinals who accompanied the new pope and stood beside him at his immediate left on the balcony.

On 31 October 2006, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Hummes to head the Congregation for the Clergy. He accepted his resignation from that post on 7 October 2010.

In a 2006 interview with Brazilian newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, Cardinal Hummes said that “even though celibacy is part of Catholic history and culture, the Church could review this question, because celibacy is not a dogma but a disciplinary question.” He also said that it is “a long and valuable tradition in the Latin-rite church, based on strong theological and pastoral arguments”.

Hummes was created Cardinal-Priest of S. Antonio da Padova in Via Merulana by Pope John Paul II in the consistory of 21 February 2001. He later preached the Lenten spiritual exercises for John Paul II and the Roman Curia in 2002. One of the cardinal electors who participated in the 2005 papal conclave that selected Pope Benedict XVI, Hummes was often mentioned as a possible successor to Pope John Paul II.

On 22 March 1975, he was appointed Coadjutor Bishop of Santo André and Titular Bishop of Carcabia. Hummes received his episcopal consecration on the following 25 May from Archbishop Aloísio Lorscheider, OFM, with Bishops Mauro Morelli and Urbano Allgayer serving as co-consecrators. He succeeded Jorge de Oliveira as Bishop of Santo André on 29 December of that same year. Hummes allowed the labour unions to meet in parishes throughout his diocese, going against the dictatorship in Brazil at the time. It was here that he began his support for liberation theology, and forged his friendship with the union boss at the time, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. On 29 May 1996 he was promoted to Archbishop of Fortaleza and was then transferred to São Paulo on 15 April 1998.

From 1963 until 1968, he taught philosophy at the Franciscan seminary in Garibaldi, the major seminary of Viamão, and at the Pontifical Catholic University of Porto Alegre. He then studied at the Ecumenical Institute of Bossey in Geneva, Switzerland, where he received a specialization in ecumenism. He was adviser for ecumenical affairs to the Episcopal Conference of Brazil, Provincial Superior of the Franciscans of Rio Grande do Sul (1972–1975), and president of the Union of Latin American Conferences of Franciscans.

Hummes was born Auri Alfonso Hummes in the village of Batinga Sul to Pedro Adão Hummes, a German-Brazilian, and Maria Frank, a German. Taking the name Cláudio upon his profession as a Franciscan, he was ordained to the priesthood on 3 August 1958 by Archbishop João Resende Costa. He obtained a doctorate in philosophy in 1963 from the Pontifical University Antonianum in Rome.

Cláudio Hummes, OFM (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈklawdʒu ˈʁum(i)s]; born Auri Alfonso Hummes; 8 August 1934 – 4 July 2022) was a Brazilian prelate of the Catholic Church. He was prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy from 2006 to 2010, having served as Archbishop of Fortaleza from 1996 to 1998 and Archbishop of São Paulo from 1998 to 2006. A member of the Order of Friars Minor and an outspoken proponent of social justice, he was made a cardinal in 2001.