In the first part of this series, I talked about how a reading in Pünderich reminded me once more of our relatives in Brazil . The second part was about Zilda Arns and her work for the Pastoral da Criança . Now to her brother, who is the most famous of our Brazilian relatives: Paulo Evaristo Arns, Cardinal of São Paulo. His story is the longest in this series, and it's also the most politically difficult. It's about a military dictatorship, about torture, and about the question of what a single person can do with their position to stand against it.
How much this story surprised even the authors of the book MoselbrasilianerInnen themselves is clear from their own opening lines: "It began when, a few years ago, we discovered something that was, for us, world-shaking: from our home village of Pünderich on the Mosel, the great-great-grandfather of a very famous man had emigrated 180 years earlier: Paulo Evaristo Arns (1921–2016)..." (Gert Eisenbürger, Gaby Küppers: MoselbrasilianerInnen, Rhein-Mosel-Verlag 2026, introductory chapter).
Key Takeaways
- Paulo Evaristo Arns (1921–2016) was Archbishop of São Paulo and, from 1973, a cardinal – son of German immigrants from the Mosel region of Reil.
- During Brazil's military dictatorship (1964–1985), he openly opposed torture and human rights violations.
- Together with Pastor Jaime Wright, he led the secret project "Brasil: Nunca Mais", which documented more than a million pages of files from military court proceedings.
- In June 2026, he was honored posthumously for this by the São Paulo journalists' union with the Troféu Audálio Dantas.
- A family photo in the Chronik der Gemeinde Reil shows him with my grandparents and my great-grandfather, presumably taken at his elevation to cardinal in 1973 in Rome.
Growing Up Among Smallholders, and a Friendship Denied
Paulo Evaristo Arns was born on September 14, 1921, in Forquilhinha, a small settlement near Criciúma in the state of Santa Catarina. The area was an old German immigrant colony, where descendants of emigrants from various parts of the German Empire had settled. He was the fifth of 13 children. His parents, Gabriel Arns and Helena Steiner, were smallholders of German descent, immigrants from the Mosel region, from Reil.
This isn't just family lore, it's documented twice over: both in the book MoselbrasilianerInnen (Eisenbürger/Küppers, Rhein-Mosel-Verlag 2026) and in the Chronik der Gemeinde Reil, Tausend Jahre Reil (Ortsgemeinde Reil, ISBN 978-3-00-028865-4, p. 405), two sources that were compiled independently of one another.
One small episode from his childhood has been passed down that I find more telling than any award that came later. The Chronik der Gemeinde Reil tells of a Black boy named Peteca, with whom the young Paulo Evaristo was friends, while the other children of the colony, mostly of German descent, avoided him. It's a brief anecdote, but it points to something that runs through his entire later life: an attitude guided not by what happens to be socially acceptable at the time, but by what is right.
From the Franciscan Order to Paris and Back to the Favelas
At the age of 18, Arns entered the Franciscan order in 1939 or 1940, completing his novitiate in Rodeio. He then studied philosophy in Curitiba and theology in Petrópolis. He subsequently went to the Sorbonne in Paris, where he earned a licentiate in classical languages and a doctorate in literary studies with a dissertation on Jerome of Stridon, the church father and Bible translator.
On November 30, 1945, he was ordained a priest in Petrópolis and took the religious name Evaristo. He then taught patristics, the study of the church fathers, as a professor at the Franciscan college in Petrópolis. What sounds unusual for a scholar with a Sorbonne degree: he went daily, covered in mud, into the city's hillside slums to help directly. He later said of this period, as recorded in the Chronik der Gemeinde Reil: "I have never in my whole life felt as free as I did back then, helping the poor directly." That's not a pious line for a sermon. It reads more like the honest reckoning of someone who would later carry a great deal of power and a great deal of responsibility, and who still remembered the moment when both weighed the least.
Cardinal of the World's Largest Diocese
In 1966, Arns was ordained a bishop and appointed auxiliary bishop of São Paulo. His appointment as Archbishop of São Paulo followed in 1970. At the time, the diocese numbered around 14.5 million Catholics, the largest in the world at that time.
On March 5, 1973, Pope Paul VI elevated him to cardinal at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, together with 29 other clergymen, among them Albino Luciani, who later briefly served as Pope John Paul I (Consistório Ordinário Público de 1973, Wikipédia).
One of his first acts as archbishop shows how he understood his role: he sold the archbishop's palace and used the proceeds, over 40 million schillings according to the Chronik der Gemeinde Reil, roughly 3 million euros, to fund social welfare stations in the poverty belt surrounding São Paulo. An archbishop without a palace was unusual at the time. To him, it apparently seemed obvious.
The Family Photo in the Chronicle
This is where the story becomes personal for me. On page 406 of the Chronik der Gemeinde Reil, there's a photo printed with the caption "Cardinal Arns with his relatives from Reil." Pictured are the cardinal along with my grandparents, Hannelore and Rainer Arns, and my great-grandfather August Arns. As the family remembers it, though I'm not entirely certain, this photo was taken at that same elevation to cardinal in 1973 in Rome. The chronicle itself doesn't confirm the occasion, it only shows the photo. (Note: we're deliberately not showing the photo itself here, the Chronik der Gemeinde Reil is subject to reproduction restrictions. We're currently clearing permission from the Reil local community to show it here.)
My great-grandfather August Arns had already begun looking into our family history years earlier. In 1960, he traveled to Brazil himself, long before anyone wrote a book about the emigration from Reil. I don't know the details of exactly what he found there. But the fact that this photo exists at all, that the connection between Reil and São Paulo wasn't lost somewhere along the generations, probably has a lot to do with his curiosity. My grandfather Rainer also visited Brazil, together with my grandmother Hannelore. I'm sure there's still interesting information out there somewhere. I'll track it down when I get the chance.
Resistance Against the Military Dictatorship
Brazil was ruled by a military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. Political opponents were arrested, tortured, many disappeared without a trace. During this period, Arns was among the few church leaders who took an early and public stand against the regime.
He visited political prisoners, supported union leaders persecuted by the regime, and later campaigned for the "Diretas Já" movement, which demanded free presidential elections. In São Paulo, he founded the Justice and Peace Commission, a church organization that documented human rights violations and assisted those affected.
This stance made him a polarizing figure. Critics from the conservative camp dismissively called him the "red bishop." For many others, especially in São Paulo's poorer neighborhoods, he became the "Cardinal of Hope" or the "People's Cardinal." Both labels describe the same man, just viewed from opposite directions.
"Brasil: Nunca Mais", the Secret Documentation of Torture
The most significant project of his resistance began in 1979, in the middle of the dictatorship. Together with the Presbyterian pastor Jaime Wright, Arns led a team that, under the utmost secrecy, systematically copied the case files of the Superior Military Court. Over a period of six years, more than a million pages of files from 707 court proceedings were captured and transferred onto 543 rolls of microfilm.
The goal was twofold: to prevent these files from being destroyed at the end of the dictatorship, and at the same time to document the actual torture methods the regime used against political opponents. Because the case files came from the military justice system itself, they could not later be dismissed as an invention of the opposition. The evidence came from the system itself.
The result was published in 1985, in the dictatorship's final year, under the title "Brasil: Nunca Mais", and is regarded today as the forerunner of the state truth commission that Brazil established decades later. At a June 2026 honoring ceremony, the jurist Luís Eduardo Greenhalgh put it this way: "Brasil Nunca Mais was the first national truth commission." A sentence that perhaps captures the project's significance better than any award that came after.
Recognition, Even Almost 63 Years Later
On June 8, 2026, Paulo Evaristo Arns was honored posthumously with the Troféu Audálio Dantas, "Indignação, Coragem, Esperança" (Outrage, Courage, Hope), from the São Paulo journalists' union, together with Paulo Vannuchi, Frei Betto, Ricardo Kotscho and Camilo Vannuchi. The honor explicitly recognized him as a journalist, not only as a churchman, for the work behind "Brasil: Nunca Mais". That this recognition only happened this year, and reached me as a descendant by way of a detour through Pünderich, is one of the reasons I'm writing this series at all.
Over his lifetime, Arns collected more than 100 national and international awards and around 24 honorary doctorates, including the Nansen Refugee Award in 1985 and the Niwano Peace Prize in 1994. He retired in 1998. By his 80th birthday in 2001, according to the Chronik der Gemeinde Reil, he was still very active, with his own radio show and newspaper columns. He died on December 14, 2016, in São Paulo at the age of 95, of bronchopneumonia. Thousands of people paid their final respects at the Sé Cathedral, among them former president Lula.
According to MoselbrasilianerInnen, the legacy continues into the present: a great-nephew of Paulo Evaristo Arns, Leonardo Ulrich Steiner, has been Archbishop of Manaus since 2020 and was himself made a cardinal in 2022, the second cardinal from the same family.
What Stays With Us From This Story
I don't want to pretend I have anything to do with what Paulo Evaristo Arns achieved. I make wine on the Mosel; he stood up against a dictatorship, at mortal risk to many of those involved. These are two completely different lives. What still stays with me is the consistency with which he acted once he was in a position to change something. He sold his palace because he felt an archbishop didn't need one. He had files secretly copied for six years, even though it was dangerous for everyone involved. That's an impressive achievement, and our relative is a genuine role model for me.
To Close: a Wine for This Story
If any part of this series deserves a wine that stands on its own, it's this one. With a role model like this, there's something to celebrate: I'm choosing our Reserve extra brut, the flagship of our estate sparkling wine, classically bottle-fermented and aged 60 months on the lees. Not a wine for a quick drink in passing, but one that has matured with the same careful consistency with which Paulo Evaristo Arns acted throughout his life. Certified organic, like everything we make.
The next part is about the Arns family's emigration from Reil as a whole, about Nikolaus Arns and the families who set out together with him in 1846, and about what became of that colony in Santa Catarina up to the present day.
