An event in memory of the journalist, murdered 50 years ago by , seeks to recreate, this Saturday (25), the inter-religious act carried out a week after his death and which was marked as one of the most emblematic protests against the regime.
The date marks the exact date and will bring together at the Sé Cathedral, in the center of São Paulo, three representatives of different religions for a celebration, similar to what occurred in 1975. On the occasion, the archbishop of São Paulo, Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns, Rabbi Henry Sobel and Presbyterian pastor Jaime Wright promoted an ecumenical act in contestation of the version given by that Herzog had committed suicide.
In 2025, the task of conducting the ceremony will fall to the Archbishop of São Paulo, Dom Odilo Scherer, Rabbi Uri Lam, from the Congregação Israelita Beth-El, and the Presbyterian pastor Anita Wright – daughter of Jaime Wright. The event is organized by the Vladimir Herzog Institute and the Arns Commission.
“Remembering is always useful to avoid falling into the same mistakes of the past; at the same time, it helps to keep alive the memory and testimony of those who contributed to achieving an end to violence, the regime of fear and the return to the normality of democratic life. I will try to say that democratic coexistence, achieved with the sacrifice of many lives, requires the participation and vigilance of everyone even today”, said Dom Odilo to Sheet.
Uri Lam was invited just two days before the event. Initially, Judaism would be represented by Rabbi Ruben Sternschein, from Congregação Israelita Paulista, but allegations that he had, revealed by Piauí magazine on Wednesday (22), led the organization to change the celebrant.
This Saturday’s event will begin at 7pm and, in addition to the religious speeches, musical performances are planned, such as that of the Luther King Choir, and the video showing of the reading of a letter from Zora Herzog, Vlado’s mother, by actress Fernanda Montenegro.
the president (PT) fulfills a series of agendas in Malaysia and will be represented by the vice president (PT).
Herzog’s death, on October 25, 1975, mobilized protests, student strikes and public questions amid the state of exception that prohibited – and punished – challenges to the military regime.
Director of TV Cultura, Vlado, as he was known, spontaneously appeared at the Army headquarters, in the capital of São Paulo, to talk about his activism in the PCB (Brazilian Communist Party). The regime then promoted several arrests of cadres linked to the organization – the main one on the left and against the dictatorship.
Vlado died after being subjected to intense torture sessions and his death was publicized as a suicide, causing outrage in several sectors of society.
The three religious people behind the 1975 act, already critical and active against the dictatorship, announced the celebration in the country’s main media outlets and brought together, on October 31 of that year, around 8,000 people at the Sé Cathedral.
On that occasion, 800 armed police officers were mobilized to close the main access roads to the city center, causing traffic jams throughout the capital for five hours. Around the Cathedral, 500 plainclothes police officers monitored the comings and goings of protesters, many of them students from USP, where Herzog was a professor, while repression agents also monitored the act inside the cathedral.
“I remember my father reporting the difficulty he faced in getting to the Sé Cathedral, due to the blockades set up by the military on the main access roads. The final part of the journey was taken by subway, and so he managed to arrive on time”, Anita Wright told the reporter.
For her speech, she intends to use as a basis the teachings of Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my shepherd, and I shall not want”), the same one read by her father on the occasion of the 1975 act. “It is a very well-known psalm and present in the liturgies of Jews, Catholics and Protestants, represented in the ecumenical act”, she stated.
Rabbi Henry Sobel, who had already challenged the Jewish dictatorship as a suicide, preached respect for men and declared that the mission of a religious man “does not only reside within the temples, but also in the social and political context”, especially in the defense of human rights.
Dom Odilo defended that religions “have the role of helping to form people’s critical consciousness in relation to the values and counter-values of society”.
“The meeting at the Sé Cathedral, 50 years after the murder of Vladimir Herzog, wants to resound once again: you will not kill; you will not do injustice or violence to your neighbor”, he stated.
In Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns’ speech, the archbishop recalled that “thou shalt not kill” is one of the ten commandments that serve as a guide for Judeo-Christian religions. “Whoever kills commits himself into the hands of the Lord of History and will not only be cursed in the memory of men, but also in the judgment of God”, he declared at the time.
In an internal report from the Ministry of Justice, dated November 5, 1975, the DSI (Security and Information Division), which monitored and reported opponents of the government, said that the act “acquired a clearly political connotation” and that there was among those present “a lack of composure that is not typical of religious acts, but rather of leftist rallies”.
“Finally, the words of D. Paulo Evaristo Arns stand out, whose homily recalls ‘you shall not kill’. The chosen theme leaves no doubt as to the connotative meaning that was intended to be given to the ceremony”, says the document.
The dictatorship presented a plan of the Sé Cathedral, showing how the layout of those present had been, and stated that “all of this gave the idea of an act directed by specialists very knowledgeable about propaganda”.
“It was a consciously oppositional public; a faction that was present there, not by simple chance or by spontaneous sentimental solidarity, as supposedly, but desperately prepared.”
The event was attended by figures such as the French philosopher Michel Foucault and the historian Sergio Buarque de Hollanda, as well as politicians, journalists, trade unionists, religious people and students.
Herzog had already been , as on the occasion of . , Vlado’s eldest son, Ivo Herzog, declared that next Saturday’s event (25) will also be a form of defense of democracy.
“If it was a given thing, suddenly we discover that it is fragile and that we are barely returning to a new period of authoritarianism,” he said.
Anita Wright agrees that the current context, especially after the attempted coup d’état in 2022, which led to the conviction of the former president () more, demands “reaffirming that we have not given up our democracy and national sovereignty”.
“The act is not intended to be a partisan demonstration, but it will certainly also be a strong message in favor of democracy”, said Dom Odilo.
