He was ordained a priest in 1931 at the age of 22, with a dispensation from the
Holy See since he was below the canonical age of 24. Câmara was named auxiliary bishop of
Rio de Janeiro by
Pope Pius XII on 3 March 1952. During his first years as a priest he was a supporter of the far-right
Brazilian Integralist Action (, AIB), an ideological choice that he later rejected. He also founded two social organizations: the Ceará Legion of Work, in 1931, and the Women Workers' Catholic Union, in 1933. He was active in the formation of the
Brazilian Bishops' Conference (CNBB) in 1952, and served as its first general secretary until 1964. In 1959, he founded in
Rio de Janeiro, a philanthropic organization to fight poverty and social injustice by facilitating the contraction of loans by poorer populations. During his tenure, Câmara was informally called the "bishop of the slums" for his clear position on the side of the urban poor. With other clerics, he encouraged peasants to free themselves from their conventional fatalistic outlook by studying the gospels in small groups and proposing the search for social change from their readings. He attended all four sessions of the
Second Vatican Council and played a significant role in drafting . Under the guidance of Câmara, the Catholic Church in Brazil became an outspoken critic of the
1964–1985 military dictatorship, and a powerful movement for social change. Câmara spoke out and wrote about the implications of using violence to repress rebellion resulting from poverty and injustice in other venues than Brazil.
Traditionalist Catholics urged the military government to arrest Câmara for his support of
land reform and Câmara's colleague, Father Antônio Henrique Pereira Neto, was murdered by unknown conservative forces. A proponent of
liberation theology, he was Archbishop of the Diocese of
Olinda and
Recife from 1964 to 1985, the entirety of the dictatorship. Liberation theology brought forth the political aspect of the Church's charitable work and was criticized on the grounds that it was encouraging the armed revolutionary struggles that swept Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s. Câmara published
Spiral of Violence in 1971, a short tract written when the United States was immersed in a still escalating
Vietnam War. It is distinctive for linking structural injustice (Level 1 violence) with escalating rebellion (Level 2 violence) and repressive reaction (Level 3 violence). In it, Câmara called on the youth of the world to take steps to break the spiral, saying their elders became addicted to those escalating steps. Câmara died in
Recife on 27 August 1999, aged 90. ==Views==