Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, one of the Catholic Church’s most prominent pro-democracy voices in Latin America, died Dec. 14 in São Paulo, Brazil. He was 95.

He had lung and kidney problems, according to the archdiocese of São Paulo, where he served from 1970 to 1998. The cardinal became famous for challenging leaders of the brutal military dictatorship of 1964-1985 and for his fight against torture in Latin America.

Cardinal Arns often talked about democratic values during Mass, protected activists in his churches and led a national anti-torture initiative. Arns also threatened to excommunicate police investigators who refused to provide information on political prisoners.

In São Paulo’s central cathedral, he organized in 1975 one of the most open acts of defiance of Brazil’s dictatorship, praying with other religious leaders and blaming the regime for the assassination of journalist Vladimir Herzog, who had been taken as a political prisoner shortly before.

Officials said Herzog had committed suicide in jail, but Cardinal Arns rejected that version during Mass, despite the pressure made by tanks and soldiers outside his church.

Conservative members of the church and the military leaders regarded him as a troublemaker. He recalled a conversation with Gen. Emilio Medici, who told him, “You take care of your church and I will take care of the country.”

Cardinal Arns also helped victims of political persecution and torture in the rest of South America.

One of his friends was Argentine human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, who said Cardinal Arns saved him twice from the Brazilian dictatorship.

A commission created by Cardinal Arns at his archdiocese documented many cases of torture and helped later governments pay damages to victims and shame perpetrators of violence.

Cardinal Arns was sympathetic to the left-leaning Theology of Liberation, a stream of Catholic thought that irritated critics by often merging socialist theory with church doctrine. The cardinal’s political links led Pope John Paul II to intervene in his archdiocese, the second biggest in the world after Mexico City, to split his powers.

Paulo Evaristo Arns was born in Forquilhinha, Brazil, on Sept. 14, 1921, to German immigrants. He entered the Franciscan order and was ordained a priest in 1945. He earned a doctorate at the Sorbonne in Paris before returning to Brazil to begin his teaching career. He was named auxiliary bishop of São Paulo in 1966 and was appointed archbishop four years later.

He lived his last years in silence on the outskirts of São Paulo.

— Associated Press