wfn.org | Brazilian Missionary and Human-Rights Champion Dies of Heart Attack

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

3-June-1999 
99215 
 
    Brazilian Missionary and Human-Rights Champion 
    Dies of Heart Attack 
 
    James Wright exposed regime's atrocities 
 
by Evan Silverstein 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky. -  The Rev. James Nelson Wright, a Presbyterian mission 
worker in Brazil who secretly helped compile a book exposing human-rights 
atrocities in the South American country, died Saturday, May 29, of a 
massive heart attack. He was 71. 
 
    "There's probably no mission worker of the Presbyterian Church in this 
century that did more for the cause of justice than Jim," said the Rev. 
Clifton Kirkpatrick, the stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), 
who knew Wright. "He was just a fervent advocate for social justice, in 
Brazil and around the world." 
 
    Wright, who went by the name Jaime, passed away in Vitoria, Brazil in 
the state of Espirito Santo, where he and his wife of 49 years, Alma, 
lived. The funeral service was held Sunday at the United Presbyterian 
Church of Vila Velha in Vitoria. Alma Wright said the funeral was attended 
by more than 200 friends, family and clergy from throughout the country. 
 
    "He saw how the civilian church suffered, and he wanted to help as a 
Brazilian," Alma Wright told the Presbyterian News Service by telephone. 
She said Wright took up the fight for human rights after his younger 
brother, Paulo Stuart Wright, a Christian student activist, disappeared in 
1973. Wright later learned that his brother had been tortured and killed 
within 48 hours of his abduction. 
 
    Alma Wright said her husband had not been feeling well for several 
days, and had scheduled a doctor's appointment that would have taken place 
two days after his death. 
 
    Wright was affiliated with the United Presbyterian Church in the United 
States of America before the 1983 reunion that formed PC(USA). He retired 
as a mission worker in 1993. He was an active member and leader of the 
United Presbyterian Church of Brazil and served as its general secretary 
from 1968 to 1986. His election to that post sparked debate over the 
appropriateness of a mission worker from one church serving as a 
high-ranking elected officer of another. Wright also was active in 
ecumenical organizations around the world. 
 
    Word of Wright's death, reported in Brazilian newspapers and on 
national television, saddened Presbyterians who knew him. 
 
    "He was just a giant of the faith," said June Ramage Rogers, a 
missionary in residence in the Global Education office, a friend of 
Wright's. 
 
    Wright was raised in Brazil by American missionary parents from 
Arkansas. He attended college in Arkansas and went on to the Princeton 
Theological Seminary in New Jersey before returning to Brazil, where he 
served three terms as executive of the Brazil mission for the former 
UPCUSA. 
 
    Wright was born with dual American-Brazilian citizenship, but he gave 
up the American half in 1958 and considered himself Brazilian. Aside from 
his wife, he is survived by five children and eight grandchildren. 
 
    He will be remembered as an avid guardian of social justice, and known 
for a book he helped to translate that divulged the truth about the 
pervasive use of torture by Brazilian military governments from 1964 to 
1979. The book, which was secretly prepared by the Archdiocese of Sao Paulo 
and first published in 1985, was titled "Torture in Brazil," an English 
translation of "Brasil: Nunca Mais" ("Brazil: Never Again"). Wright was 
listed as translator of the American edition, but a published report 
suggested that he had been heavily involved in the project from its 
inception. The book was based on the official records of the regime itself 
- verbatim transcripts of military trials that were never intended to be 
made public. 
 
    The people who compiled the volume not only managed to keep its 
existence absolutely secret for more than five years - the time it took to 
complete the work - but also managed to keep their own identities secret 
after the book's publication. 

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