Roman Catholic Cardinal. Considered by many to be a leading candidate for the Papacy in the conclaves of 1978, Aloísio Leo Arlindo Lorscheider OFM., was born in Picada Geraldo, Estrela, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, and entered the Franciscan Minor Seminary of Taquari at the tender age of nine years. Beginning his novitiate year in December 1942 in the Franciscan convent of Divinopolis where he made his solemn profession on March 13, 1946, he was ordained priest on August 22, 1948. Sent to Rome to study dogmatic theology, back in Brazil he started lecturing the subject at the Franciscan seminary of Divinópolis, of which Province he went on to serve as commissary of the Third Franciscan Order, definitor and master of novices. Named lector at the Pontifical Antonianum Athenaeum in Rome, he served general visitor of the Franciscan Province of Portugal before being elected bishop of the newly erected diocese of Santo Ângelo, Rio Grande do Sul, receiving his episcopal consecration from Cardinal Alfredo Vicente Scherer on May 20, 1962. Promoted to the metropolitan see of Fortaleza, Ceará, his popularity grew among the citizens of Brazil soon grew up as a result of his outspoken stance on the appalling poverty that blighted the region. A vehement critic of Brazil's military regime and its tortures, Pope Paul VI created him cardinal priest in the consistory of May 24, 1976 with the title of San Pietro in Montorio. Transferred to the archdiocese of Aparecida, São Paulo, he resigned the pastoral government of his see on January 28, 2004. President of the Brazilian Episcopal Conference, vice-president and later president of the Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM), and president of Caritas Internationalis, Lorscheider died on Sunday, December 23, 2007, at 5.20 am., in the Unit of Intensive Therapy of the São Francisco's hospital at Santa Casa de Misericórdia, Porto Alegre, where he was recovered due to cardiac and renal complications during the first week of December. Orignally buried at the Franciscan convent of Daltro Filho, following his exhumation, the remains were divided into three simple wooden urns and reburied in three different locations: part in the Capela da Ressurreição of the National Shrine of Nossa Senhora Aparecida; another in the Capela da Ressurreição of the Cathedral of Fortaleza and the remaining in the same convent of São Boaventura in Daltro Filho where he had been initially buried.