Geraldo de Proença Sigaud

Who was Geraldo de Proença Sigaud?

Geraldo de Proença Sigaud, S.V.D. was a Brazilian prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Bishop of Jacarezinho from 1947 to 1960, and as Archbishop of Diamantina from 1960 to 1980.

He was born in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, and ordained a priest of the Society of the Divine Word on March 12, 1932. Following his ordination, he became a professor at the major seminary of São Paulo, alongside Antônio de Castro Mayer. When he gave his support to a book written by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira claiming Communist infiltration in the Brazilian Catholic Action, he was sanctioned and sent to Spain in March 1946. However, he found favor with the Apostolic Nuncio Benedetto Aloisi Masella, who ensured his return to Brazil shortly afterwards.

On October 29, 1946, Sigaud was appointed the third Bishop of Jacarezinho by Pope Pius XII. He received his episcopal consecration on May 1, 1947 from Archbishop Carlo Chiarlo, with Bishops José Maurício da Rocha and Manoel da Silveira d'Elboux serving as co-consecrators. He was later named the fourth Archbishop of Diamantina on December 20, 1960.

After Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council in 1962, Sigaud called for "counter-revolutionary combat," especially against Communism, and denounced "the implacable enemy of the Church and Catholic society...the Revolution." Determined to organize the conservative-minded Council Fathers to provide opposition to the more progressive bishops, he founded the Coetus Internationalis Patrum with the French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and his compatriot Bishop de Castro Mayer in 1963, later becoming the group's Secretary. During the Council, he brought a petition signed by 213 Fathers to Amleto Cardinal Cicognani, asking for the condemnation of Marxism, socialism and Communism, and later presented Pope Paul VI with the petition of 510 Fathers for the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Sigaud also described the United States one-dollar bill as evidence of "the world wide conspiracy against the Catholic order," and claimed, "The heads of international Jewry have for centuries conspired methodically and out of an undying hatred against the Catholic name and the destruction of the Catholic order, and for the construction of a world wide Jewish empire."