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Journalist Jose Maria MayrinkThe 82-year-old died early today in São Paulo from complications of leukemia. The wake, reserved for a few people due to the covid-19 pandemic, is scheduled to begin at 3:00 p.m., at the Pacaembu Ceremonial, in the west of the city. Then the body will be cremated.
A Catholic, a former seminarian, the miner made journalism a profession of faith. His career as a reporter began in 1961, when he left the seminary to teach Latin and Portuguese classes and contribute to the weekly. Popular Newspaper, from the city of Ponte Nova, in the interior of Minas Gerais. The following year, in Belo Horizonte, he worked for the newspaper Post office and began a journalism course at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, a study that he later completed at the Faculdade Cásper Líbero, in São Paulo.
Since then, the report has followed him throughout his life, he received the most important awards from the Brazilian press, such as the Esso Prize (1971), and he reached the extreme of the profession of an informant: he interviewed a saint. Mayrink’s report published in Status, on October 14, 2018, which gives the news of the canonization of Don Óscar Romero, archbishop of San Salvador, in Central America, sanctified by Pope Francis in a ceremony in Rome.
Mayrink knew the new saint well. He had interviewed the archbishop on March 21, 1980, a Friday, accompanied by two colleagues, an American, from the Dallas Times Herald, and a German, from the news agency DPA.
In the midst of a political conflict that led to a massacre in the country, with 75,000 dead in 13 years of civil war, the reporter went straight to the heart of the crisis: “Are you afraid of dying?” He asked the Salvadoran religious leader. . Three days after the interview, on Monday 24th, at 6:30 pm, Don Óscar Arnulfo Romero Galdamez, then 62, was shot and killed in the chest while celebrating a mass, shot by a gunman at the request of a leader. of the local extreme right.
In his coverage of the canonization of Santo Óscar Romero in Rome, Mayrink recalls the crime episode in a first-person text under the title “I interviewed a saint”, accompanied by a reproduction of the Status with the story of the death of the “Martyr of the Americas” – how the archbishop was appointed in the Catholic Church for having given his life in defense of the rights of the poor and persecuted.
The president of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB), Dom Walmor de Oliveira Azevedo, described Mayrink as “a man of virtues” and a “reference for many generations of journalists, for his always brilliant, precise texts, capable of to move, without resorting to sensationalism ”.
In a note, Azevedo stated: “In a special way, Mayrink brilliantly covered the main events of the Catholic Church, always with independence, earning the admiration and respect of the clergy, religious, theologians and many lay evangelists. Mineiro, was a seminarian , but his true vocation was journalism, which he embraced with love and with unwavering fidelity to ethical principles, I keep in mind his respectful and objective way of interviewing, his sincerity and clarity, capable of gaining the trust of his interviewees. sustained by a singular humanism, it is a seal of quality for Brazilian journalism, we will greatly feel its absence, society loses the sensitive gaze of our late José Maria Mayrink, always translated into precise and beautiful words. God welcome you, giving you the well deserved rest “.
Family
Born in Jequeri, in the Zona da Mata, 730 kilometers from São Paulo, married to Maria José Lembi Ferreira Mayrink, father of Cristina, Mônica, Luciana and Juliana, Mayrink was born in July 1938, the son of a doctor and a teacher, as the book tells him Loneliness, 2014, by Geração Editorial.
With great sadness, the family reported that the leukemia had advanced greatly in recent days. “He fought like a warrior. Rest now like an angel. Despite your generosity, character and faith, we are sure that today is a holiday in heaven.”
At the age of 13 he entered the seminary of Mariana, in the interior of Minas, then he was transferred to the sanctuary of Caraça, where he completed high school and to which, whenever he could, he returned with his family to enjoy the tranquility of the natural reserve and visits from the maned wolf that usually walks through the sanctuary at night.
Appreciating good prose, the young Mayrink later moved to Petropolis (RJ), where he studied philosophy and also two years of theology. At that time, 1960, he wrote his first book, “Pastor e Vítima”, using the pseudonym Augusto Gomes, his mother’s surname.
He is the author of several books: Soiliness (EMW, 1983), Children of Divorce (Paulinas, 1984), Clay angels (EMW, 1986), 3 x 30 – The backstage of the Brazilian press (Best Seller, 1992), with Carmo Chagas and Luiz Adolfo Pinheiro; Reporter life (Editorial Generation, 2002) and 1968 – Gag in Estadão (Editora do Grupo Estado, 2008).
Clay angels, from 1986, with a foreword by Henfil, is dedicated to his father, José Eduardo Mayrink. “The title is great. It even made me jealous of Mayrink, that envy that every professional creator has, when a colleague hits the mark. But I’m not going to make a preface, this book needs no introduction”, wrote Henfil (1944-1988 ) on the constructions.
In Loneliness, from 1983, republished by Geração Editorial in 2014, for which he had special affection, gathered stories published in a series of reports made in 1982 for the Status about the characters who lived the dilemma of a lonely life.
In his long career, which had the “50 years of contribution to Brazilian journalism” honored in 2013 at a ceremony in Estadão, Mayrink has compiled national and international coverage of dramatic cases since the 1970s. As shown in the book Reporter life, from April 2002, launched during the XVII Biennial of the Book, a balance of 40 years of profession, was in charge of following in Chile, in 1973, the military coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende.
Mayrink covered the fact for him Newspaper, from Grupo Estado, with his colleague Clóvis Rossi (1943-2019), at that time writing for Estadão. On the trip, he also reported the funeral of the poet Pablo Neruda, which ended up being the first major Chilean public demonstration against the dictator Augusto Pinochet.
In the book on the life of Carlos Marighella, the journalist Mário Magalhães tells that Mayrink was the first reporter to arrive at the scene of the crime, which occurred in Alameda Casa Branca, in 1969, when the revolutionary militant was shot dead in a prepared bell. by agents of the Brazilian repression. Always concerned about the veracity of the information, he amused himself by recalling the lesson learned the day when, still a novice in the business, he wrote a text titled Pelé “Joaquim Arantes do Nascimento”, a memory that is in the book. Reporter life.
The reference among journalists, particularly those specialized in religion, covered meetings of the main Catholic leaders, such as the one who elected Benedict XVI, in 2005, and the beatification ceremony of the Polish Karol Wojtyla (João Paulo 2nd), in 2011 In December 2008, in the 40 years of the darkness of AI-5, it released the book-report Gag in Estadão, on censorship in newspapers The State of S. Paulo me Newspaper, from December 1968 to January 1975.
“Mayrink was an exceptional person, a benchmark of character and competence for all journalists, of various generations. We feel privileged to have had him as a colleague for so many years at the Status“said the director of journalism of Status, João Caminoto.
During his life in the newsrooms he passed through, he was also an editor. But what I really liked was the direct contact with the sources of information in the field. A professional witness of his time, always attentive to collecting data and information for readers, he defended the maxim that “the place of a reporter is in the street.”
Accustomed to reports, in his reports and books he cultivated caring for people – lately he was thinking of a way to work in support of refugees -, he did not forget the emotions experienced in his personal visits to historical places of reference of his Catholic faith . He recalled that when he arrived at the holy places in Israel, he was filled with a special emotion. A feeling that also dominated him when he remembered the encounter with the tragic place of the massacre of the Jews in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz, whose text, published in the State, he wrote from memory, without consulting notes.
