Frei Betto

Frei Betto
Born	Carlos Alberto Libânio Christo August 25, 1944 Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais
Residence	Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo
Nationality	Brazilian
Occupation	Roman Catholic friar
Religion	Roman Catholicism

Carlos Alberto Libânio Christo, O.P., better known as Frei Betto (born August 25, 1944) is a Brazilian writer, political activist, liberation theologist and Dominican friar. He was imprisoned for four years by the military dictatorship for smuggling people out of Brazil. His incarceration was part of an ongoing series of attacks by the government on members of the Roman Catholic Church.

In addition to work on eliminating hunger in Brazil, Frei Betto is involved in various aspects of Brazil's politics. He worked for the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, for whom he was considered a spiritual advisor and mentor.

As a liberation theologist, Frei Betto has been involved in various international efforts in order to support an understanding between Marxism and Christianity. During the 1980s, he visited Havana and held frequent and lengthy interviews with Fidel Castro, the result of such talks being a book, Fidel and Religion, where Castro exposed his views on Christianity, something that raised protest among conservatives but is also said to have improved relations between Castro's government and the Cuban Catholic Church. During Mikhail Gorbachev's Perestroika, Betto was also involved in various efforts aimed at an understanding between leaders of Russian Orthodox Church and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, such efforts being described in the form of a travelogue published by him in 1993 in Portuguese, Lost Paradise, which the author dedicates to a certain Theophilus ("God's friend"), apparently the same as the mysterious addressee of the Gospel of Luke, which should be understood as a symbol of all Christians.