RIO DE JANEIRO: Forty years after Ernesto Che Guevara’s death, Brazilian liberation theology pioneer Fray Betto on Friday called him a “St. Francis of Politics.” “Che was our revolutionary paradigm,” Fray Betto, a Dominican brother whose movement dating from the 1960s encouraged Catholics to get involved in social and political change, told newsmen.

“For us, he was a St Francis of Politics, because he walked away from power in Cuba and starving for justice, he went off into the jungle in Congo and then in Bolivia to try to liberate greater Latin America,” said Betto, 63.

Fray Betto, a personal friend of Cuba’s Fidel Castro, spent four years in prison for his links, along with other Dominican brothers, to a leftist group that rose up in arms against the Brazilian military government in 1964.

Guevara, the Argentine-born Cuban leftist icon, was killed Oct 9, 1967 in Bolivia. He will be given anniversary honours in the small city of Santa Clara, Cuba where he led a key battle of the Cuban Revolution and where a mausoleum has held his remains since 1997.—AFP