Monsignor João Scognamiglio Clá Dias, founder of the Heralds of the Gospel, passed away on 1 November in São Paulo (Brazil) at the age of 85. He has been suffering from a stroke for the last 14 years, according to a statement from the institution.
“As founder of the Heralds of the Gospel, he leaves a legacy of the holiness of life to millions of Catholics linked to the institution on five continents,” the Heralds of the Gospel said in their statement.
The association celebrated a Mass today, with the beginning of the funeral vigil for Msgr. Cla Dias at 2:00 p.m. (Brasilia time). On 2 November there will also be another Mass at 5:00 p.m. which can be followed at this link. The last Mass of farewell of the founder of the Heralds of the Gospel will be celebrated on Sunday, October 3rd at 3:00 p.m. The celebration can be followed at this link.
According to ACI Prensa, João Scognamiglio Clá Dias was born on 15 August 1939, in São Paulo. On 7 July 1956, he met Plínio Corrêa de Oliveira, founder of the Brazilian Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), and, according to the Heralds, “became an ardent disciple and faithful interpreter” of his thought and work. In 1958, he served in the Brazilian army and was awarded the Marechal Hermes medal, the most distinguished military honor in the field of education. He studied law at the Faculty of Largo São Francisco, in São Paulo, and then completed a doctorate in Theology and Canon Law. He founded the Aristotelian-Thomistic Philosophical Institute and the São Tomás de Aquino Theological Institute, as well as the scientific journal Lumen Veritatis and the Catholic culture magazine Heralds of the Gospel.
During this period he wrote 27 works, several of which were translated into seven languages and some with a circulation of more than two million copies, such as Fatima, Dawn of the Third Millennium; Saint Mary! The Paradise of God Revealed to Men ; Saint Joseph, Who Knows Him?; The Unpublished Works of the Gospels; Dona Lucilia and The Gift of Wisdom in the Mind, Life and Work of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira. He also promoted the construction of churches in Brazil and other countries in America, Europe and Africa.
In 1970, based on Plinio’s wishes, he wanted to establish a religious association, approved by the Church and serving her. She had an experience of community life in an old Benedictine property in São Paulo. In 1995, after Plinio’s death, she created three entities of pontifical right: the International Private Association of Faithful Heralds of the Gospel, approved in 2001 by Pope Saint John Paul II, the Clerical Society of Apostolic Life Virgo Flos Carmeli and the Feminine Society of Apostolic Life Regina Virginum, both approved in 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI.
In addition, he founded more than 50 choirs and orchestras and promoted the construction of nearly 30 churches and oratories in Brazil and on different continents in America, Europe and Africa. According to the Heralds, João Clá Dias also personally directed the institutions he founded, which currently carry out their activities in more than 70 countries, with the help of millions of members and followers, among priests, associate brothers, cooperators or solidarity participants. He also propagated devotion to the Virgin Mary through ceremonies of consecration to Our Lady, according to the method of St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, remotely reaching almost three million believers, in 178 countries. He also instituted and promoted Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in the main houses of the institutions he founded.
On 15 June 2005 he was ordained a priest at the age of 65. In 2008 he was appointed protonotary apostolic and honorary canon of the Papal Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome by Pope Benedict XVI. On 15 August 2009 he was awarded the Pro Ecclesia et Pontice medal for his zeal for the Church and the Pope. That same year he published a book on the occasion of the Year for Priests, written at the request of the then prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, Cardinal Claudio Hummes. In 2010 he published the book The Church is Immaculate and indefectible, in which he denounces the root causes of abuse committed against minors or vulnerable people.
In 2017, Bishop Cla Dias resigned from his position as president of the International Association of Heralds of the Gospel following complaints against the organization in a video showing a meeting between the founder of the Heralds and a group of priests who read an alleged dialogue that a priest of the institution had had during an encounter with a supposed demon during an “exorcism.” In 2019, the association received several complaints that children and adolescents from the Heralds’ boarding schools suffered humiliation, torture, harassment and rape by members of the association, inside the Heralds’ headquarters in Caieiras (Brazil). On 23 July 2024, the São Paulo Court of Justice (TJSP) closed the case, giving the victory to the Heralds of the Gospel.
In the statement on the death of its founder, the Heralds report that, “since 2017,” the association “has been the subject of false accusations by enemies of the Church and of good” and that, “by restoring the truth, Monsignor João emerged unscathed from these waves of defamation, either by benevolently accepting the judicial retractions of the accusers, or by accumulating numerous procedural victories, recorded in sentences and in the archive of investigations.”
“Thus, convinced that the biographies of providential men do not end on this earth, their spiritual children will continue their work under the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to fulfill the mission of being a link between the Holy Church and civil society,” the association wrote in its statement.