Geraldo de Proença Sigaud

Geraldo de Proença Sigaud, S.V.D. (September 26, 1909 – September 5, 1999) 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.

Biography 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. In 1962 Sigaud called for "counter-revolutionary combat," especially against Communism, and denounced "the implacable enemy of the Church and Catholic society...the Revolution." The Archbishop of Diamantina himself, on October 2, 1970, officially announced, coming out of an audience with the President of the Republic Emílio Garrastazu Médici, that the TFP had distanced himself from him because of his support for the agrarian reform promoted by the government and the reform liturgy of Paul VI.

Despite his conservative leanings, he implemented the Novus Ordo Missae in his diocese and did not support Archbishop Lefebvre's Society of St. Pius X. Sigaud resigned as Archbishop on September 10, 1980, after a 19-year-long tenure. He later died at age 89.