Organised the religious and community life of the ethnic Croatian community in Sao Paulo and in Rio de Janeiro
| Damjan Rodin, Croatian priest and benefactor in Brasil Prominent among the religious leaders was the priest Damjan Rodin, one of the first Croatian priests to move to Brazil after the Second World War, where he organised the religious and community life of the ethnic Croatian community in Sao Paulo. In Rio de Janeiro he continued his important work for Croatians and Brazilians. He was born in the Šibenik hinterland (in the town of Prvić Luka on the island of Prvić) and moved to Brazil in 1947, working as parish priest in Sao Paulo for a brief period where he edited a bilingual monthly, the Hrvatski marijanski glasnik (Croatian Marian Herald). The monthly saw only six issues published in 1947 and 1948. Milan Rodin (1910-1968)
Thanks to his many contacts and good relationships he secured funding from various Catholic (and other) organisations in Europe and North America, and helped raised a favela in Rio de Janeiro now known as Vila Croacia, part of the Senador Camara district. Over time this favela gained a truly Croatian feel, with elements of heritage that could not be achieved in Sao Paulo. He founded the Brazil-Hrvatska school in 1959, active to this day, and the Cardinal Stepinac home for children on Rua Dalmacia street. In 1966 he opened a Croatian hospital in the Sepetiba district, part of the broader Rio de Janeiro area. In 1968 he helped found a football club for children and youth. At the Nossa senhora de Lapa parish he founded a centre that works to combat addiction. Rodin continued to write as a Brazilian correspondent for Revista Croata, publishing a number of short articles in Croatian.
In 1960 he supported, as the president of the Croatian colony of Brazil, an initiative from Brazilian senator and vice president Medeiros Neto to create a Croatian language and literature course at the national university in Rio de Janeiro, which did not, unfortunately, bear fruit. He published a book in Rio de Janeiro in the late sixties in Portuguese called Hrvatska, njezina povijest u povijesti zapadne civilizacije (Croatia: It’s History in the History of Western Civilisation). Priest Rodin died in 1968 and Vila Croacia lost its link to the ancestral homeland. This led the Raymundo family to continue the work of the football club and create links with the homeland spoken of so often in this favela. |
