Dom Emanuel Xavier Oliveira de Almeida, monk of the Monastery of São Bento in Rio de Janeiro, died on January 16, at the age of 95, in Rio de Janeiro. He made his monastic profession in 1951 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1956 for the Benedictine Congregation of Brazil.
Born in 1930, he studied at the Colégio de São Bento of the Monastery of Rio de Janeiro and entered the monastery at the age of 18. He studied at the Athenaeum of Sant’Anselmo, earning a doctorate in Dogmatic Theology, and was very close to Dom Agostinho Mayer. He served as a professor at the Theological School (today the Faculty of São Bento) of the Monastery of São Bento in Rio de Janeiro (affiliated with Sant’Anselmo since 1977), and was its Director from 1980 to 2000. He was also a professor at the Colégio de São Bento, novice master of the Monastery (1976–1992), Subprior, and Prior (from 1997 to January 2000). In 2000 he was elected the second Conventual Prior of the Monastery of the Holy Cross in Brasília, leaving the office in 2005, when he returned to Rio de Janeiro. Ill, he gradually worsened and spent several years in a vegetative state in the Monastery infirmary.
While a student at Sant’Anselmo, he was ordained a deacon in the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi and later a priest at Montecassino. On 25 January 1959 he was with other Anselmians in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls during the celebration of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. On that day, after Mass, Pope John XXIII met privately with the cardinals present and announced his intention to convoke an Ecumenical Council.