From a seminary invaded on April 25th to the confessions of an ex-pide – April 25th 50 years

Avelino Pereira Alves was a seminarian and belonged to the Comboni Missionaries, a congregation persecuted by the old regime for defending that the Church had to be liberating. On the morning of April 25, 1974, the news that Lisbon was the scene of a revolution quickly reached Famalicão and was received with enormous joy: “We hugged each other and cried”. But the astonishment came shortly afterwards, when he saw the seminary where he studied being invaded by more than ten pides seeking asylum.

After 50 years, Avelino, 22 at the time, can remember in detail the entry of political police agents into the seminary and the courageous way in which one of his superiors grabbed a (plastic) gun and confronted those trying to take revenge on the Pides. .

Today, he still doesn’t know what happened to those men, but he remembers that “they left, one by one, night after night”.

Avelino was ordained a priest after the Carnation Revolution but he does not forget the pre-25th of April masses, in which everyone looked at each other, suspiciously, to find out where the pide that controlled them was. He admits that they almost always knew who it was. “If the face was strange, then it was that one,” he says.

Chaplain at the Santa Margarida Military Camp, he met Salgueiro Maia and was a friend of General Francisco Costa Gomes, one of the protagonists of the military coup of April 25, who was dismissed as Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces and replaced Spínola as President of the Republic, still in 1974.

At 72 years old, Avelino does not hide his emotion when he talks about who he considers to be one of the great heroes of April. “The hero of April with whom I was friends was General Costa Gomes. He was a man I admired“, he recalls.

With his voice breaking, the priest remembers that he met the general many times and that he even confessed to him. “He was a man of faith. He sang and prayed at mass. An extraordinary man, who I admire because he was silent and suffered in silence. If it weren’t for him, I don’t know if we wouldn’t have suffered a civil war“.

Memories now come to him accompanied by a smile. Between his life as a teacher, journalist and parish priest, he admits to being a man “of everyone and for everyone”. And he confesses that one of the things that surprised him most was discovering that a large number of the priests were former seminarians. Avelino explains that this happened because Cardinal Manuel Gonçalves Cerejeira, the 14th Patriarch of Lisbon, asked Salazar not to recognize the seminary’s qualifications – because the majority of men went to the seminary because they did not have economic conditions –, a request that was accepted on the condition that qualifications would only be recognized for police and military service.

In the post-25th of April period, the stigma that fell on the former pides was great. In Pêro Pinheiro, in the municipality of Sintra, where he has been a parish priest for several years, he met a former political police officer and quickly nicknamed him ‘Zé Pide’. The playful and relaxed tone helped to defend him from the public’s gaze and comments.

The priest describes, with sadness, the difficulties he experienced during the old regime but does not fail to emphasize that the post-25th of April period was not easy either.

“Politically we were accused. In the North there was that war between the PS and the PSD. I had some troubles there. It was a bit difficult. After April 25th, I felt more persecuted than by PIDE“. Remember that the forced attempt to label people according to their political party often prevented the freedom achieved in the revolution from being fully experienced.

Avelino believes that Portugal needs to continue the 25th of April and that more justice and equality are needed. “We need more social justice, especially to feel that it is a country for all of us, not just a country for a few. When people don’t see justice, there is no peace.”