Goodbye, Professor, and one less wise man

Aroldo Murá, a thoroughbred of journalism, was pointed about matters of intelligence, with no patience for errors of logic or Portuguese. He was relentless on those points to the last moment. At the newspaper Indústria & Comércio, he voluntarily disdained the journalistic skill of newcomers in order to build memorable stories. A high point of that plot was having immediately hired an intern who wrote a good note. The intern was Gladimir Nascimento.

It became customary to call the journalist Professor Aroldo Murá. He himself often called himself “Professor.” “Don’t leave the Professor in the lurch,” he would say when commissioning a piece for the blog. In more than 60 years of practicing news, together with a gift of himself, he was admired by students and colleagues, and kept in his editorials classic and comic disaffections. The man knew how to provoke many times, and many other times mended himself in public.

To the blog’s own contributors, among whom journalist André Nunes, a squire and present friend, stands out, he used to complain about absolutely every text that carried explicit or subtle criticism of any public figure. And he posted the texts anyway, without any change, even to shouts of “you’re going to make me lose all my advertisers!”

At the end of the 2010s, he joined forces with administrator and former State Planning Secretary Dr. Belmiro Valverde, architect Manoel Coelho, journalist Michelle Thomé, photographer Felipe Pinheiro and others, and helped build the João Paulo II Education Center in a vulnerable area of Araucária, in the Curitiba metropolitan region. The school, at the time, was an institutional provocation taken to its ultimate consequences, with education of the highest level, and full time. The cost per student was the same as the public network’s, but financed by U.S. philanthropy.

A few years ago, he called a long list of journalists and invited: “let’s grill Luiz Geraldo Mazza.” He received everyone with a very ample table, and that afternoon the innards of Curitiba and Paraná opened up. It is all recorded on video. It was proven that the capital is indeed a small city, with very noble and very infamous experiences, as befits any inhabited city.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, through the Science and Faith Institute, he promoted a series of online lectures with representatives of various religious beliefs. There was a bit of everything, from the least known or popular to the Blessed Sacrament. The respect with which Professor treated each guest and each question is a lesson in professional ethics and human sensitivity.

Paraná journalism loses a generous sage as well. Father to an infinity of children, he always bid them farewell with a blessing in the form of a cross. Now, it is hoped that, given the advantages of proximity, he asks God for help for Paraná and Brazil. And that he intercedes with the Creator for the life of journalism.