Charles Buswell, 94, the former Roman Catholic bishop of Pueblo, died Saturday. Buswell, who led the Pueblo diocese for 20 years starting in 1959, is remembered for helping ease racial tensions in the 1960s and 1970s and championing social-justice causes.
He was appointed to lead the Pueblo diocese by Pope John XXIII, the pontiff who would later convene the Second Vatican Council to help modernize the church. Buswell attended all the council’s sessions and promoted its spirit of reform and openness in Pueblo.
Buswell started a program that allowed lay people to study theology, then assist in pastoral programs. He also encouraged diocesan and parish officials to seek out and invite women and minorities to participate in church life. He decided to close Pueblo’s struggling parochial school system in 1971, thinking that it was better to not offer a Catholic education at all than to offer it only to those who could pay the costly tuition.
Buswell lived in the mansion purchased by the diocese but routinely answered the door himself. When he was in better health, he could also be found serving food and eating with the homeless at the soup kitchen.
Buswell was born Oct. 15, 1913, in Homestead, Okla., the fourth of five children. He was ordained in 1939 in the diocese of Oklahoma City-Tulsa.
Anne C. Martindell, 93, who entered politics in her 50s, found true love as ambassador to New Zealand in her 60s, earned a college degree in her 80s and published a memoir titled “Never Too Late” in her 90s, died Wednesday in Princeton, N.J. Her death was announced by her son, Roger Martindell of Princeton.
Her birth, her breeding and her iron-willed father seemed to have condemned Martindell to a life she later dismissed as utterly conventional — “I didn’t do anything real until I was 50,” she once told a reporter — but feminism and the 1960s changed all that.
Racing to make up for lost time, she carved out a career in New Jersey politics, serving as a state senator in the 1970s, and held posts in President Jimmy Carter’s administration, including that of ambassador to New Zealand. She also resumed her education at Smith College more than six decades after her freshman year and in her 90s wrote her memoirs, published last month by Boxed Books. The book’s theme, neatly expressed by its author in two words, is carpe diem.
Jose Bispo Clementino dos Santos, 95, the celebrated samba singer known as Jamelao who was a pillar of Rio de Janeiro’s most traditional samba school, died Saturday, a spokeswoman said. With his smooth, melodic voice, Jamelao was the lead singer for countless Mangueira Carnival parades from the 1950s onward. He recorded more than 20 records.
The Associated Press
