URUGUAY, Alexandra Kempff / Maria Fischer •
Jorge “Toto” Da Silveira, a well-known journalist from Uruguay, died Tuesday, July 4, in Montevideo at the age of 79. We found an interview conducted by Nicolás Lauber in Diario El País, Uruguay, in September 2022, and republished on July 4, 2023, in Diario de Carmelo, a town about 75 km north of Colonia del Sacramento. In this interview, Da Silveira talks about his attachment to the Schoenstatt Shrine of Nueva Helvecia, the first Daughter Shrine. -Jorge “Toto” Da Silveira, a well-known journalist from Uruguay, died in Montevideo on Tuesday, July 4, at the age of 79. We found an interview conducted by Nicolás Lauber in Diario El País, Uruguay, in September 2022, and republished on July 4, 2023, in the “Daily News” of Carmelo, a town about 75 km north of Colonia del Sacramento. In this interview, Da Silveira talks about his attachment to the Schoenstatt Shrine of Nueva Helvecia, the first Daughter Shrine. —
Jorge Urbano Da Silveira Silva, known as “Toto” da Silveira, was a Uruguayan sports journalist, lawyer, and broadcaster. On November 29, 2022, Da Silveira was honored by FIFA and the International Sports Press Association (AIPS) at an event that recognized professionals who had covered eight or more World Cups. He covered 15, from Wimbledon 1966 to Qatar 2022. “Toto” retired from radio at the end of May 2023, just days – on June 3 – before his 62nd anniversary as a reporter. “It has been a great privilege and a great joy,” he said in his farewell to radio.
The tragedy that made him believe again
Like everything else in his life, it happened on the job. Da Silveira was one of the reporters sent to Durazno by Estadio Uno, then Canal 4, to cover the final of the OFI Cup between Tacuarembó and San José. He was accompanied by two commentators, Enrique Yanuzzi and Rodolfo Larrea, as well as program director Julio César Sánchez Padilla and his son Nicolás.
The coverage was successful, but tragedy struck on the way back. On the nighttime drive back to Montevideo, Sánchez Padilla’s Mercedes Benz blew a tire and they crashed into a road marker on Ruta 5. Larrea was killed instantly, and Toto Da Silveira was rushed to the intensive care unit with broken hips, knees, and shoulder blades, a lacerated liver, and head injuries.
Here is his first-hand account: “I had a very big crisis of faith. My mother was a very Catholic woman, and she had been sick with cancer for two years. I used to go to the church in Punta Carretas to ask Father Lucas to bring her communion. The day she died, I saw her suffering so much that I said to myself, no, God should not have tested her like that. God didn’t have to test her like that to deserve heaven, and I didn’t believe in it anymore. The years went by and the accident happened.
It was a Sunday at 9 p.m. What a coincidence that a neurologist who lived in Las Piedras and had come with his family from Florida-a football player who knew me and listened to me on the radio-was walking by on the street as I was bleeding to death. I had torn out my femur behind my pelvis, broken my right leg, lacerated my liver and developed emphysema. What I didn’t know was that I had suffered a head injury and was bleeding to death. When the doctor arrived, he put his hand on my back, touched my head, and told me that I had to be taken to Comeca immediately because I would not make it to Montevideo.
By the time I got to Canelones, my blood pressure was barely measurable and I fainted.
Shrine in Nueva Helvecia
Prayer to the Blessed Mother
A sister of mine had gone to the Blessed Mother in Nueva Helvecia to pray for me and she asked me to visit her as soon as possible. My first family trip was to the Schoenstatt Shrine.
What a coincidence: who would send a neurologist to the middle of nowhere on a Sunday night? At the Shrine, I also learned that the Shrine had been desecrated during my accident.
I already felt a deep attachment that was strengthened when I heard María Inés Obaldía speak about the Blessed Mother in a program, and then I learned that this Shrine was founded by a Father who had been in a concentration camp in Germany and later visited Uruguay.
The only concentration camp that I had visited to do journalistic research – I spent two days with my wife looking at documents – was near Munich, and it was the same one where Father Kentenich had been before coming here.
So I believed again.
On another occasion I almost died of hepatitis. When I saw the doctor with a worried look on her face, I told her, “I have a pact with the one upstairs who doesn’t want me to go now.” And she replied that the faith I had in those moments was very important.
The Shrine of Nueva Helvecia will be 80 years old on October 18, 2023 | Photo: Horacio Chavez
Original: Spanish. Translation: Maria Fischer @schoenstatt.org
