Rio, August 8, 2003 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - On Thursday (7), President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva affirmed that Brazil lost not only a great journalist and a great man, but someone who made an inestimable contribution to communications and culture in Brazil. President Lula attended the wake of the president of the Globo Organizations, Roberto Marinho, and the mass with corpse present, celebrated by the Archbishop Emeritus of Rio, Dom Eugênio Sales, a personal friend of the journalist for 30 years. The ceremony was held at the Marinho home in the Cosme Velho district of Rio de Janeiro. The president of the Globo Organizations died Wednesday (6) night in consequence of a pulmonary edema. He was 98 years old.

Lula recalled the two occasions when he and Roberto Marinho met. The first was in Paris, when they discussed the 1989 Presidential elections, and the second was at the headquarters of the O Globo newspaper, when they conversed about the impeachment of ex-President Fernando Collor de Melo. "I believe that you don't judge people on the basis of political disagreement. You judge people by their importance in what they set themselves out to accomplish. Doctor Roberto Marinho was, undeniably, one of the greatest communications figures in the history of this country," the President affirmed.

The President cancelled his agenda in Brasília to pay his last respects to the journalist Roberto Marinho. Accompanying Lula were the presidents of the Senate and the Chamber, José Sarney and João Paulo Cunha, as well as the Ministers of Finance, Antônio Palocci; National Integration, Ciro Gomes; Communications, Miro Teixeira; Education, Cristovam Buarque; and Culture, Gilberto Gil. (DAS)