Catholic Bishop Nick D'Antonio, a social justice activist who moved to New Orleans after death threats forced him to quit his work among the poor in Honduras, was buried Friday in St. Anthony's Garden behind St. Louis Cathedral after funeral services there. He died Aug. 1 at the age of 93, the Archdiocese of New Orleans said.
Bishop D'Antonio grew up in Baltimore, was ordained a Franciscan priest in Lowell, Mass., and turned early to missionary work.
Bishop D'Antonio served 30 years as a priest, then bishop, of Olancho in the rugged backcountry of Honduras.
There Bishop D'Antonio lived as the peasants he served. He recalled in a 1998 interview that on his first morning after arriving at his new Honduran parish by mule, he awakened on a cowhide cot, covered with bat droppings. His role there called for him to be a builder, backwoods dentist, pastor, educator and, beginning in 1966, bishop of a rural province of 155,000 people, six priests and two nuns.
As the leader of the regional church, Bishop D'Antonio angered landowners and the government with calls for land reform. He and other priests and nuns organized peasants into political cooperatives to agitate for land redistribution, bringing the church into increasing conflict with the government.
In June 1975, while D'Antonio was in Rome, gunmen showed up at his churches and schools looking for him, his priests and his community leaders.
They killed two priests and 12 civilians, and word circulated of a bounty on Bishop D'Antonio's head on his return.
Bishop D'Antonio's Franciscan superiors pulled him out of Honduras. Two years later he relocated to New Orleans at the invitation of Archbishop Philip Hannan to work among Spanish-speaking Catholics. He served as vicar for the church's Latin American apostolate and as vicar general.
Meantime, Bishop D'Antonio -- he preferred to be called "Bishop Nick" -- maintained his interest in social justice causes worldwide, often working in concert with some of the most liberal bishops in the Catholic church.
In 1982, he was one of 23 bishops who formally endorsed an equal rights amendment to the Constitution on behalf of women.
"Justice demands it. I'd sin if I did not support it, " he said then.
In 1984, he joined 73 U.S. bishops in signing a statement asserting that the United States' maintenance of a nuclear arsenal is "morally abhorrent." In 1998, he opposed the economic embargo against Iraq for its brutalizing effect on civilians.
Bishop D'Antonio was the last pastor of Annunciation Church in Bywater before its closure in 2001.
He is survived by one brother, John D'Antonio, of Baltimore, three nephews and two nieces.
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