Established last year by President Dilma Rousseff, the commission will investigate whether pro-dictatorship clergy committed human rights abuses or supported members of the military responsible for such abuses.
Brazil has never punished military officials who committed human rights abuses, unlike Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, which also had repressive military regimes.
A recent study by the Brazilian government concluded last year that 475 people were killed or “disappeared” by agents of the military regime, far less than in neighboring Argentina or Chile.
The church saw the coup d’etat as a strike against communism, which they feared President Joao Goulart would install in Brazil, said Fernando Altemeyer, a theologian at the Catholic University of Sao Paulo.
But the church decided it could no longer support the military government when it saw that the regime was imprisoning and torturing real and feared opponents, Altemeyer said.
Members of the church also began suffering persecution, with at least 100 bishops, priests and nuns arrested and many tortured during the dictatorship.