Philanthropist Milton Afonso Dies in Brazil at 104

Milton Soldani Afonso died on September 2 in Rio de Janeiro, at the age of 104, leaving a legacy that Hope Channel carries to the ends of the Earth. As a boy in Brazil, Milton Soldani Afonso sold homemade sweets in the street to help with expenses at home. He studied at an Adventist school and promised that one day he would pay for the education of others. He kept that promise, paying the school fees of tens of thousands of students and funding the media center that became Rede Novo Tempo de Comunicação. 

Afonso funded broadcasting, Adventist schools, orphanages, foster homes and church buildings across several Brazilian states. He helped build the Rede Novo Tempo de Comunicação, which reaches audiences in Portuguese and Spanish across South America. In 2012 he received the title of patron of Adventist communication on the continent.

“He understood, with extraordinary vision, that education could change destinies and that communication would carry the gospel far beyond our walls,” said Erton Köhler, president of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, who was president of the South American Division from 2007 to 2021.

Milton Soldani Afonso with three generations of his family at home. Credit: Personal Archive.

Financial hardship marks a childhood

Afonso was born in Nova Lima, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, on December 12, 1921. His mother was a seamstress and his father worked as a waiter and an electrician. Afonso was nine when first introduced to Adventist teaching. In 1934 he arrived at Colégio Adventista Brasileiro, and he was baptized in 1937.

A student without means founds South America’s largest health insurer

Afonso earned a law degree and went into business. In 1971 he founded Golden Cross, a health insurance company that became the largest in its sector in South America and one of the largest healthcare operators in the world by 1984 . The profits went into education, social assistance, and evangelism through media. Tens of thousands of students had school fees paid in full or in part by Afonso, and between 1985 and 1994 he contributed funds to the institution that became Universidade de Santo Amaro, a private university in São Paulo.

Media investment builds what became Hope Channel in Brazil

In 1997, Afonso donated the land for a media center in Brazil, and the network grew into television, radio, and digital platforms. In Jacareí, São Paulo, a building named after him houses six studios across five thousand square meters.

Asked in 2021, on his 100th birthday, what Novo Tempo meant to him, he said: “It is my life. I always dreamed that the church would have a strong communication vehicle, and I made it happen. It is a dream fulfilled. Today Novo Tempo is a reality.”

Afonso is survived by his children Celso, Carlos, Neide, and Paulo César. His wife, Arlete Carvalho da Silva Afonso, died in 2020 at the age of 96. Novo Tempo has made a three-part documentary about his life, The Boy Who Sold Sweets and Delivered Dreams, available on its own channel. 

The mission Afonso funded continues at Hope Channel, taking the gospel of Jesus through media to the ends of the Earth. He rests now, and his legacy continues.

Afonso at the celebration of his hundredth birthday, in December 2021. Credit: Vasjan Leno

Reported by Felipe Lemos for the South American Division Portuguese-language news site and Gabriela Frontini for Novo Tempo, and written for Hope Channel International by Jeanne Damasio.