Ballooning priest receives Darwin Award

Remember the Brazilian priest who died after his makeshift ballooning stunt ended in tragedy? Father Adelir Antonio de Carli has been posthumously honored for his misadventure, albeit for all the wrong reasons:

Sitting for more than 19 hours in a lawn chair is not a trivial matter, even in the comfort of your own backyard. The priest took numerous safety precautions, including wearing a survival suit, selecting a buoyant chair, and packing a satellite phone and a GPS. However, the late Adelir Antonio made a fatal mistake.

He did not know how to use the GPS.

The winds changed, as winds do, and he was blown inexorably toward open sea.

De Carli’s voyage was well-intentioned yet his error earned him the name of “balloon buffoon” by one daily. (Compare that to the second place “recipient”: an Italian whose car was stuck on train tracks and who, in desperation, ran towards the train).

(Hat tip: Neatorama).

Image- Montreal Gazette (Adelir Antonio de Carli flying in his makeshift balloon contraption hours before his fatal crash in April 2008).
Online Sources- The Latin Americanist, Darwin Awards, Neatorama, Metro.co.uk, The Sun

Brazil: Officials ID body of ballooning priest

Brazilian authoritative declared that a DNA sample taken from a dead body found earlier this month matched that of a missing priest.

On April 20^th, Father Adelir Antonio de Carli strapped hundreds of helium-filled balloons to himself and set off from the off from the port city of Paranagua. De Carli planned to stay up in the air for over 19 hours in order to raise funds for a worship center for local truckers. Yet after eight hours in the air he was reported missing and his body was untraced until tugboat workers found the lifeless, floating body at sea.

Despite de Carli’s death, his brother told Brazilian press that his mission was not in vain:

“The flight was rewarding for his project despite his death. He always did things out of generosity to help others and not for himself or his own ego.” [ed. personal translation with help from Babelfish].

Image- CBS News (“This photo shows a cluster of colored party balloons floating in the ocean near Florianopolis, in Brazil's southern state of Santa Catarina on April 22, 2008. Catholic priest Adelir Antonio di Carli used the balloons…”)

Sources (English)- BBC News, Babelfish, Reuters UK, Xinhua

Sources (Portuguese)- Folha Online