Leftist priests: Pope Francis can fix church 'in ruins'
Leftist priests: Pope Francis can fix church 'in ruins'
By Jessica Weiss
Associated Press
April 28, 2013 at 1:00 am
Buenos Aires, Argentina — A new pope from Latin America who wants to build "a church for the poor" is stirring hopes among advocates of liberation theology, a movement of social activism that alarmed former popes by delving into leftist politics.
Pope Francis has what it takes to fix a church "in ruins" that has "lost its respect for what is sacred," prominent liberation theologian Leonardo Boff said Saturday.
"With this pope, a Jesuit and a pope from the Third World, we can breathe happiness," Boff said at a Buenos Aires book fair. "Pope Francis has both the vigor and tenderness that we need to create a new spiritual world."
The 74-year-old Brazilian theologian was pressured to remain silent by previous popes who tried to draw a hard line between socially active priests and leftist politics. As Argentina's leading cardinal before he became pope, Francis reinforced this line, suggesting in 2010 that reading the Gospel with a Marxist interpretation only gets priests in trouble.
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Monsignor Juan José Gerardi Conedera (27 December 1922 – 26 April 1998)[1] was a Guatemalan Roman Catholic bishop and human rights defender who was beaten to death two days after releasing a report on victims of the Guatemalan Civil War.
Between 1980 and 1983 El Quiché saw increased levels of violence in the conflict between the Army and various rebel guerrilla factions. Hundreds of Roman Catholic catechists and heads of Christian communities, most of whom were of Maya origin, were brutally murdered. Gerardi repeatedly asked the military authorities to control their actions.
While serving as president of the Guatemalan Conference of Bishops, he spoke out openly about the Spanish embassy fire of 31 January 1980 in which 39 people lost their lives and which subsequently the Government of Guatemala became suspected of starting. That same year he was called to the Vatican to attend a synod. Upon returning to Guatemala he was denied entry to the country. He travelled to neighbouring El Salvador, which refused to grant him right of asylum, and he settled temporarily in Costa Rica where he remained until military president Romeo Lucas García was overthrown in 1982, allowing him to return to Guatemala.
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On 28 August 1984, he was appointed auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Guatemala.
National Reconciliation Commission
In 1988 the Conference of Bishops assigned Gerardi and Rodolfo Quezada Toruño to serve on the National Reconciliation Commission. This later led to the creation of the Office of Human Rights of the Archbishopric (Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado, ODHA), which to date provides assistance for the victims of human rights violation. In that context work began on the Recovery of Historical Memory (REMHI) project. On 24 April 1998, REMHI presented the results of its work in the report Guatemala: Nunca más. This report carried statements from thousands of witnesses and victims of repression during the Civil War and placed the blame for the vast majority of the violations on the government and the army.
The task of historical recovery that Gerardi and his team pursued was fundamental in the subsequent work of the UN-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission (CEH), set up within the framework of the 1996 peace process.
Although the Vatican, the REMHI and Gerardi were accused of furthering Marxist propaganda because the REMHI blames the National Army for the vast majority of deaths during the civil war, the UN Truth Commission Report came to very similar conclusions.
Assassination
On 26 April 1998, two days after the publication of REMHI's report, Bishop Gerardi was bludgeoned to death in the garage of his home in Guatemala City.[2] His assailants used a concrete slab, disfiguring him to the extent that his face was unrecognisable and identification of the corpse was made by means of his episcopal ring.
On 8 June 2001, three army officers – Col. Byron Disrael Lima Estrada and Capt. Byron Lima Oliva (father and son), and José Obdulio Villanueva – were convicted of his murder and sentenced to 30-year prison terms. A priest, Mario Orantes, whom the court had identified as an accomplice, was sentenced to 20 years. The case was precedent-setting in that it was the first time that members of the military had faced trial before civilian courts. The defendants appealed, and in March 2005 an appeals court lowered the Limas' sentences to 20 years. Orantes' sentence was left unchanged and Villanueva had been killed in prison before the appeal verdict was reached. These revised prison terms were upheld by the Constitutional Court in April 2007.
The elder Estrada had been trained at the School of Americas.[3]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Jos%C3%A9_Gerardi_Conedera
The 15th anniversary of Bishop Gerardi's death comes at a time when Guatemala is once again experiencing a wave of polarizing rhetoric around human rights and post-armed-conflict justice issues—rhetoric that includes damning words for the Catholic church.
One example: "The Farce of Genocide," a recent paid campaign in a major Guatemalan newspaper by Guatemala's "Foundation Against Terrorism" (Fundación Contra El Terrorismo; blog, Facebook). The group was founded by Ricardo Méndez Ruíz, whose father was a military officer and minister of the interior under Rios Montt. The 20-page newspaper insert warned of an "International Marxist Conspiracy" transmitted through the Catholic Church; it included archival photographs said to be proof of "
Catholic) nuns manipulating indigenous people against" the US-backed former military dictator at the center of the current genocide trial.
The insert says Gerardi was a Marxist guerrilla enabler. "He was insubordinate to the Pope, arming the guerrilla's conspiracy and being complicit with the terrorists," the ad reads.
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http://boingboing.net/2013/04/26/guatemala-a-march-for-an-assa.html
This is how they found him, in the garage of the parochial home of the Church of San Sebastián, bludgeoned to death 2 days after he released his courageous report "Guatemala Never Again", the most comprehensive report ever made on the atrocities. His report contained the names of 26 people responsible for the atrocities.
The complicit Guatemalan authorities, with help from the FBI, first arrested a drunk but they were forced to release him after a few days because their flimsy evidence wasn't fooling anyone.
They then implicated a dog, a German Shepherd named Balu, and said the dog killed him. The dog belonged to another priest named Father Mario Orantes Vajera who was arrested and jailed along with 3 others despite the objections of the villagers who said Father Orantes had nothing to do with the murder and that he in no way matched the description of the man who was seen fleeing from the murder scene but stopped to buy cigarettes from a corner stand. Father Mario Orantes Vajera had actually collaborated on the report so by jailing him, two brave men were diabolically shut up. Three other men were also arrested and jailed but no one's bought that story either.
