The effort comes after a new law passed by parliament that allows all churches and church groups with legal standing to receive information on the fate of 1,198 missing people and protect the identity of those who provide the information. The law says the names of the informants and any information that would allow them to be identified must remain confidential. It provides for penal sanctions for anyone who violates that provision.

The novel procedure aimed at discovering the truth about those who disappeared was agreed upon by a human rights panel that signed an accord on June 13. The panel, an unprecedented initiative involving representatives of the armed forces as well as human rights lawyers, began to negotiate on the question of the pending human rights cases last August.

Critics of the agreement maintain that once the remains are located, judges will have no choice but to change the definition of the offense from disappearance to homicide, thus allowing the culprits to invoke the March 1978 amnesty law passed by the Pinochet regime.

Bishops’ conference spokesman Deacon Enrique Palet confirmed that the Church had handed over to the army, navy, air force, and Carabineros police all of the information compiled on those who disappeared, since the start of the dictatorship, by the now-defunct Vicariate of Solidarity. The documents contain information on 984 cases, out of a total of 1,198 in which legal complaints have been filed. The archives were stored by an ad hoc Church foundation after the Vicariate of Solidarity was dissolved.