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A Friend of Peace
The director of the Fides news service offered these comments on the death of Archbishop Duarte:
Bishop Isaías Duarte was a friendly man, always in good spirits. I met him three years ago during the 1st All American Missionary Congress, CAM I, in Argentina and he joked about his name (During the 1980s, the nation of El Salvador had a president named Duarte, who succeeded in putting an end to the civil war.) “I am better than a politician,” the then-Bishop Duarte said, with a twinkle in his eye.
Perhaps the people of Colombia have never had a more dedicated defender than this 63-year-old Catholic bishop, who thundered against Marxist guerilla fighters, paramilitary groups, and corrupt politicians alike. Like Bishop Gerardi in Guatemala, Cardinal Posado Ocampo in Mexico, and Archbishop Romero in Salvador—all of whom suffered violent deaths—Archbishop Duarte was a man of the Gospel, who taught that the path of the Church is the path of respect for the human person and human dignity. But treading this path made him an enemy of those for whom people are objects, to be exploited in the struggle to affirm an ideology or to gain personal economic power.
Colombia has been in a state of civil war for more than 30 years. Resistance by poor peasants to rich families of Spanish descent degenerated into Marxist guerilla warfare, backed by drug trafficking, kidnapping, and violence—against police, army, and any “collaborationists.” The atrocities that have been committed leave little room for memory of a “struggle for the poor.”
In 2000 the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) carried out an 18-hour massacre, after which they played football with the heads of the police and military officers among the countless civilians they had murdered. Archbishop Duarte was furious: “A guerilla who kidnaps and kills . . . has lost all human virtues, he is the most miserable of men,” he said. After accusing the FARC of “crimes against humanity,” and against the very people they claim to defend, he said: “We beg the Lord to make these guerillas feel the pain of killing an innocent, helpless brother, so they realize that the war they are fighting is not a just war.”
FARC would do well to take note of something Pope John Paul II said in his message for World Peace Day this year. Referring to terrorism, the Pope writes: “Injustices existing in the world can never be used to excuse acts of terrorism…. The terrorist claim to be acting on behalf of the poor is a patent falsehood.”
Voice for the people
Archbishop Duarte also reprimanded the Colombian government for being too weak “to demand respect for human rights”—too frightened to “choose the paths of peace, social justice, and harmony.” A feeble government led to an increase in the activities of paramilitary groups, paid by drug traffickers and large landowners and backed by elements in the army and the police. Only weeks before the recent parliamentary elections—held on March 10—Archbishop Duarte had denounced some candidates for supporting their electoral campaigns with the political and economic backing of the drug-trafficking Mafia of northern Colombia.The violence in Colombia has now killed at least 35,000 people over the last decade, and forced about 2 million Colombians to flee the country. Guerilla fighting and violence are also preventing normal economic development; Colombia has an unemployment rate of 20 percent, and a sad world record for criminal impunity.
Guerillas, paramilitary groups, and many rich families are all concerned with their own selfish interests; they are not interested in the people. Archbishop Duarte was. The Church is. For the whole Church in Colombia, Archbishop Duarte led the way with his testimony of faith, standing up to everyone and everything, showing that the reasons for life are stronger than reasons for death even when the latter are clothed in high-sounding words—from either the left or the right.
For years now the Catholic bishops in Colombia have worked to obtain respect for prisoners, to provide assistance for victims of violence, to help poor peasants replace cocaine fields with alternative crops, to obtain the release of hostages, and to open dialogue on two fronts. This testimony, this martyrdom point to the source from which Colombia can draw new hope and life.
—Father Bernardo Cervellera