John Paul's victory against communism would not last. With the fall of communism, Poland, his heroic country, his Christ of nations, would change, and soon the Pope would come to feel betrayed.


For a deeper critique of this Pope see:

 http://newswire.indymedia.org/en/newswire/2005/04/821514.shtml

Now a featured Article at:

 http://nyc.indymedia.org/feature/display/147242/index.php

Liberation Theology

BILL BLAKEMORE: When the Pope went to Central America, we asked him on some of those trips, flying into these countries, "What about liberation theology?" And he'd get very stern, and he would say, "It depends on whose liberation theology. If we're talking about the liberation theology of Christ, not Marx, I am very much for it."

NARRATOR: In Poland the Pope fought communism with clarity and grace. But in Latin America he stumbled. In the 1980s the region was gripped by violent civil wars between despotic rightwing regimes and Marxist revolutionaries. Many Catholic priests caught up in the political struggle were apostles of a new "liberation theology." The Pope's repression of their movement revealed a rigid side of his character in this lush tropical landscape.

The first confrontation came early in his papacy with the embattled archbishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero. Romero was sympathetic to the liberation theologians who claimed that for too long the Catholic Church had aligned itself with the rich and the powerful. They believed the Church's real place was with the poor and its most important mission was to bring about social change.

ROBERT STONE, Novelist: The conditions that existed most egregiously in Central America made it impossible for a person to be a Christian or even completely a human being. People were being denied their humanity, hence they were being denied their capacity for experiencing a God.

CAROLYN FORCHE, Poet: Monsignor Romero acknowledged the injustice of poverty openly. He condemned institutional violence openly. Monsignor Romero said, "The person you are killing is your brother. You have you do not need to obey an order that is contrary to the commandments of God. Refuse. Lay down your arms. You don't have to do this. I beg you, I beseech you, I order you, stop the repression."

Bishop THOMAS GUMBLETON, Auxiliary Bishop of Detroit: The reports that went back to Rome about Romero were that he was too influenced by the revolutionary movement, and there was danger that this country could become communist or Marxist, and if he wasn't stopped, it would be a total disaster for the church.

Archbishop Romero did not accept that interpretation of the whole movement. He saw it really as the poor rising up to try to change their lives in order to be freed of the oppression and the injustice that they were suffering from and

_ but the other Bishops denounced him to Rome.

GIANCARLO ZIZOLA: [through interpreter] When Romero went to the Vatican for his meeting with the Pope, he was forced to wait many days before he was received because the Vatican did not want him to speak to the Pope. And this caused him a great deal of pain.

MARIA LOPEZ VIGIL, Activist, Author: [through interpreter] I saw him in a state of shock. The first thing that he said to me was, "Help me to understand why I've been treated by the Holy Father in the way that he treated me."

GIANCARLO ZIZOLA: [through interpreter] When he finally met the Pope, he showed him photographs of murdered priests and mutilated peasants, and the only response Romero got from the Pope was that Romero had to find an agreement with the government.

MARIA LOPEZ VIGIL: [through interpreter] I am never going to forget it's in my mind the gesture that Monsignor Romero made when he was explaining that to me. He did this gesture. "Look," he said, "that the Holy Father says that the archbishopric must get along well with the government, that we must enter into a dialogue. And I was trying to let the Holy Father understand that the government attacks the people. And if I am the pastor of the people, I cannot enter into good understanding with this government." But the Holy Father was insisting.

I am still seeing Monsignor Romero making that gesture like wanting to things to converge that cannot converge.

Rev. JON SOBRINO, Liberation Theologian: [through interpreter] When Romero told him that the that the church was being persecuted in El Salvador, John Paul said to him "Well, well, don't exaggerate it." And he said to Romero, "You have to be very careful with communism." The result was that Monsignor Romero was very upset. He left the Vatican in tears. It was a sad interview, very sad.

MARIA LOPEZ VIGIL: [through interpreter] It was an injustice. Monsignor Romero did not deserve that.

NARRATOR: One month after his disappointing visit with the Pope, while he was celebrating Mass in San Salvador, Archbishop Romero was murdered at the altar. The assassins were known to be members of a rightwing death squad. Those close to Romero said that he always knew that one day he would be killed.

His funeral, attended by dignitaries from all over the world, turned into a bloody riot when shots were fired into the crowd of mourners. In life, John Paul II had been wary of Archbishop Romero and where he wanted to lead the church in Latin America, but the Pope was appalled by Romero's assassination. He immediately denounced the murder and called Romero a martyr.

Yet many years would pass before he finally visited Romero's tomb. Romero's death did not change the Pope's harsh views toward liberation theology or toward the political activism of his priests in Latin America.

ROBERTO SURO, "The Washington Post": The Pope went to Nicaragua to understand what this "popular church" was, as they called it in Nicaragua, a church that was allied with the aims of the revolution, that identified itself with the poor and identified the church and the Sandinista regime together as the vehicles for lifting up the poor people. This was something that had a lot of the Latin American hierarchy quite worried, and the Pope was hearing that.

BILL BLAKEMORE: He was coming, in effect, from his triumphal visits to Poland into Latin America, saying, "I am dealing with the communists over there. I'm going to deal with them here in Latin America." He scolded on camera and in front of the world the priest Ernesto Cardenal, saying, "You must correct yourself with the church. You cannot be aligned with this political movement." He used both fingers. "You must you must correct this." And Cardenal was doing this, "Yes, yes, yes, Holy Father. Yes, I will."

ROBERTO SURO: There was a very dramatic mass, where the background of the altar, as I remember it, was sort of like a revolutionary mural. It was like, you know, Che Guevara's ghost was wandering around somewhere on the altar there.

JOHN PAUL II: [subtitles] The unity of the Church demands of us the radical elimination ... then you weaken the unity of the church.

Rev. WILLIAM R. CALLAHAN, Writer: In the struggle between the Sandinistas and the church leadership in Nicaragua there were code words, and the Pope began the first 11 paragraphs of his talk with one of those sets of code words. "I say you must live in unity with your bishops." That's the same thing as saying "You must back off from the Sandinista revolution."

People that had the papal colors were shouting "Viva la Papa," and the others were shouting "Queremos la paz" "We want peace." Finally as this would swell up, finally the Pope said what is the Spanish equivalent of "Shut up"? "Silencio." Three times the chanting swelled, and three times the Pope told the people to keep quiet.

JOHN PAUL II: [subtitles] The Church is the first to want peace!

ROBERTO SURO: The man has a bit of a temper and does not brook a lot of impertinence. And he was clearly angry about this. When he came back to Rome, he said, "What the hell is going on in that country? Who are these people? And what kind of church is this?" And the prelates in Rome and the conservative hierarchy in Latin America said, "That's liberation theology. You just saw it."

Well, he saw one very particular, small strain of what was a continentwide movement that had many, many manifestations. This set in motion a very deliberate strategy to crush liberation theology. [www.pbs.org: Read more of this interview]

ERIC MARGOLIS, "The Toronto Sun": He moved very quickly to close many institutions that had become hotbeds of liberation theology seminaries, for example, schools, particular churches, things where there had become clusters of sort of Marxism within the church. These were closed. Their personnel were transferred to the Catholic versions of Devil's Island, to all kinds of remote places out of the region.

The Pope then moved in a whole new cadre of administrative and religious personnel to come in and replace these people. So he did a complete clean sweep of the system in Latin America and put his own men in who were responsive and answerable to the Pope. He just cleaned them out.

ROBERTO SURO, "The Washington Post": The subject was not open for discussion. It was not open for exploration. It was not a matter to be researched, debated. It was over.

JOHN PAUL II: [subtitles] I would follow the various orientations outlined by our bishops in their recent document about the theory of liberation.

ROBERT STONE, Novelist: If we look at his point of view and what his job is, it's to hold the Catholic Church together, is to make sure that Mass gets said every Sunday, that kids get baptized, that kids get confirmed, that people get married in church. And for a functioning institution like that to thrive, there's no place for stars or superstars, or maybe just one superstar, and that's him. He's the Pope and they're not, and that's the story.

The Pope knew that at the end of the day, what people wanted from the church was not political and social instruction but the Ten Commandments, sin and how to be against it, and what they traditionally had turned to religion for.

BILL BLAKEMORE: History will be the ultimate judge of this, but it does seem to me that he may have had too simplistic an understanding of just how communist, how Marxist, some of these liberation theology movements in Latin America were.

JAMES CARROLL, Author, "American Requiem," Former Priest: This Pope was needed on the side of the revolution there, so that for one thing, as in Eastern Europe, it could be nonviolent, but so that it could be powerful. And it's a tragedy that this Pope didn't recognize it as such. And I can only understand his failure to do so because he applied to it too narrowly the lens of his own fight against communism.

ROBERTO SURO: You have to wonder what would have happened if he had made a different choice. What would have happened if instead he had said, "There is a way for the church to be a force for social change in Latin America. Let me show you how we might do it and be faithful to my ideals."

There was an opportunity there. There was a moment in the history of Latin America. There was a moment in the history of the church. He decided not to go down the route of change. Instead he chose another route. He chose to end the experimentation, to throttle that initiative. That was his choice, and that's what he'll live with…


 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pope/etc/script.html



For a good review of Oscar Romero see:

 http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/3/24/94044/4052