A wounded church

...The two were often the only voices in the Catholic hierarchy who spoke out (along with Lutheran Bishop Medardo Gomez) against the repression and injustice that have flourished for decades...

...The commission is charged with monitoring and implementing the political, economic, military, police, judicial, and electoral reforms negotiated in the peace accords...

...I celebrated Mass there many times and I remember how much the people participated...

...A pastoral team of eight lay people has taken on most of the responsibility for ministry...

...Dennis Leder, a Jesuit priest who had worked with the refugees for five years, was also denied permission by Bishop Alvarez to work in the diocese...

...Even the papal nuncio, who has been in El Salvador only a little over a year, has visited on two occasions and spoken to Ponseele and the pastoral workers in the area...

...In his September 1990 interview, Ponseele described how that "unofficial" pastoral work had been organized in northern Morazán: Thirty thousand people live here north of the Torola River...

...The church will continue to play an important part in the process of reconciliation and reconstruction...

...During the last two years, the Reverend Esteban Velazquez has been working with him as well...

...Yet his report was widely circulated...

...In Mozote there had been families, small shops, a school...

...The operative word in El Salvador currently, at least in political circles, is "reconciliation...

...His presence surprised some who recognized him, but it was a pleasant surprise...

...As Christians we are not eternally condemned to a situation of misery and repression...

...They are therefore rejected by the episcopal conference and accepted or tolerated with varying degrees of tension by the Archdiocese of San Salvador" (see A Decade of War, Anjali Sundaram and George Gelber, eds., Monthly Review Press...

...Our job is to support them, to visit the communities, and to develop materials for reflections and other activities...

...Not only did Calderon Sol make no mention of governmental or military errors (not even the killing of the Jesuits and the two women, when for the first time in Salvadoran history military officers had been convicted of a human rights violation), but he paid homage to the late Roberto D'Aubuisson, the founder of the ARENA party who has been linked to the formation and direction of El Salvador's infamous death squads...

...Bishop Alvarez, a former vicar to the Armed Forces, apparently has considered all the people in that zone guerrillas or guerrilla sympathizers and thus undeserving of pastoral attention...

...What kind of faith does it take to preach a word of hope among people who have witnessed the destruction of an entire village of family members and friends...

...Symbolizing this new moment in the country's history, a national "Commission for the Consolidation of the Peace" (COPAZ) was inaugurated at 9:00 A.M...

...They are the testimony of a church which embodies the problems of the people...

...He has refused to recognize, for example, the existence of Ciudad Segundo Montes, a settlement of eighty-five hundred returned Salvadoran refugees named after one of the Jesuits killed by the Salvadoran military...

...With a dateline from the small town of Perquin, Freed wrote that "for Fathers Rogelio Ponseele and Esteban Velazquez, the kingdom of heaven is found in this war-battered village in northeastern El Salvador...

...During the two months following the killings, some of the bishops continued to believe, and even insisted publicly, that the murders had been carried out by the FMLN—a claim that Archbishop Rivera y Damas never believed...

...On a day when a FMLN leader could sit down next to a Salvadoran colonel and both pledge to work for peace, it was at least as appropriate that the Reverend Rogelio Ponseele sat in the same auditorium to witness such an event...

...It is clear that this next stage will be slow and painful...

...To allow oneself to be touched by the poor involves taking a risk...

...As a church we are in solidarity with the legitimate aspirations of the people...

...Ponseele's pastoral presence and work in Morazán has been "unofficial...

...There is an ideal of the church of the poor to which we aspire...

...Rivera y Damas's recent election as head of the Salvadoran Bishops' Conference (CEDES) was welcome news precisely for this reason...

...It sounds like an experience of conversion, when one encounters the face of God in the faces of people who know firsthand what the words "passion" and "death" mean...

...The refugees returned to their homeland in early 1990 after ten years in a Honduran refugee camp...

...I knew many people from Mozote...

...in an auditorium in the capital of San Salvador...

...It was notable that of all the speakers at the COPAZ inauguration, only FMLN leader Villalobos made a public reference to past mistakes...

...He misconstrued their views on violence, and he made no effort to find out what life had been like for them and the people with whom they lived and worked under extraordinarily difficult conditions during all those years...

...How they brought the women together, young and old, raped them and killed them...

...Since that time he has served thirty thousand people in northern Morazán, usually with the help of one other priest and the lay pastoral team that he helped to form...

...He once said, "It would be sad if there were not priests among the victims in a country where such horrific murders are being committed...

...Jon Sobrino, S.J., writes, "They have been branded as the 'popular church' or the 'parallel church,' with the implication that their commitment is more Marxist than Christian and their loyalties more to revolution than to the church...

...the experience of people patiently instructing their pastors 14: 8 May 1992 Commonweal about what following Jesus implies...

...This admission stood out all the more starkly when Armando Calderon Sol, president of the governing ARENA party and present mayor of San Salvador, offered his remarks...

...They perhaps reached their apex after the assassination of the Jesuits in late 1989...

...It was the work of Rogelio Ponseele and the Christian base communities of El Salvador (CEBES) that helped to keep the people's faith alive...

...The presence of the Belgian priest reflected the unique manner in which the church had ministered throughout the war...

...There are just two priests...

...Whatever the bishop's reasons may be, there has been no pastoral attention from the diocese in that entire zone for the last ten years...

...While the church must continue to do all it can to promote reconciliation within society, it will have to come to grips with its own need for reconciliation...

...Rivera, who was named archbishop after the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, had worked tirelessly to promote a negotiated settlement to the conflict...

...For many people, Ponseele symbolized the way in which the official church could have ministered to people, especially during the war's darkest days...

...Do you know how they gathered the men in the church and shot them...

...All of us are sinners, all need to be reconciled with God and one another...

...It was a day many Salvadorans thought they would never live to see, and 75,000 men, women, and children did not...

...And the children, how they were shot and bayoneted to death...

...Family members of those who died at Mozote encouraged me to continue pastoral work...

...Reconciliation" is a word that is central to the Christian faith—we profess it as a sacrament...

...The "intraecclesiastical dialogue" which Archbishop Romero began years ago must resume with a new spirit...

...Seated in the front of the hall were Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas, who holds observer status on COPAZ, and Bishop Gregorio Rosa Chavez, the auxiliary of San Salvador...

...Now that the war is over, many of those lay and religious church workers who have been ministering in some of the most dangerous areas of the country without assistance, protection, or approval from the local bishop wish to "regularize" their status...

...No one believes that bringing a country together after twelve years of civil war will be easy and no one knows what it will entail...

...Instead of continuing as a priest, instead of trying to motivate the people, perhaps I could serve better in a more political setting...

...There have already been major disagreements among the COPAZ members concerning land tenure, especially in areas formerly controlled by the FMLN...

...Commonweal 8 May 1992: 13 Quietly sitting in the middle of the auditorium, unnoticed by all but a few, was a tall, blonde man with a sunburned face, looking very uncomfortable in an ill-fitting suit...

...Villalobos then took his seat at the table directly to the left of Colonel Juan Orlando Zepeda, a high-ranking officer who has been implicated by Congressman Joe Moakley (D-Mass...

...But then, such a cruel massacre...

...By killing the whole village, the Army tried to do away with the social base of the FMLN...

...In an interview with a group of North Americans in September 1990, shortly before the tenth anniversary of the Mozote massacre, Ponseele reflected: I remember the period after the massacre in Mozote in December 1981, when the Army killed more than one thousand campesinos: men, women, and children...

...Speaking of FMLN actions during the course of the conflict, he said, "We are very aware that we have committed errors, that we were not infallible, and that this is the moment to say this to the nation...

...When I preached there, I preached of hope...

...He and Rosa Chavez had played important roles during the war, from denouncing human rights violations in their Sunday homilies to mediating the periodic attempts at negotiating a settlement...

...It is an act, a process that we consider holy and necessary for salvation...

...16: 8 May 1992 Commonweal...

...The problem is that this ideal, a church incarnated in the world, a church that speaks to the heart and accompanies people directly in their struggles and aspirations—this ideal still rings of "communism" to many people...

...Do you know about that...

...They hope and expect that pastoral workers trained by people such as Ponseele will be able to continue their ministry, and that that their ministry will be incorporated and welcomed into the overall work of the diocese...

...They want consultation and dialogue about the appointment of pastors in parishes where they have been working—parishes that had been abandoned by some dioceses for years...

...But the entrance of Joaquin Villalobos, one of the five principal commanders of the FMLN, was greeted with cheers, sustained applause, and shouts of, "Joaquin...

...Their beliefs are in God and armed revolution...

...Many of the catechists, delegates of the Word, and people they served are unwilling to settle for a resumption of ecclesiastical business as usual...

...Strong differences still divide the bishops and these differences need to be addressed...

...There are other serious concerns regarding the process and timetable for dissolving the state security forces...

...Romero was willing to take such risks, but he saw himself as simply preaching the gospel, prepared to accept the consequences...

...Joaquin...

...It was not until President Cristiani appeared on television in January 1990, announcing the involvement of the military in the killings, that the other bishops finally began to modify their positions...

...COPAZ is made up of a member from each political party represented in the National Assembly, as well as representatives from the Salvadoran government and the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front (FMLN...

...There is also fear that the bishop will soon reassign a priest to the area who earlier had been pressured to leave for pointing out "suspicious people" to the Salvadoran army...

...We are convinced that without truth and without justice there will neither be reconciliation nor peace...

...What Ponseele describes sounds similar to what happened to Archbishop Oscar Romero when faced with the murders of Rutilio Grande, S.J., Octavio Ortiz, and other priests and pastoral workers of his archdiocese...

...I told them we would have to pass through difficult times, but that we would win our freedom...

...He was forced to flee there after having worked during the 1970s with Christian base communities in San Salvador...

...They told me that though God had been silent during the massacre, God was greater than [then-Salvadoran president] Duarte, that God was greater than Ronald Reagan, and that God has the last word ("I Only Wanted to Be a Good Priest," Ecumenical Program on Central America and the Caribbean, 1990...

...The people gave me strength...

...There is general agreement that all must work together and that reigniting the war will not bring the needed social, political, and judicial reforms...

...It is not important to us whether the errors which others have made were greater or less than ours, or if those errors will be admitted some day...

...Given the history of the last decade, what took place that Saturday morning was quite remarkable...

...In each community there are local pastoral teams who are responsible for celebrations of the Word, catechism, and religious education....With all of these activities, we believe we are building a church of the poor, a church incarnated in the world of the poor...

...A similar commitment to dialogue and reconciliation needs to take hold within certain church circles as well...

...When asked about that in a recent interview, Archbishop Rivera said, Our most important role is promoting reconciliation among our people, convincing both rich and poor that all Salvadorans are brothers and sisters....In addition, the Commonweal 8 May 1992: 15 church has a role to play in the socioeconomic area, not with specific plans—that is not our job—but indirectly, by analyzing proposed solutions, insisting that they be as just as possible and that people, especially the poor, have a voice in decisions that affect their lives (Maryknoll, April 1992...

...Freed had spent all of twenty-five minutes talking with the two priests...

...They wish to have their pastoral ministry, and the struggles which the people have endured, recognized for what they have produced: vibrant small communities of faith and hope...

...Their situation has not been improved by articles such as "The Cross and the Gun" by Kenneth Freed in the Los Angeles Times (October 9, 1990...

...as one of the "intellectual authors" of the November 1989 assassination of six Jesuits and two women...

...I considered leaving the ministry...

...Even those who hoped for the end of the war probably never thought they would see these two men sitting together...

...In short, there was genuine happiness...

...The peace accords and ceasefire will be difficult to implement, and people and parties are already gearing up for the 1994 elections...

...After receiving death threats and having his parish house bombed, Ponseele could no longer work in the capital...

...Their work and that of others deeply committed to the poor, because it had no "official church" sanction, has occasionally come under fire from both political and ecclesiastical corners...

...These people later turned up dead...

...For the last ten years, Ponseele lived and worked in the Department of Morazán in northeastern El Salvador...

...A long and difficult process of dialogue and negotiation has led to the beginning of what may evolve into a nationwide experience of reconciliation in El Salvador...

...The bishop of San Miguel, Eduardo Alvarez, not only refused to accept the priest's offer to work in the diocese, but never once visited the area during the twelve-year war...

...When President Alfredo Cristiani walked into the auditorium, surrounded by his bodyguards and members of the ARENA government, there was some applause from the three thousand people in attendance...

...Reconciliation" also implies an acknowledgment of past error and the necessity for healing...

...One of his coworkers, the Reverend Octavio Ortiz, and four young boys were killed by the National Guard on January 20, 1979, while on a retreat...

...Bishop Alvarez of San Miguel consistently has refused to meet with Ponseele to discuss the priest's future status, and recently gave a pastoral team only five minutes of his time once he found out that they were returned refugees...

...There were tensions in the Salvadoran Bishops' Conference when Romero was archbishop, and they are present still...