Salvadoran Prelate Walks Fine Line in Divided Nation

Six years ago, as priests bearing the coffin of slain Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero moved slowly toward the Metropolitan Cathedral, security troops along the crowded route fired their rifles menacingly into the air.

At the head of the procession, Msgr. Arturo Rivera y Damas ordered the priests, “Continue forward.” Steadfastly, according to a churchwoman who was present, Rivera led the coffin-bearers through frightened mourners and skittish troops until they arrived safely at the cathedral.

With the same steady determination, Rivera y Damas then assumed the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church in El Salvador, succeeding Romero, who had been assassinated. And since then, the archbishop has led the divided church through six years of civil war with slow, measured steps.

“That is why we still have him with us,” said Maria Julia Hernandez, head of Tutela Legal, the church’s human rights office.

In the years since Romero was murdered, Rivera y Damas has carefully altered the church’s role in the civil conflict, walking a narrow path between the government and Marxist-led rebels with a caution that reflects his quiet personality and the changes that have taken place in El Salvador.

Romero, shot through the heart by a lone gunman as he said Mass in a hospital chapel on March 24, 1980, was an outspoken critic of the armed forces and of government-condoned violence. He lashed out every week at death-squad killings, at the injustice of poverty. He even told soldiers not to obey orders to kill civilians.

This made him an enemy of the army and the landed rich, who called him a leftist. His death made him a martyr. Nobody has ever been charged with his killing.

Rivera y Damas was carefully chosen to succeed Romero by Pope John Paul II. The Pope made Rivera y Damas the acting archbishop until March, 1983, apparently to make sure that he would not retrace Romero’s bold and fatal path into politics. And the prelate has not tried to become a second Romero.

Taking Middle Path

Instead, he has charted a course as mediator, for himself and for the church. He sees his role as that of an intermediary between the U.S.-backed government and the guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front. He hammers at both sides to “humanize the war” and to seek a peaceful solution through dialogue.

As is the case in most Latin American countries, the Catholic Church in El Salvador has long been a part of the political landscape. Since the days of Romero, the long-unfinished Metropolitan Cathedral, pocked with bullet holes from past confrontations, has had a permanent press section, and the archbishop’s weekly homily has served as a source of information in the absence of an opposition press.

From the cathedral, where Romero is buried and where his larger-than-life portrait looks down on the congregation, the archbishop has continued Romero’s tradition of chronicling and criticizing the violence--always with painstaking care to criticize both sides.

“I have been very careful to prevent anyone from interpreting that I have been politically manipulated,” Rivera y Damas said in a recent interview, “and at the same time not to separate myself from my people, to be near to their suffering.”

Some people would like to see the Catholic cleric play a more decisive role, pushing the two sides to negotiate. But people in both camps, as well as in the church, agree that the archbishop is possibly the only man in El Salvador who has the respect of both sides and the freedom to talk to both.

‘A Good Man’

Those who have been in negotiations with the 62-year-old Rivera y Damas say he is honest, trustworthy and without personal ambition. “He is a good man,” a government negotiator said. “He is not going to compromise the interests of one side or the other.”

The times as well as the archbishop’s personality have helped to redefine his role and the church’s direction. In Romero’s time, random killings were more prevalent, and dialogue was considered a subversive word by a much larger sector of El Salvador’s society than holds such views today.

“Romero’s time was an inferno,” said a bishop who works closely with Rivera y Damas. “We needed someone to cry out. This is an inferno, but it is not as hot, and he has chosen the road of seeking dialogue. If anyone is going to achieve anything, it is he.”

The war continues to claim victims every day, with neither side seemingly able to win. Fewer civilians are being killed than in Romero’s time, but there are still many casualties. Rivera y Damas’ goals of humanizing the war and bringing about a negotiated settlement are not getting any closer.

Raids on Civilian Areas

The government continues to bomb civilian-occupied areas, and earlier this month it destroyed a guerrilla hospital in the northern province of Chalatenango. The leftist rebels continue to plant mines in areas where civilians pass, and last year, during an attack at outdoor cafes in the capital, they killed nine civilians and four U.S. Marines.

The government and the guerrillas met twice for church-mediated peace talks, in October and November, 1984, but have been unable to resume that process. The only successful negotiations between the two sides took place last October over the release of President Jose Napoleon Duarte’s kidnaped daughter.

The guerrillas released the woman, Ines Guadalupe Duarte Duran, and about 30 kidnaped municipal officials in exchange for the release of 22 political prisoners and the evacuation of 101 wounded guerrillas. As he was in the peace talks, Rivera y Damas was the intermediary, and participants described his conduct as calm and steady, saying that he lent his authority to the process but rarely intervened.

To those who criticize him for not being more forceful in pursuit of peace, the archbishop replies: “There is a constant invitation to dialogue. I don’t know what else I can do. The politicians are the ones with the imagination to accelerate dialogue. That is not for me. If I got involved in that, I would lose my role as mediator.”

Church Split, as Well

Rivera y Damas not only mediates between the two sides in the country’s conflict; he is also holding together a church leadership that has been politically divided.

A majority of the bishops are far more conservative than he is. While the guerrillas condemned a pastoral letter that he signed last year calling for dialogue because it recognized the legitimacy of the Duarte government, some people considered the call for dialogue by the Episcopal Conference a major accomplishment for Rivera y Damas. The archbishop had begun to push for dialogue back when it was a word that others dared not utter publicly.

When Romero was named archbishop in 1977, it was with the blessing of the conservatives in the church and in the government; progressives had hoped that the post would go to Rivera y Damas. But Romero grew increasingly radical as priests were killed--as were nuns, Christian lay workers and thousands of Salvadoran peasants, by military and paramilitary forces.

Rivera y Damas, who was then the bishop of Santiago de Maria in the war-torn eastern province of Usulutan, stood by Romero, signing a pastoral letter condemning violence and injustice when other bishops not only refused to do so but issued a counter-letter. He was the only Salvadoran bishop to attend Romero’s funeral.

Support for the Poor

The prelate has maintained Romero’s commitment to the poor and has followed his lead in other areas. For example, he has written to the U.S. Congress to oppose military aid to the Salvadoran government and to ask Congress to halt the deportation of Salvadoran refugees from the United States.

After the guerrilla attack on the cafes last year, Rivera y Damas condemned the action as terrorism, but added that the bombing of civilians and the burning of peasants’ crops by government forces were also terrorism. This brought virulent attacks on him in ultrarightist newspapers and private threats against his life. Death threats have been a standard response to his pastoral work since the late 1970s. Rivera y Damas, unlike Romero, has accepted police protection.

After the negotiations for the release of Duarte Duran--which twice took the archbishop into guerrilla-held territory--he made a weeklong pastoral journey into the guerrilla areas to celebrate Mass for civilians who had not seen a bishop in a decade. He returned visibly touched by his experience with the peasants.

The archbishop has also arranged for civilians to resettle the town of Tenancingo, in disputed territory about 25 miles northeast of the capital, by getting the army and guerrillas to promise not to base troops there. The residents fled the area more than two years ago after a government air raid left 50 dead. One civilian has been killed in cross-fire since their return.

“After Romero’s death,” Hernandez, the human rights worker, said, “Rivera continued with denunciation after denunciation. You have to remember that in periods when you couldn’t talk about anything, he continued to speak. He has not changed.”