Salvadoran Archbishop on Hand as Church Marks a Year as Sanctuary

The Roman Catholic archbishop of San Salvador, making his first pastoral visit to the large Salvadoran community in Los Angeles, celebrated a colorful Mass on Friday at the packed Old Plaza Church--largest and oldest in the archdiocese and the first to declare itself a “sanctuary church.”

Sanctuary for Central American refugees is needed “now more than ever,” Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas said in Spanish, as the congregation celebrated the first anniversary of the church’s designation as a sanctuary and the 455-year-old feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Folk music, native Latin American costumes and Indian dancers with pheasant-feather headdresses lent a fiesta atmosphere to the 167-year-old church and its courtyard.

The so-called sanctuary movement began several years ago among churches and synagogues that declared support and protection for illegal alien refugees. About 300 religious organizations nationwide are now involved, and nearly 20 cities and the state of New Mexico have also symbolically declared themselves sanctuaries.

The City of Los Angeles, bowing to critics and a possible ballot initiative, in February watered down an earlier resolution that had symbolically made Los Angeles a “city of sanctuary.” The present statement reaffirms city policy providing services to anyone, regardless of immigration status.

More than 300,000 Salvadorans are estimated to reside in the Los Angeles area, the largest number outside El Salvador.

The mostly Latino worshipers gave Rivera a standing ovation when Father Luis Olivares, pastor of the Plaza church, called the archbishop, a leader in Salvadoran peace efforts, “the strongest voice in Central America. . . . “

Later, Rivera spoke at a press conference and was honored after a brief address to the Los Angeles City Council.

Leaders from a variety of Southland religious groups also took part in the church service, and a Salvadoran woman, identified only as “Maria,” told through an interpreter how she had been “kidnaped and badly tortured” in El Salvador because of her involvement in election campaigning.

Rivera suggested that the new Immigration Reform and Control Act will make it difficult for recently arrived Central American refugees to remain in this country and find jobs here.

Amnesty provisions in the immigration law passed by Congress and signed by President Reagan in November offer legal resident status to illegal aliens who can prove they have been in the United States since at least Jan. 1, 1982. But many refugees from Central America have come since then, and thus appear ineligible for the legalization program.

At the press conference, Rivera said that while human rights violations in his country have eased somewhat, President Reagan should do more to end the war in El Salvador and recognize illegal aliens from that country as political refugees.

“He (Rivera) believes the United States certainly can do more. Not only is it important it do more, but it’s necessary, given the great influence the United States has in the region,” Olivares said in English, interpreting an answer to a reporter’s question.

Olivares said that a year ago, when the Old Plaza Church began its sanctuary program, more than 100 refugees were sleeping on the church’s pews each night. Now, because of the dramatic increase in numbers, “we can only let them sleep in the church for three nights,” he said.