These paths lead to Rome

National Catholic Reporter, June 2, 2000 by John L. Jr. Allen

In a working paper for the 1979 Puebla meeting of CELAM, Lopez Trujillo came close to endorsing the Latin American national security state. "These military regimes came into existence as a response to social and economic chaos," he wrote. "No society can admit a power vacuum. Faced with tensions and disorders, an appeal to force is inevitable.'

As Puebla unfolded, a bombshell hit the Latin American press in the form of a confidential letter from Lopez Trujillo to the head of the social action department at CELAM. The letter became public because

Lopez Trujillo had dictated it on a tape, and it was still on the tape when Lopez Trujillo offered it to a reporter whose own cassette had run out during an interview.

In the letter Lopez Trujillo attacked Jesuit Fr. Pedro Arrupe, head of the Jesuits, and Cardinal Eduardo Pironio, former head of CELAM. Both were known for pro-liberation theology sentiments. "I am convinced that these persons ... must be told to their faces that they must change their attitude," Lopez Trujillo said. In his letter, he told a colleague to "prepare your bombers for Puebla" and "get into training just like boxers before entering the ring for a world match."

In 1985, Lopez Trujillo was the driving force behind the "Andes Statement" denouncing liberation theology. "Whatever its subjective intentions were, this theoretical influence tends to betray the true option for the poor in Latin America and eventually becomes a fundamental danger for the faith of the people of God," it said. "In the portrait of the `popular church' presented by these theologies, we are unable to recognize the face of the tree church of Christ."

The statement received extensive coverage on Chile's Pinochet-controlled state television. Chilean theologian Ronaldo Munoz called it "a virtual incitement to repression, and of a criminal nature." The charge proved prophetic when Pinochet's security forces arrested Jesuit Fr. Renato Hevia, editor of the monthly magazine Mensaje, because of his criticism of the government. The army cited the "Andes Statement" in defense of the arrest, arguing that the church itself had disavowed Hevia's position.

As archbishop of Medellin, Lopez Trujillo put his anti-liberation theology position to work. tie threatened to expel the Missionaries of Charity for "being in line with liberation theology" and took away a parish from the Missionaries of the Consolate, calling them "revolutionaries."

He also began a long association with Pablo Escobar, a notorious drug lord, that included joint membership in a civic association called Medellin sin tugurios (Medellin without shantytowns), widely seen as a smokescreen for Escobar's illegal activities. When a priest who wrote for a pro-Escobar newspaper was forced out of his job due to a personal scandal, Lopez Trujillo appointed him to his ecclesiastical tribunal.

In 1990, 200 Colombian Catholic lay professionals wrote the Vatican to say they were "scandalized" about the "orphaned state" of the Medellin church. "The absence of dialogue on the part of our pastor has caused malaise among the priests, religious, laity and apostolic groups, and has resulted in the exodus of many of our members to other dioceses." They asked for a canonical visit to "clear up the anti-evangelical acts -- some of them questionable before canon law, others before criminal courts."