Papal visit gave “breathing room” to
Guatemalan people, bishop says

By Paul Jeffrey

Tegucigalpa (CNS) - The pope’s recent visit to Guatemala provided “breathing room” in the midst of the Central American nation’s enormous social and economic problems, according to a threatened Guatemalan bishop.

Yet Alvaro Ramazzini, the bishop of San Marcos, complained that John Paul’s visit was “absorbed” by the Guatemalan government, which he said subjected the pontiff to an unfortunate show of military force upon his arrival at the Guatemala City airport on July 29.

“Many of us in Guatemala have been warning that some people want to remilitarize the country, and we had a difficult time watching what they did to the pope,” Ramazzini told Catholic News Service.

“The first vision that the pope had as he left the airplane was of a group of military cadets, and then there were soldiers all around the throne where he sat. Some say they did it for the security of the pope, but that’s debatable. I don’t believe that the first thing the pope should have seen of Guatemala was the military.”

Ramazzini spoke with CNS during a visit to Honduras, where he participated in ceremonies, which ended August 17, commemorating the 500th anniversary of what church leaders claim was the first mass on the mainland of the Americas.

Ramazzini said the militarization of the pope’s welcoming ceremony was one product of the Guatemalan government’s control of the papal visit, the third to the country during John Paul’s papacy.

“The government absorbed everything. It was as if the episcopal conference didn’t exist. We bishops didn’t have an opportunity to greet the pope when he arrived nor when he departed. We had no personal encounter with him. It’s fine that the government welcomed him as a head of state, but it should at least have complemented its ceremony with the presence of the episcopal conference. We are, after all, brothers in the episcopacy with John Paul,” the bishop said.

Ramazzini also criticized the greeting the pope received at the airport from a group of supposedly indigenous children. Although dressed in indigenous clothing, the five blond children were far from indigenous, and turned out to be the grandchildren of the country’s vice president, Francisco Reyes.

“That was an affront to the pope and to the indigenous communities. To dress up a child who isn’t indigenous in indigenous clothing is a farce. We need to be proud of the Guatemala that really exists, and stop living in a farce,” Ramazzini said.

Despite his criticism of the airport ceremonies, Ramazzini said the pope’s brief visit was a positive experience. “It gave the people of Guatemala breathing room, however brief, in the middle of the economic and political crisis that we’ve been living through. People were able to get out and walk the streets, to have a day or two off from work to move about freely.”

According to Ramazzini, John Paul’s presence also “helped build up a sense of unity against the aggressive attacks of fundamentalist evangelical groups, who are constantly assaulting us with their propaganda. The pope’s visit was a way to state that we are one church, that we feel united. . . [The pope’s visit] left many Catholics feeling happy about belonging to the church.”

Yet the bishop said he didn’t think counterattacking the evangelicals was an explicit objective of the papal visit. “That wouldn’t fit into the pope’s ecumenical spirit,” he said.

Many in Guatemala expected the pope to comment during his visit on the recent persecution of Catholic activists. Ramazzini and six priests, along with several staff members of the church’s human rights office, have received death threats, and forensic anthropologists digging up massacre victims from decades past have been forced to flee the country. A church building holding records from the exhumation of mass graves was torched.

Yet the pope made no comment on those events, nor did he mention Guatemala City Auxiliary Bishop Juan Gerardi, who was beaten to death in 1998 just two days after releasing the report of a church-sponsored investigation into responsibility for massive human rights violations during the country’s civil war, which ended in 1996. Three military officers and a priest were convicted of Gerardi’s killing last year, yet a court order to investigate how additional high-ranking officials may be linked to the assassination has been ignored by government officials.

“This visit was less political than those in the past because it didn’t touch the structural problems of the country,” Ramazzini said. “It would be interesting to see who advised him on his homily [during canonization ceremonies for Brother Pedro de San Jose Betancur]. I thought his homily was very weak compared to the speeches he made in the two earlier visits. He mentioned the situation of the indigenous, and also the problem of poverty, but didn’t touch on the concrete problems that we are living through at this moment. Whoever helped him write his speeches didn’t have our reality in mind.”

Ramazzini said he thought the main objective of the pope’s Guatemala visit–‘putting the example of Brother Pedro in front of us”–had been achieved. “And Saint Brother Pedro is a good example to imitate, he has a lot to say about the current socio-economic situation in Guatemala, especially the marginalization of the indigenous,” Ramazzini said.

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