Enrique Angelelli — Wikipedia

Posted on by
before-content-x4

Enrique Angelelli , Né to Córdoba le and death murdered in Chilecito the , was an Argentinian Catholic bishop. Bishop of the Rioja, he pointed out by his strong social commitment, and was part of the group of bishops who openly opposed the military dictatorship. His death, suspected of having been a disguised attack organized by the military authorities, was the subject of controversy. Recognized martyr by the Catholic Church, he is venerated as blessed.

after-content-x4

Young years [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

Enrique Angelelli was born in the city of Córdoba, as the first child of a couple of Italian immigrants. Entered the seminar of Our Lady of Loreto At the age of 15, he was then sent, in 1947, finished his studies to the pious Latin American pontifical college in Rome, where he was ordained priest , at the age of 26 years . He continued in the wake of studies in canon law at Gregorian pontifical university.

Years in Córdoba [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

In 1951, back to Córdoba, he was appointed vicar of the parish San José de Barrio Alto Alberdi and chaplain of the Clinic Hospital . He became assessor of the youth Catholic worker, whose siege was at the chapel of Christ-Ouvrier, and did not hesitate to visit the slums of Córdoba. He taught canonical law and the social doctrine of the Church to the great seminary and theology at the Institute Light of Christ .

The , he was appointed by the pope Jean XXIII auxiliary bishop of the Archbishopric of Córdoba, then consecrated the . It also fulfills the function of rector of the great seminar. As an auxiliary bishop, he engaged in various social conflicts (Fiat, IME, Municipal), and, jointly with other priests, worked for the Church to reproduce its right place in society, but attracting thereby the opposition of the conservative faction within the ecclesiastical institution. In 1963, he called to participate in solidarity campaigns to relieve hunger and the state of abandonment of dispossessed.

He was a participant in the council Vatican II , assistant to the first (October 1962), third (1964) and fourth (1965) Session of the Council. In 1964, in the context of the changes caused by the council, when tensions were daydown within the Church of Córdoba, in particular following the publication of reports on certain priests, Angelelli publicly supported the renovators and their “option preferential for the poor “. This position led to his exclusion from the ecclesiastical management, leading him to work since then as chaplain of Spanish worshipers in the neighborhood of Eucharistic Villa .

In 1965, the holder of the Archbishopric of Córdoba, Raúl Primatta, restored Angelelli to the post of auxiliary bishop.

after-content-x4

Bishop of the Rioja [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

The , Enrique Angelelli became bishop of the diocese of the Rioja, in the northwest of the country, on the appointment of the Pope Paul WE . Which had first appeared to be a sidelining of Angelelli became in fact for him a fertile field of action, where he succeeded in mobilizing large neglected sectors of the population of the Rioja, by promoting the Training of peasant cooperatives and by stimulating the creation of unions of agricultural workers, minors and domestic staff.

Thus Angelelli helped to set up at the Rioja, not only of the union organizations of minors, agrarian workers and house employees, but also cooperatives of weaving, manufacturing of bricks, bakery and cooperatives agricultural. One of these cooperatives asked for an expropriation measure against a large landowner who had enlarged his field by absorbing one by one, on the grounds of non -reimbursement of debts, the small surrounding plots. Governor Carlos Menem then promised to transfer these lands to the cooperative.

The , Enrique Angelelli went to Anillaco, a hometown of Menem, to preside over the employers’ festivals. He was greeted by a troop of people led by merchants and landowners, including Amado Menem, brother of the governor, and his sons César and Manuel, who in concert with other owners wanted to attack the bishop . The troop entered the church by force, and when Angellelli, after suspending the celebration, left the church, threw stones in its direction. Governor Menem, on the pretext of “social agitation”, withdrew his support for the cooperative. Enrique Angelelli denounced the conservative groups, canceled the religious celebrations of the diocese, and struck a temporal prohibition Menem and his supporters.

The superior general of the Company of Jesus, Pedro Arrupe, and Vicente Faustino Zazpe, of the Archbishopric of Santa Fe, dispatched by the Holy See as listener, visited the Rioja and gave their support to Enrique Angelelli, who had previously offered his resignation to the presbyteral council and required the pope Paul WE either to endorse him or to withdraw his confidence. Almost all of the ecclesiastics of the diocese, gathered with Zazpe, said their support for Angelelli, indicating that “the powerful manipulated faith to preserve a situation of injustice and oppression of the people” and to benefit from a “hand- cheap, poorly paid work ”. On the other hand, the president of the Argentine episcopal conference, Adolfo Tortolo, declared that the conference did not have to intercede, and the Nonce Lino Zanini openly supported the sanctioned, to which he offered crucifix as a gift. Zazpe concluded his inspection visit by a mass celebrated jointly with Angelelli and expressed his full support both in terms of his pastoral work and his doctrinal positions.

“Dirty war” and dead [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

Poster representing Enrique Angelelli.

The short presidency of Isabel Martínez de Perón (1974-1976) was marked by the beginnings of the dirty war, which soon degenerated into the bomb attacks, sequesters, tortures, assassinations and persecution. On February 12, 1976, the vicar general of the diocese of The Rioja (is) And two members of a movement of social activists were held by the soldiers. On March 24 took place the coup, which overthrew Isabel Perón as well as all the provincial governors of the country, including Carlos Menem in the province of The Rioja . Enrique angelleli anxiety le Colonel de l’armee Osvaldo Perez Battaglia, nouvel interventeur of The Rioja , to provide information on the vicar and the place of detention of activists. Getting no answer, he went to Córdoba to maintain himself with Luciano Benjamín Mennendez, then commander of the third army corps. Mennendez launched this comminarity warning to Angelelli: “It is you who have to stand on your guard. »» [ first ] Clues exist indicating that Angelelli knew that it was targeted by the military. Nearby people have heard him say many times: “It’s my turn. »»

The , he led a van with Father Arturo Pinto, returning from a mass celebrated in the city of Chamical in tribute to two murdered priests, Carlos Murias and the French Gabriel Longueville, and taking three files filled with notes on these two cases. According to Father Pinto, an automobile began to follow them, then a second. In the locality of Punta de Los Llanos, these two cars would have enclosed the van and would have capsized it. Pinto, after being unconscious for a while, saw Enrique Angelelli extended lifeless on the road, with the rear part of his neck with strong lesions, “as if we had struck it”.

The area was quickly completed by police and soldiers. An ambulance was dispatched to the scene and the body of Angelelli transported to the city of The Rioja . The autopsy revealed several broken ribs and a star -shaped fracture in the occipital bone, compatible with a swallowed blow with the help of a blunt object. The van brakes and the steering wheel had remained intact, and there was no trace of projectiles. The police report indicates that the one who led the vehicle was Pinto, which would have passed the control and would have had a puncture while trying to refer to the road. According to this version, Angelelli had lost his life as a result of the subsequent barrels of the van. Judge Rodolfo Vigo accepted the report. A few days later, the prosecutor Martha Guzmán Loza recommended to close the case, which she described as “traffic accident”. However, there were bishops – Jaime de Nevares, Jorge Novak and Miguel Hesayne – to denounce the case as an “assassination”, including during the dictatorship, but the rest of the Church was silent.

Judicial affair [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

The , that is to say after the restoration of the democratic regime, the judge of the Rioja Aldo Morales stated the judgment that the death of Angelelli had been “a coldly premeditated homicide, which the victim expected”. After a few soldiers were implicated, the armed forces tried to block the judicial investigation, but the judge rejected their complaints. The case was transferred to the Supreme Court of Justice of the Argentine Nation, which in turn sent it back to the Federal Chamber of Córdoba. The Córdoba court declared that it was possible that orders came from the commander of the third army corps, Luciano Benjamín Mennendez.

In , the law of the final point put an end to the judicial education against the three soldiers accused of the death of Angelelli, namely: José Carlos González, Luis Manzanelli and Ricardo Román Oscar Otero. However, this law was repealed in 2003, at the same time as the law of obedience due, and in August of the same year the case was educated again. The Supreme Court divided it into two parts: that involving the soldiers was referred to the courts of Córdoba, and that relating to the possible participation of civilians in the assassination was transmitted to the Rioja. Former commander Mennendez was called upon to appear before the Rioja court , but preferred not to make any declaration.

In An autopsy was practiced on Angelelli’s body. The medical report attests that the multiple fractures of the skull had been the cause of death. Thus, by insisting on the absence of projectiles of firearms, we wanted to have the thesis of a simple road accident accredited, thereby eliminating the possibility of intentionality, that is to be said of an attack.

After Angelelli’s death, the church officially accepted the version of the automotive accident, although some of its members, mentioned above, were personally pronounced against said version. The Romano Osservatore reported this death as “a strange accident”. Cardinal Juan Carlos Aramburu, archbishop of Buenos Aires, nia that a crime was.

Ten years later, even after the judgment of the moral judge was pronounced at the Rioja, the church hierarchy continued to avoid referring to the death of Angelelli as an assassination. In 2001, a statement from the Argentine episcopal conference stated that “death found him while he was carrying out an arduous mission, accompanying the community injured by the death of his pastors”.

In particular under the influence of Cardinal Bergoglio, future Pope Francis, who presented him as a martyr, the position of the Catholic Church changes radically, and the , the congregation for the causes of the saints authorizes the diocese of The Rioja (is) to open the cause in beatification and canonization. The diocesan survey ended on September 15, 2016 and transferred to Rome to be studied by the Holy See.

The , Pope Francis recognizes the martyrdom death of Enrique Angelelli, and signs the decree of his beatification. He was proclaimed Blessed at la reolja, about tongly patricne, by Le Cardinal> Italian Beckand

The , two days before 30 It is anniversary of his assassination, the President of the Argentine Republic, born Kirchner, signed a decree proclaiming the (Assassination day, in 1976) National Day of Mourning, and delivered a speech to Casa Rosada “commemorating the religious who were victims of state terrorism”. Estela Barnes de Carlotto, one of the grandmothers in the May square, who attended a mass in tribute to Bishop Angelelli, declared, alluding to the veiled “tribute” of the Catholic hierarchy: “I do not Do not want Monsignor to be a pious image. He remains alive in our memory ”.

On the birthday, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, future Pope Francis, celebrated a mass in the Rioja cathedral in memory of Angelelli. In his homily, he said about Angelelli that “he removed stones, which fell on him, for having proclaimed the Gospel, and soared up with his own blood”, without however making the slightest explicit mention of the responsibility for the dictatorship in his death. Bergoglio, however, also pronounced this Tertullian sentence: “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church” – this is the first time that Agelelli was officially mentioned under the term of martyr by the Argentine church [ 2 ] . Following this ceremony, 2,000 people, including the Governor of the Rioja, Ángel Maza, paid tribute to Angelelli to Punta de Los Llanos, where the crime had been perpetrated.

The lawyer and writer Ricardo Mercado Luna devoted in 1996 a work to the martyr bishop, Enrique Angelelli, Bishop of La Rioja. Notes for a story of faith, commitment and martyrdom . A 67 -minute docudrama devoted to Angelelli and entitled Angelelli, The Living Word (A., Living Word), was turned by Fernando Spiner and Víctor Laplace, on a scenario by Juan Pablo Young, and disseminated by the cultural chain Meeting in 2007 [ 3 ] .

  1. ↑ Andersen, Martin. (1993). Dossier secreto: Argentina’s Desaparecidos and the myth of the “Dirty War . Westview Press. 412 p. (ISBN  0-8133-8212-2 ) .
  2. ↑ (is) Juan Carlos Pisano, ‘ Enrique Angelelli – “One ear in the town and the other in the Gospel” » , Dialogue , n O 202, ( read online , consulted the ) .
  3. ↑ Fernando Spiner & Víctor Laplace, ‘ Angelelli, The Living Word (Video) » , on Don Orione – Little work of Divina Providencia (consulted the ) .

Bibliography [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

  • (is) Luis Miguel Baronetto, Life and martyrdom Mons. Angelelli, bishop of the Catholic Church , Córdoba, Latin American Time Editions, , 2 It is ed. , 264 p.

Related article [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

external links [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

Press articles [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

after-content-x4