The announced closure of the legal aid office of the Archdiocese of San Salvador has sparked controversy in El Salvador, as well as reflection
on the impact Archbishop Oscar A. Romero has had in the field of human rights.
In retrospect, the impact that the small office opened by Archbishop Romero has had is
remarkable. The office can be credited with, among other things, documenting
and highlighting the Massacre of El Mozote, investigating and documenting the
activities of the death squads during the Salvadoran conflict, gathering
evidence that resulted in the report of the U.N. Truth Commission for El Salvador
in 1993, and the investigation of more than 50,000 cases of human rights
violations in that country, including forced disappearances, torture and
extrajudicial killings (including Archbishop Romero). Notable alumni of the office include Florentin
Melendez, now a justice of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of
El Salvador; Luis Ramirez, who became a United Nations representative; David
Morales, current Human Rights Ombudsman for the government of El Salvador;
Roberto Cuellar, former Executive Director of the Interamerican Institute of Human Rights;
and, of course, Maria Julia Hernandez, the head of the office who became an internationally
renowned champion of human rights.
Defining him as a pioneer of human rights in El Salvador,
Roberto Cuellar says that, “It is worth
pointing out that Monseñor Romero began to use the general principles of law
and the doctrine of human rights at a time when international conventions and
pacts were still few in number and adequate international human rights
legislation did not yet exist.” Cuellar
says that, “Monseñor Romero was the first Human Rights Ombudsman our
country ever had.” Cuellar recalls how Romero would provide guidance and
leadership to young lawyers who handled cases in the office:
Naturally, Monseñor [Romero] was not a lawyer by training. However, in the course of those
three years, I witnessed how he woke up and grew in his interest in the law, becoming
a clever and profound legal reasoner. Often he would study the
Constitution, which in those fateful years he considered the only remedy
available to defend the “just right,” as he called it. Those who worked in the
archdiocese Legal Aid received many cases from his very hands, with Monseñor [Romero]’s personal annotations about possible ways to channel and direct
each case.
Florentin Melendez recalls another important function
that the legal aid office fulfilled for Romero: fact-checking his denunciations.
"Monsignor Romero digested the
information that would reach the legal aid office for his homilies, for the
part about the events of the week and the denunciations. We were collecting
evidence. As a notary, I would go out to legalize testimonies, to make field
visits where dead bodies had appeared, to search the prisons for the ‘disappeared’
from the UCA [university], the National [university] or the unions.”
Similarly, Roberto Cuellar also recalls that Romero was “demanding with respect to legal issues, he was very rigorous about ascertaining
the facts.”
The Apostolic
Exhortation «Pastores Gregis» of John Paul II (written in part by
Cardinal Bergoglio) states that “the
Bishop is the defender of human rights, the rights of human beings made in the
image and likeness of God … the Bishop is the defender and the father of the
poor, concerned for justice and human rights.” The archdiocesan Legal Aid Office
shows how Archbishop Romero fulfilled that role. So much so that a U.S.
District Court concluded that when Romero was assassinated, “The people were deprived of their protector.”
Doe v. Rafael Saravia, 348 F. Supp. 2d 1112, 1141 ( E.D. Cal. 2004). The
court went on to say that: “For many, his
role as the ‘Voice of the Voiceless,’ meant that he was their only protection
against attack.” Roberto Cuellar
praises Archbishop Romero as an “apostle of human rights.”
Post Script
Msgr. Ricardo Urioste,
Archbishop Romero’s vicar general and one of his closest collaborators, who
chairs Fundación Romero, told the Vatican Insider that he does not believe “that
the situation that has been created will hurt the process” of beatification.
The closure does not jump out as being outside the range of actions of previous
archbishops. For example, Archbishop Arturo Rivera Damas set up “Tutela Legal” precisely after closing
the “Socorro Juridico” that
Archbishop Romero had established, when Rivera wished to impose a more “moderate” line over the human rights work of the archdiocese. Archbishop Fernando Saenz
Lacalle also stirred controversy by dismissing a prominent lawyer with Tutela
Legal (David Morales), also over differences in direction. The attention that
the closure has generated is encouraging in the sense that it highlights the
great awareness that has been aroused in the area of human rights in El
Salvador, which allows us to think that the crisis will be diffused when all
parties approach the issue with reflection.
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