Berkley Center

Every afternoon I take the number 12 bus home from the Social Science building of the University of Buenos Aires in downtown Buenos Aires to my apartment in the Palermo neighborhood. And during that 20-minute bus ride in the late afternoon I pass by five Catholic churches with impressive stone edifices and wrought iron gates tucked in among the simply decorated exteriors of low-rise apartment buildings, secondary schools, and the occasional café or kiosk.

When I make the trek to the city center for my Spanish language class, I emerge from the subway immediately in front of the national cathedral which, with its striking resemblance to the Parthenon, looms over the postcard square of the federal district, striking a sharp contrast between the various government buildings.

Perhaps more definitive then these architectural figures in the urban jungle of Buenos Aires is the manner in which most Porteños, or natives of the city, recognize a Catholic church by crossing themselves. Witnessing this done five times on my bus ride home, I am always struck by the duality of the act—done without thought and as casually as one returning a salutation to a stranger, yet bearing the impressive weight of tradition and sanctity. To me, this simple act represents religion in the capital. This is the Catholic Church in Buenos Aires. This is a presence which flows from the church pew to the bus ride home to the stroll in the plaza. But what does this mean in a Latin American country with a recent history of social turmoil, economic crisis, and political corruption?

On October 9, 2007, Father Christian Federico Von Wernich, a former chaplain of the police department of the Buenos Aires province of Argentina, was convicted in a federal court on charges of complicity in seven homicides, 42 kidnappings, and 32 instances of torture. A priest of the Roman Catholic Church arraigned for crimes against humanity in a country where approximately 90 percent of the population is Catholic is naturally front page news. The theological and sociological implications of this trial are such that candidates for the upcoming presidential election commented immediately for the press, and the topic came up even in my Spanish grammar class. The themes of collective memory and the prosecution of human rights violators are becoming just as integrated into modern Argentine society as the customs of the Catholic Church.

Therefore, I am left with the following question: does crossing oneself in passing a church collide with bringing to justice a priest who committed despicable acts of torture? Does the observance of Catholic ritual and tradition collide with a modern, more or less globalized idea of human rights? Universally it is true that customs will always in some way clash with social changes. Thus, the answer to my question is yes. However, the disturbing commentary on religion in Argentina is that 30-plus years have passed without one member of the Catholic church being brought to justice for human rights violations committed during the military dictatorship of the 1970s, when thousands of innocent civilians were tortured, imprisoned, and murdered.

Of course, I can understand that it is extraordinarily difficult to accept that a member of the Catholic Church would be personally responsible for such unspeakable acts. But the fact remains that there is no question in the international, as well as Argentine, justice system that a crime committed by a priest is still a crime. After studying the dictatorship and the progression in the following decades of the phenomenon of collective memory during the process of redemocratization, I have gained an understanding of the difficulties in pursuing justice after such a grief-filled era. An estimated 30,000 people disappeared, and thousands more were imprisoned. Many Argentines simply wish to forget this dark period of recent history and move on with their lives, while others continue to struggle daily with the commemoration of the horrors which affected them directly or indirectly. Without getting bogged down in the theories of human rights and collective memory, I simply wish to demonstrate that the judicial system is just one of many instruments of memory which naturally has distinct social and political obstacles. Unfortunately, the strong Catholic tradition of Argentina has proven to be one of these obstacles.