Buenos Aires, Argentina - For nearly 30 years, the faithful at St. Patrick's Church have cherished the memory of five spiritual guides slain during Argentina's "dirty war." The priests and parishioners at the Buenos Aires church tend a small, understated shrine. And they nurture a cause that goes beyond honoring the dead.
That cause, which once seemed impossible, now looks merely improbable: to win canonization for the three Pallottine priests and two seminarians slain at St. Patrick's on July 4, 1976.
The archbishop of Buenos Aires last week authorized the beatification request to go forward, the first official step in the Roman Catholic Church's long and complex process toward naming someone a saint.
"The idea is not to generate hate or rancor, because from the very first moment we have forgiven the killers, even if we do not know who they are, even if we do not know their faces," said Rev. Adrian Francioli of St. Patrick's, who is compiling the beatification request on behalf of the Pallottine order. "The motive is to revive faith in people, to kindle charity in the sense of brotherly service, solidarity and commitment to those who have less."
The decision by Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio carries political as well as spiritual significance.
Evidence and testimony will be collected to paint a portrait of the men's religious lives. The Pallottines will ask that the five be declared martyrs for the faith, and Bergoglio has ordered an investigation into the attack itself, widely blamed on the military regime that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983.
The Argentine church has acknowledged its failure to challenge the military's anti-leftist repression, which according to human-rights groups left 30,000 people dead or "disappeared," including dozens of Catholic clergy and lay activists.
To the harshest critics, church leaders were not merely indifferent to the violence but complicit in it. They say that includes Bergoglio, 68, who led Argentina's Jesuits at the time. Such charges were revived after the death of Pope John Paul II, when Bergoglio was being mentioned as a possible successor.
Critics cite link to military
Writing in the Buenos Aires newspaper Pagina 12, leading journalist Horacio Verbitsky said Bergoglio's "relations with the military dictatorship three decades ago ... are a point against his chances" of someday becoming pope. Verbitsky suggested the beatification proposal was part of an attempt by Bergoglio "to whitewash his personal history."
The timing of the decision is crucial. To comply with church rules, the beatification process should begin within 30 years of a person's death. In the case of Revs. Pedro Dufau, Alfredo Leaden and Alfredo Kelly and seminarians Salvador Barbeito and Emilio Barletti, that deadline comes next summer.
On the night they were slain, the United States was lavishly celebrating its 200th birthday and Argentina was descending into an agony of suspicion, violence and vengeance. The coup that brought the military to power was 3 months old, and the first days of July saw a terrifying spike in attacks by leftist guerrillas and retribution by government and right-wing forces.
The priests and seminarians--or The Five, as they are known at St. Patrick's--were home in their simple residence attached to the church. By the time their assailants left in the early morning hours, the five men had been gathered in the living room, riddled with scores of bullets and heaped onto a rug.
Today that rug forms the backdrop for a simple shrine honoring The Five. Next month, a monument with five granite pillars will be dedicated.
The initial criminal investigation went nowhere. But witness testimony and other evidence collected since the dictatorship lost power in 1983 points to a team from the Naval Mechanics School in Buenos Aires, a dirty war stronghold.
In his 1989 book on the slayings, "La Masacre de San Patricio," journalist Eduardo Kimel suggested four possible reasons for the killing: revenge for guerrilla activity; the targeting of Barletti, who though not a guerrilla fighter was connected to the main armed revolutionary group; a vendetta by right-wing groups in the neighborhood, or the silencing of Kelly, whose sermons condemning the repression stung conservative and influential parishioners.
To Kimel, who was censured by the Argentine courts for his book's critical portrayal of a judge in the case, "the killings enunciated the objectives of state terror to destroy all organized popular protests against the military dictatorship."
Church, society still divided
That it took three decades for the beatification petition to take its first official step reflects the divisions within the Catholic Church, and within Argentine society, over those dark years.
"Not everyone has recognized what happened as martyrdom," said Sister Celia Scota, a Buenos Aires nun who went to St. Patrick's last week for a mass to celebrate the opening of the beatification process. "Some say it happened because they were mixed up in other things. You still hear that today."
Sister Maria de los Angeles Puy said certain interests in the church, in politics and business have "set up obstacles to the discovery of the truth." But she was heartened by the name of a street that runs by St. Patrick's Church. It has been rechristened "Pallottine Martyrs."
"The church did not give that name, it was society, and that means a lot," Puy said. "And saints they are too, even if they have yet to be proclaimed that by the church."