Church in the World

Archbishop accused of failing Romero

El Salvador

The Archbishop of San Salvador, Fernando Saenz Lacalle, has been accused of negotiating away the responsibility of the Government for the assassination in 1980 of his predecessor, Archbishop Oscar Romero. Archbishop Lacalle was criticised by human-rights campaigners after it emerged that he had held meetings with members of the ruling Arena party to discuss the Government's continued defiance of rulings made by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (CIDH) of the Organisation of American States.

In 2000, a CIDH report into the assassination of Archbishop Romero made three key demands of the Government, all of which have yet to be met. These were that first it should investigate the crime properly and sanction those responsible; that it should provide reparations for what happened; and that it should amend the country's sweeping Amnesty Law, passed in 1993, which granted impunity to those responsible for some of the worst human-rights abuses of the 1980-92 civil war.

At a meeting of the CIDH in Washington last month, it emerged that Archbishop Lacalle had held three separate meetings with government officials to discuss the case. A member of the archdiocese's legal team, David Morales, was subsequently sacked by the archbishop for revealing the information.

Archbishop Lacalle, who turns 75 this month, has issued two press releases confirming he has been in dialogue with the Salvadorean state and insisting there was "nothing secret" about this.  He said it was the state rather than the government of the day that was responsible for the crime and that the archdiocese and the Government were working closely together to find a way of recognising the state's responsibility and making a suitable public gesture to show the high public esteem in which Archbishop Romero is held.