Government of Bukele and the Catholic Church “without official contact”, says Cardinal Rosa Chávez

Salvadoran Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chávez warned this weekend that the Catholic Church in El Salvador does not have dialogue with the government of President Nayib Bukele to address the country’s problems and find joint solutions as was done before.

The cardinal, auxiliary bishop emeritus of San Salvador, considers that “a wall has been built” that has cooled relations between the Church and the government, “something that never happened before”, and such distancing has also led to direct attacks on his person, for pointing out violations of human rights and multiple arbitrariness with the state of exception of more than a year in the country. “There is a regime of terror,” she said.

“In previous governments there was a direct telephone line where one could call and speak with some officials and even with the President, or there was a link with whom to contact the government, today there is none of that, there has been no contact since he arrived President Bukele to power”, said the cardinal in statementscollected in Panama for the News Agency of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Council (CELAM).

According to Rosa Chávez, since the official congratulations that were made to Bukele as a Salvadoran Catholic Church after his triumph at the beginning of 2019, a posteriori “there has been no official contact”, a phenomenon that in his opinion “draws a lot of attention in a country with so much tradition, where the Church has been present”.

The public security policy of the Salvadoran government, which enacted the state of emergency since March 2022, and the changes in the law to combat gangs would have further distanced the positions, according to the prelate, who indicated that the work of the Church with programs programs for at-risk youth from impoverished communities “has stopped because it is totally criminalized.”

Rosa Chávez appointed by Pope Francis as the first Salvadoran cardinal, in 2017, added that the loss of guarantees in fundamental rights of citizens such as freedom of expression, to organize and even to have a fair trial “is something extremely dangerous for those who are aware of what human dignity is.”

Added to this is the lynching by multiple platforms and social networks of figures from the country’s public life, who opine against those State policies under the Bukele government, whose propaganda machine -he says- “presents a very country face.” wonderful”, but in which, in reality, exclusion, extreme poverty, and the fear of Salvadorans predominate.

Cardinal Rosa Chévez was close to Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, assassinated on the eve of the Salvadoran civil war in 1980, and canonized in 2018. “I chose what Romero says: the pastor must be where the suffering is.”

During the emergency regime, the Salvadoran government has recognized the capture of nearly 70,000 Salvadorans who have been prosecuted as gang members, although at the beginning of the year it released some 5,000 as it was unable to link them to gang structures. More than a hundred detainees have died at the hands of the State for different reasons, according to human rights organizations.

President Bukele has told Salvadorans that “we are about to win the most difficult battle, the war against the gangs,” which has justified time and again the state of exception with one more extension that will expire in mid-June.

The voice of america He requested comments through the Communications office of the Presidential House in San Salvador, to have a reaction on the bishop’s opinions given in Panama, but until this time there was no response.

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