Ignominy: The legacy of López Trujillo
Top stories > TopicsBy Carlos Uribe de los Ríos
Thursday 1 May 2008 17:32 COT
Este artículo está disponible en ESPAÑOL
There is something really absurd on asking about cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo’s legacy. If there is something worth granting to this frantic bishop from the Roman Catholic Church, is the toughening of the most conservative, traditional and alienating of its sections. Besides that, he left nothing but a trail of persecution and hatred.
López Trujillo was an expert in gaining the help and support of the powerful. He was quite skilled and persistent in achieving it. In fact, he was designated as auxiliary bishop for Bogotá right after he managed to successfully arrange a visit from Pope Paul VI to Colombia and make his name known. Later on, as head of the Latin American Episcopal Conference –Celam, for its Spanish initials- and archbishop of Medellín, he made it his crusade to attack and condemn every bishop, priest or nun that preached about the Liberation Theology in this continent and mainly, those who would openly defend the religious option of looking after the poor.
Monsignor was especially cautious in keeping his opponents far apart and ostracised. While in Medellín, he dismissed from their priestly obligations or sent away to the toughest and most remote parishes those who would dare confront his points of view. This meant not only ecclesiastical exile but also a clear sentence to hunger and deprivation.
Not many people remember father Carlos Alberto Calderón who was designated to handle the parish El Corazón (a very conflictive area in Medellín) as a punishment, with such bad luck for the bishop that the priest turned out to be a leader and an inspiring figure in a hopeless community, long forgotten by the Church. Calderón was so ruthlessly persecuted that he became the symbol of all those clerics who were being victimized by López Trujillo. A few years later, he ended up as a missionary in Africa, where he died from a tropical disease.
There was always this element of ambivalence in the archbishop. That was the key to his success. Complaisance with more radically conservative sectors of the Church, sponsored by Rome and specially by the “all mighty” cardinal Ratzinger (today Pope Benedict XVI) and an almost constabulary vigilance of the priests and nuns who would continue a service for the poor, away from opulence and authoritarianism.
Once in Rome, as president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, he continued to strengthen his ideas with the support of Pope John Paul II and engaged in ferocious campaigning battles against the more progressive segments around the world and joined wilfully and successfully every internal crusade against the reforms made by the Vatican Council II, with Pope John XXIII on the front.
For all these reasons, to pretend that there is a legacy by Alfonso López Trujillo is to ignore his history and give too much attention to his arrogance and pretensions of putting his name on the list of those likely to become Popes; thank God, death came before.
This article was originally published 22 April 2008 in equinoXio. Translated by Claudia Vásquez Ramírez
Tags: Alfonso López Trujillo, Benedict XVI, Carlos Alberto Calderón, CELAM, Colombia, Colombian politics, conservatism, ignominy, Joseph Ratzinger, Latin American Episcopal Conference, Liberation Theology, Medellín, Pontifical Council for the Family, Roman Catholic Church, Vatican
saturday 21 june 2008, 13:33 COT
Excellent article about Cardinal Lopez Trujillo. I have shared it with many progressive catholic organizations in the USA. Congratulations!!