Bishop Sergio Valech: Priest who helped lead the opposition to the Pinochet regime in Chile

[Judi Lynn]

Bishop Sergio Valech: Priest who helped lead the opposition to the Pinochet regime in Chile

By Hugh O'Shaughnessy

Saturday, 27 November 2010

Bishop Sergio Valech Aldunate was one of the most formidable opponents of the Western-backed terrorist regime of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile and a strong supporter of the cause of the Chilean poor.

The country's current president Sebastiá* Piñera, despite having had strong ideological links with Pinochet, immediately decreed two days' national mourning.

Valech's father was Antonio, a Levantine Christian who migrated to Chile early last century and made a fortune in property; Sergio always had money. He was ordained priest in 1953 by the influential figure of Cardinal José María Caro, archbishop of Santiago. He thus became part of a Chilean clergy who were – and still remain – in large part humble and dedicated, far removed from such as the Argentine and Colombian churches, who have for long hidden in their ranks men whose actions are scandalously unchristian and whose conduct has at times been blatantly fascist.

Valech was always a conscientious administrator, careful with money, and early on he caught the eye of Cardinal Raúl Silva, who had succeeded to the see of Santiago. Silva and his auxiliary, Fernando Ariztía, consecrated Valech a bishop a fortnight before Pinochet's bloody putsch of 11 September 1973. Silva, Ariztía and Valech formed a powerful episcopal defence force as the military regime captured, tortured and killed at will with no effective interference from Western governments, which continually and mendaciously proclaimed their adherence to democracy and human rights.

More:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/bishop-sergio-valech-priest-who-helped-lead-the-opposition-to-the-pinochet-regime-in-chile-2145042.html

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