Priests and Socialism in Chile

Extract

Eighty Catholic priests who live and work among the working classes in Chile met in April in Santiago to study the most effective way priests and lay people could help in building socialism in Chile. What follows is a summary made up from answers given to questions asked at a Press Conference on 16th April, to some questions asked later of some of the priests taking part, and from statements made in some of the papers read.

It has been compiled by the Uruguayan journalist MARUJA ECHEGOYEN.

Background

During the final Session of the study group, eight priests held a Press Conference at which they read out a prepared statement and answered questions from journalists representing both Chilean and overseas papers. Among these priests were Fr Gonzalo Arroyo, chaplain of the Catholic University of Santiago, and Fr Alfonso Pujadas, Director-General of the Workers’ Movement at the same University. The journalists mostly represented left-wing organs. Not long before, the Christian Democrat daily La Prensa had published, tendentiously and without prior authorization, with misleading headings, a private document circulated in November last year among a group of priests, wrongly making it out to be the starting-point for this meeting of Socialist priests. Gonzalo Arroyo attacked this action at the Press Conference, and it is indeed one more example of the growing inability of the more right-wing sector of Christian Democracy in Chile to listen and discuss rationally.