Gustavo Morello – författare

On the afternoon of August 3rd, 1976, Fr. James Weeks and five seminarians of the Missionaries of La Salette living with him in Córdoba, Argentina's second largest city, were kidnapped. A mob burst into their house claiming to be Catholic police looking for "subversive fighters." The seminarians were "disappeared" for a few days, then jailed and tortured for two months before eventually being exiled to the United States.Since the election of the first Latin American pope, tension regarding the role that the Catholic Church played in Argentina's Dirty War has resurfaced. Critics claim that the Catholic Church had done nothing to alleviate the situation, even acting as an accomplice to the dictators. Leaders of the Catholic Church on the other hand claimed they did not fully know what was going on, but tried to help when they could. Many scholars and the general public have long assumed that the historical context of Argentina was similar to other Latin American countries. On the contrary, unlike countries such as Chile and Brazil, Argentina's political violence was seen as acceptable tools of political involvement; both the guerrillas and the military government were able to gain popular support for their fights.Employing a rigorous methodology, The Catholic Church and Argentina's Dirty War contributes to the understanding of the historical and sociopolitical contexts of Argentina, as well as the role of Catholics under State Terror. The book uses the La Salette missionaries as a case study, drawing on interviews with victims of forced disappearance, documents from the State and the Church, field observation, and participant observation in providing a deeper view of the relationship between Catholicism and state terrorism during Argentina's Dirty War.

On August 3rd, 1976, in Córdoba, Argentina's second largest city, Fr. James Week and five seminarians from the Missionaries of La Salette were kidnapped. A mob burst into the house they shared, claiming to be police looking for "subversive fighters." The seminarians were jailed and tortured for two months before eventually being exiled to the United States.The perpetrators were part of the Argentine military government that took power under President General Jorge Videla in 1976, ostensibly to fight Communism in the name of Christian Civilization. Videla claimed to lead a Catholic government, yet the government killed and persecuted many Catholics as part of Argentina's infamous Dirty War. Critics claim that the Church did nothing to alleviate the situation, even serving as an accomplice to the dictators. Leaders of the Church have claimed they did not fully know what was going on, and that they tried to help when they could. Gustavo Morello draws on interviews with victims of forced disappearance, documents from the state and the Church, field observation, and participant observation in order to provide a deeper view of the relationship between Catholicism and state terrorism during Argentina's Dirty War. Morello uses the case of the seminarians to explore the complex relationship between Catholic faith and political violence during the Dirty War-a relationship that has received renewed attention since Argentina's own Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis. Unlike in countries such as Chile and Brazil, Argentina's political violence was seen as an acceptable tool in propagating political involvement; both the guerrillas and the military government were able to gain popular support. Morello examines how the Argentine government deployed a discourse of Catholicism to justify the violence that it imposed on Catholics and how the official Catholic hierarchy in Argentina rationalized their silence in the face of this violence. Most interestingly, Morello investigates how Catholic victims of state violence and their supporters understood their own faith in this complicated context: what it meant to be Catholic under Argentina's dictatorship.

Desde la teología de la liberación hasta la inédita y ubicua presencia de las iglesias evangélicas y pentecostales, la religión ha demostrado un inesperado dinamismo como fuerza social en América Latina. Cuál ha sido su relación con el problema de la violencia Es el tema que discuten historiadores, politólogos, sociólogos y antropólogos.