Bourgeois takes Close SOA message
to Rome
By ROBERT BLAIR KAISER
Special to the National Catholic Reporter Rome
Roy Bourgeois, Vietnam veteran, Maryknoll priest, in Rome for the
first time, wanders into St. Peters in late January, awed by the size of
it all and feeling very small.
Im sittin there, he reports. Just
thinkin. He is a Cajun from Louisiana and he still has the accents
of the bayou.
And ahm thinkin, Theres something
wrong here. The power of the keys. But whats it for? Is it about
bein No. 1? Or is it about service?
Ever since his missionary service in Bolivia and in El Salvador,
Bourgeois has felt that the official church has been kowtowing to the rich. And
he has just come from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, where a
Latin American priest confirmed it for him.
Through much of John Pauls 21-year reign, the
priest told him, the bishops have usually been on the side of the
oligarchy, who keep on exploiting the poor. He puts much of the blame for
this on the papal nuncios, who come from the upper levels of Romes
priestly caste system and often have the final vote on who gets to become a
bishop.
So here is Bourgeois, in his jeans and his windbreaker, a rather
young-looking 61, thinking about Vatican politics on a bench in St.
Peters and about the cause that has obsessed him since 1990 -- closing
down the U.S. Armys School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Ga., which
has one aim: to shore up the power of the elites in Latin America.
Ahm thinkin that this is a very sad situation.
And ahm also thinkin there is somethin I can do about
it.
He can say something on Vatican Radio, because he is scheduled for
a live interview there the next day. But what to say? And how to say it?
Oh, he will tell the interviewers how he founded the School of the
Americas Watch to seek public support to close this training ground for Latin
American military and police types.
And he will tell them that he met for four hours with 150 members
of the justice and peace commission of the International Conference of Major
Religious Superiors and spent an hour the next day with the head of the
Jesuits, Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach.
These superiors have their own networks in the United States and
they told Bourgeois they have ways of getting to perhaps 100 U.S. bishops who
havent yet signed a petition urging Congress and the president to
close the doors of this shameful military school forever. (Exactly 146
bishops have signed so far.)
But Bourgeois feels he needs to say something more. At Mass the
next morning, Bourgeois has his answer. He knows what he needs to say.
CUT TO: The offices of Vatican Radio on the top floor at Via Della
Conciliazione 3.
FADE IN: Roy Bourgeois and three English language interviewers,
plus a woman whos translating what he says into French and a young man
translating into Italian.
ACTION: Bourgeois takes 10 minutes to give his practiced spiel on
the SOA, where the U.S. Army has trained 60,000 military men to kill priests
and nuns trying to bring bread and justice to the poor.
Then, with some trepidation, he says, Ahm not
goin to talk about politics now. I wanna talk about Jubilee
justice.
Ah think its time the church tried somethin new.
For 2,000 years, the men have been in charge, and the men havent done the
job. We need to bring in the women in the church. We cant be healed
unless we get our women to address the sufferin of the poor. We need
women priests, we need women bishops, to take leadership positions in every
church office. When women get their voice in the church, we will have more
justice in the world.
The French translator gulps. She knows what the Vatican thinks
about women priests. But she goes ahead and gives a fair rendition in French of
Bourgeois words. The young Italian is more prudent. He skips the
sentence, We need women priests, we need women bishops.
Any more questions? No. Bourgeois has said enough to get them all
in trouble. The interview is over. Listeners around the world get 15 minutes of
recorded music to fill in the silence left by the departed Cajun.
The three English language interviewers stop Bourgeois and invite
him to stay for coffee. One of them says, I think this is the first time
anyone has ever heard this on Vatican Radio.
The Italian translators strategy of omission, however,
extended to coverage of Bourgeois Rome visit by the Catholic News
Service, the official agency of the U.S. bishops. In reporter Cindy
Woodens 350-word story, no mention is made of his Vatican Radio
appearance or his call for womens ordination.
I didnt think it had anything to do with the story. A
lot of people have said this. It wasnt news, Wooden told NCR.
I didnt want to make too big a deal out of it. If a
story goes out to the States saying it was on Vatican Radio, people think
its a big deal. But how many people actually heard it? Three?
Whatever the size of his audience, Bourgeois isnt scared.
Next day, he phones Bishop Jim Harvey in the papal household, tells him who he
is and, though he doesnt get to see the pope, he takes Harvey a copy of
his videotape documentary on the SOA, School of Assassins.
He tells himself, Maybe the pope will learn
somethin.
National Catholic Reporter, February 11,
2000
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