'Provincial Letters' by Blaise Pascal

In 1647, an odd case played out in French courts. A man named John d’Alba, unhappy with his wages, made off with a few pewter plates from the Jesuit college where he served; once caught, he was duly charged with larceny. When questioned, however, though he admitted to having taken the plates, he denied it was stealing—instead claiming he had simply been following the teachings of university priests, and showing the court a pamphlet authored by the one instructing him in cases of conscience. The judge was unsympathetic. According to Pascal, who tells the story in his brilliant, scathing ‘Provincial Letters’, the incensed order was given not only for the man to receive a good whipping at the college gates, but also for all materials with a doctrine “so illegal, pernicious, and contrary to all laws, natural, divine, and human” to be burnt. D’Alba didn’t stay around for the repercussions, disappearing from the scene along with the pewter.

The “pernicious” doctrine appealed to so unsuccessfully? ‘Probabilism’, a theological notion with roots in the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain. Initially taught by the Franciscans and Dominicans, it eventually came to be firmly associated with the Jesuits. The idea, briefly, was that right and wrong are not so obvious as they seem—that abstract reason must adapt itself to the specific case, and that many seemingly immoral or un-Catholic actions can be justified retrospectively by taking into account the circumstances.

Mere sophistry or moral relativism, say some—but as the D’Alba case shows, the ideas weren’t limited to dusty Latin texts. Nor was their influence limited to the continent. When Spanish Jesuit missionaries arrived in the Americas—including Argentina—they were confronted with native populations speaking other languages and following customs different from their own. At times these ran quite counter to the Catholic practices the missionaries espoused. And so, to continue living in harmony, the priests practised a flexible doctrine—adapting their arguments to the conditions, and in doing so drawing on theological ideas picked up in Europe.

Speaking crosswise

In the north-eastern Argentine province of Misiones, and just across the border in Paraguay and southern Brazil, lie the crumbling rust-coloured remains of the reducciones where Jesuit priests organised the indigenous into communities. Despite their somewhat difficult accessibility (requiring long walks down dusty roads), and slightly diminished grandeur (the buildings were destroyed during the war with Paraguay), they draw thousands of visitors per year. Most are Argentines, intrigued by “las ruinas” and by this period in their own past.

The first missionaries arrived in Argentina in 1585, after coming to Brazil (1553), Peru (1567), and Mexico (1572). Many were from the Extramadura region of Spain, notable for its harsh living conditions and bleak landscapes, the forge of many strong characters. Still, they found Argentina rough-going. The land wasn’t the problem—that was green and fertile. It was the strange-seeming culture of the natives, their disinterest in city life, commercial interests, and the particular form of religion that for the Spaniards meant civilization.

The most immediate challenge was language. Hundreds of native tongues could be heard in the area; luckily, most tribes could understand at least Guaraní. Unluckily for the Spaniards, Guaraní is a language incredibly difficult for the non-native, with words which can sound like a guttural staccato for a speaker of the Romance languages. Since preaching to an uncomprehending audience in Latin or Spanish would be inutile, however, the Jesuits immediately set themselves to work mastering the unfamiliar sounds and syntax—with surprising success, as several impressive grammars of the period attest.

Any change in language affects what one says as well as how one says it. Guaraní didn’t have words for many of the Catholic terms the missionaries were trying to impart. And so the priests “translated”—putting highly abstract ideas into more practical indigenous language. The interpretive flexibility didn’t go unnoticed. Critics pounced, denouncing the “pagan” teachings before the Tribunal de la Santa of the inquisition in Lima. In this case, the supposed offenders were pardoned—the judges understood the missionaries’ argument that the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception is difficult to explain elegantly when words like “grace” or “conception” do not exist.

The ruins of San Ignacio Miní in north-eastern Argentina (courtesy of wikimedia)

A pragmatic coexistence

On the reducciones, while it was the Spaniards who managed everything, the “tubichá” (chief) of each tribe gave formal approval and was specially treated. Organisation was based on a mixed system of public and private property, which in their writings the priests attribute to influences as diverse as Tommaso Campanella and Plato. In fact, it was an organic twist on the ideas of the Indian community—each family received its own piece of land, or “abambaé,” which it worked three days a week; another three days it worked a different property “belonging to God”, called the “tupambaé”. Food produced on the latter went to the old, the sick, and the children; there, Indians also worked in their workshops, made tributes, and built up the food reserves.

The reducciones were largely self-sustaining, basing themselves around workshops—blacksmiths, carpenters, spinners, potters, sculptors, bakers, silversmiths, and rosary manufacturers. What could not be made was purchased with the money made by selling yerba mate to Spain. As in medieval times, there was a hierarchical structure of apprenticeship, with work tools held in common and an equitable distribution of benefits; all was shared and there were no salaries.

The fine arts were thought of practically, and adapted to incorporate the aesthetics of indigenous crafters. If paintings and miniature wooden statues were well-made and kept the Indians at work and thinking of God, what did it matter if they bore no resemblance to any European image of the divine? Architecture was conceived of in a similarly utilitarian way. As the priest P. Diego de Torres wrote in 1614: “The churches must be brightly lit, so that they can follow the service well and read the prayers in their book. The acoustics must be such that one can hear the preacher and that the hymn reaches the masses. Easy access to the Holy Table is necessary so that one can give the communion without disorder… The plan of the building, the style of construction, are left open to the preference of the donors, the taste of the architects, and the subordination of circumstances.”

Education (of both sexes, rare for the time) went by the classical Ratio Studiorum, fitted to the individual case. It was a two-way learning process: Indians mimicked priests in religion and education, and Jesuits adapted to indigenous practices, an exchange not entirely free of biases. For the priests, the indigenous were largely thought of as children who had to be protected from their own supposedly worse instincts—largely cultural stereotypes. Ana Maria Galileano’s ‘Las Reducciones Guaraníticas’, published by the Argentine government’s Ministry of Culture and Education, is a snapshot of both the philosophy and the prejudice. “To civilize the aborigines, the Jesuits adapted to their mentality and their habits,” she writes. “They were able to halt their warlike impulses and exaggerated taste for alcohol, and, developing their artistic and manual aptitudes, attract them by means of sumptuous temples and solemn ceremonies with songs and an orchestra, to a sincere expression of the worship due to the grandeur of God.”

A subversive doctrine?

Both Jesuit justifications and probabilist or proto-probabilist texts by thinkers like Vitoria, Cano, Soto, and Molina can now be found bound in large Latinate tomes in the Argentine universities in Córdoba and other major cities. In colonial times, the schools of law reinforced the teachings, both through explicit study of the texts themselves, and through the training of lawyers to argue and resolve cases of doubt by providing a plurality of possible acceptable answers.

Not everyone liked this flexibility. The Jesuits gained a negative reputation for “worldliness”, the soothsayers of the “leyenda negra“, due to their willingness to adapt and to work with governments; but since their doctrine was pragmatic and anti-systemic, and focused on the individual case without recourse to a larger legal framework, it could just as easily go the other way. It took as justification the voices of church authorities, but these might be tailored to justify nearly any action retrospectively. In the Argentine context, the Jesuit flexibility was subversive in two ways: It was used by some to defend indigenous rights on the reducciones when the Spanish crown would rather simply rule the natives, and it was used by some to justify clearly anti-government or illegal practices like tyrannicide.

Eventually, the Spanish crown came to see these nonconformist ethics as a threat. In the 1750s, Spain and Portugal negotiated a treaty expelling the reducciones from Río de la Plata; Jesuits and Guaranís combined forces in protest, but were defeated by a joint Iberian force. In 1767 the Jesuits themselves were expelled from Argentina, an act Spain justified by exaggerating the number of probabilists who were “laxists”—the extreme of probabilism, in which nearly anything goes. Portugal was only too willing to help; its minister Marqués de Pombal published several notes meant to discredit the Jesuits, so that his country would have less resistance for its own South American conquests.

Multiplying truths

Pascal accuses the Jesuits of using complicated arguments to further their own worldly ambitions, rather than purely loving God; their flexible ideas “merely serve to betray, by their contrariety, the duplicity of your hearts… ‘Vae duplici corde, et ingredienti duabus viis! Woe be to the double hearts, and the sinner that goeth two ways!’” But Pascal himself drew on similar resources in his own ‘Pensées’, in his famous wager with God. Moral theories based on uncertainty, chance, double possibility, and probability, were particularly frequent and rich during this time—partly due to the influence of the Enlightenment, with its skepticism, unsettling scientific advances, stirrings of secularism, and questioning of moral certainties.

The probablism and religious syncretism of the Argentine reductions might thus be worth turning to once again, as one possible response to still-existing problems. As one Jesuit priest in Argentina wrote, quoting Loyola: “The same illness cannot be treated invariably in all cases in the same way; one must rather consider the nature of the patient.”

A man was charged today in Bogotá with the murder of two priests, who had paid him $15 million Colombian pesos in a ‘suicide pact’.

It was originally thought that the priests were murdered in an attempted robbery.

A court ruled that Rafael Reátiga, 36, and Richard Píffano, 37, paid Isidro ‘Gallero’ Castoblanco US$ 8,500 to kill them on 26^th January 2010.

“Two Catholic priests hired a band of assassins for the murder when they learned that at least one of them had AIDS,” said the Attorney General.

Days before his death, Reátiga asked his parishioners to pray for him and spoke of death. From the autopsy, it was discovered he had AIDS.

Reátiga and Píffano hired four men from a gang, of which only two are detained. Castoblanco accepted the charge of murder, meaning he is liable to serve between 16-60 years in prison. Gildardo Peñante, the other alleged assassin remanded in custody, denies his charges. Both men have been previously linked to drug trafficking, money counterfeiting, and theft.

The two priests had previously tried to commit suicide by jumping off a canyon, but were unable to commit suicide as security fences were in place. After, they approached a local gang arranging exactly how and when they would be assassinated, paying a high sum.

It was initially believed that the priests were killed in a failed attempt to steal their car.

There have been an increasing number of priests being murdered in Colombia. In 2011 alone, six priests were murdered, and another priest’s body was found in the jungle, supposedly murdered in 2006, by members of the FARC.

As part of The Indy’s on-going villas series, we revisit Laura Mojonnier article on ‘curas villeros’ – priests who have been working out of the capital’s shantytowns for 40 years.

During my first trip to the villas of Buenos Aires, I felt as if I were in another city altogether, if not another country. These overcrowded, ramshackle settlements on the outskirts of the city are not the expat’s Buenos Aires, a city defined by French-influenced architecture, restaurants with two-hour waits, and overpriced month-to-month apartments.

This is the part of Buenos Aires in which Argentina’s poverty is tangible – from the rocky, unpaved mud roads, to flimsy buildings constructed from cinderblocks and scraps, to the depth of the stares that one receives as a tall, blonde white woman walking through the streets with the local Parish priest.

Padre Carrozza walks through villa 31 (photo/Julián Bongiovanni)

While it can be easy to forget about – or never even know about – the villas while living in the centre of Buenos Aires, there is a group of dedicated Catholic priests who have made serving these marginalised neighbourhoods  their life’s work. Known as the curas villeros, these clerics have lived and worked in the villas for the past 40 years, becoming de facto community organisers, social workers, and authority figures in the barrios that so many have left behind.

The Situation Today

Today, there are about 20 priests living in the villas, located in the south and southwest of the city. In addition to standard priestly duties like conducting mass, hearing confession, and overseeing funerals, these priests engage in a host of community-building activities, from organising day care services to providing help for paco addicts to offering computer classes.

According to Father Martín de Chiara, who lives and works in Concepción Inmaculada in Barrio Ramon Carrillo, the goal of the priests is to help the villa residents find agency and a sense of meaning in their own lives, despite the obstacles they face.

“We want to support them to study, to have dreams and to realise them, to develop as people, to find meaning in life, to find their path and follow it and be happy,” he said. “We work a lot in prevention of drugs and delinquency, we help adolescents and young people find meaning in their lives so that they don’t turn to drugs or delinquency to escape…Our work is not just religious, it’s also human and social promotion.”

The parishes in the villas become more than a place to worship the Christian god – they are a place to get a home-cooked meal, to learn a trade, or to commiserate with others whose families have been touched by drug addiction.

The Church has also become a place of celebration. De Chiara’s parish, for instance, held a massive party for el Día del Niño in August, with more than 900 neighbourhood children in attendance.

The Dia del Niño party at Father Martín de Chiara's (pictured) parish (photo/Jessie Akin)

In Bajo Flores, the church grounds of Santa Maria Madre del Pueblo  Parish function like a fully-fledged community centre. Services include a daycare centre for 72 children; classes that teach computer skills, carpentry, painting, electricity, welding, and sewing; soccer and hockey clubs; a youth band; and a support group for relatives of paco addicts.

With over 40,000 residents in Bajo Flores, there is a lot of need. There are two other chapels in the villa in addition to Santa Maria, and the curas villeros are currently looking to buy another building to expand their activities. They want to increase class offerings and start a live-in care and rehabilitation facility for recovering addicts. (Currently, those looking to end their dependency can come to the Church for breakfast and lunch, a place to shower, a fresh pair of clothes, and to speak to someone to help them enter a local treatment facility).

“Most of the people are looking for a better life,” said Father Gustavo Carrara, one of three priests from Santa Maria. “The difficulty is that they have a lot fewer opportunities.”

In Search of a Better Life

The majority of villa residents are new arrivals to Buenos Aires. They come looking for work from the more impoverished interior of the country or from neighbouring countries like Bolivia and Paraguay. Those who come from abroad are often in search of healthcare: they have a sick family member whose expensive treatment they cannot afford back home. So they come to Argentina to take advantage of the free public system.

But then they often find themselves in financial circumstances that are only marginally better than back home. They commute to the city centre to work in construction and housekeeping, earning just enough to put food on the table. Some cannot find work at all.

Despite dire economic circumstances, Father José María Di Paola, believes that other Argentines could learn from villa residents.

“We believe that the villas have a lot to teach the rest of the city,” he said. “Our job is not to change this fact, but [also] to learn what they have to teach us.”

Known as Padre Pepe, Di Paola has become the leader of this generation of curas villeros, rising to prominence in Argentina after holding a press conference in 2009 after he received an in-person death threat while walking through his villa in Barracas.

Padre Pepe (centre) and Cardinal Bergoglio in Barracas (photo/Julián Bongiovanni)

During her time in the villas, author and journalist Silvina Premat, whose book on these priests – ‘Curas Villeros: de Mugica al Padre Pepe, Historias de Lucha y Esperanza’  – was published this year, said she witnessed a profound sense of community and an application of Christian values that is less prevalent in more affluent neighbourhoods.

“They maintain the values and the experience of faith that has an influence on their daily lives,” she said. “They help their neighbours who are homeless, by giving them food, letting them use the bathroom. This is a solidarity that is lost in the center of the city. Could you imagine letting a homeless man in to use your bathroom?”

Carrara agreed. “It’s a more popular culture, that has great cultural wealth,” he said. “I learned a lot of the people’s faith, of a grand religiosity. Its heart is more religious.”

Perhaps it is this popular religiosity that allows the priests to gain the respect of the villa residents so quickly, despite the recent secularlisation of Latin America as a whole, and Argentina in particular. Where the state has failed them and material wealth has eluded them, the Church has always been there.

“The presence of the state is not there,” Premat said of the villas. “The only people who have an authority are the priests. But they have a religious authority, not a political one. They are known in the streets as “Padre”, not their proper names. That is their identity.”

The Legacy of Mugica

The Catholic Church first made its mark in the villas of Buenos Aires in 1960s, when a group of priests who called themselves Los Sacerdotes para El Tercer Mundo  (Priests for the Third World) moved into the impoverished neighbourhoods with an explicit commitment to social justice and political change. The now-legendary Father Carlos Mugica emerged as the movement’s leader, leading the charge for the government to establish the most basic living conditions in the villas, like proper sanitation, potable water, electricity, and gas.

A man holds up a picture of Father Mugica (photo/Julián Bongiovanni)

The tercermundistas were inheritors of liberation theology, a political-religious movement that spread through Latin America in the 1960s. In this time, many Catholic priests saw their role as relieving the poor from their suffering, and addressing the systemic political reasons that such profound inequalities existed across the continent. Mugica himself was a committed Peronist and socialist, calling Marx, Che Guevara, and Freud “grand profits of the Church in our time”.

“They are men that concerned themselves with or are concerned by mankind and by the human condition,” Mugica said. “Marx said that religion is the opiate of the masses. Marx probably would not feel this way if he had known people like Torres, Helder Cámara or Pope John XXIII.”

But the mission of this first wave of curas villeros received a major blow when Mugica was assassinated in 1974, most likely by the Triple A, a covert government-backed paramilitary organisation.

The ensuing military dictatorship along with the ascendancy to the papacy of the neo-conservative John Paul II in 1978 forced the tercermundistas to recede into the background along with their radical ideas.

But a smaller, quieter group of priests carried on with the work, rebuilding a sense of order and community in these neighbourhoods  that had nearly been destroyed by the military regime as they tried to eradicate the villas.

The curas villeros were given an injection of support with the ascendency of Cardenal Jorge Bergoglio in 1998. Bergoglio vastly expanded the corps, arranged for the priest to live in pairs or small groups instead of alone in the villas, and encouraged the development of a support network in the form of monthly meetings and increased cash for projects.

“Without the help of the bishops and the priests from other neighbourhoods, our work would not be possible,” Carrara said. “There is not a good Church and a bad church.”

Indeed, the international Catholic Church as a whole appears to be more supportive of their work as a whole. In June, Di Paoloa – or Padre Pepe – was one of four men chosen from around the world to speak about contemporary issues facing priests at a Vatican conference in front of Pope Benedict XVI.

One major difference between the two generations of curas villeros is the lack of involvement in politics of today’s priests, perhaps making the contemporary movement more palatable to Church leaders.

De Chiara attributes this largely to the changing times – the 1970s were simply a highly politicized epoch in Argentina.

“I do not identify with a party on the left or the right, I identify with the mission of Christ,” he said. “I believe that Jesus chose the poorest, and I try to do the same.”

Despite the political neutrality, there are more continuities than discontinuities between the two groups.

“Our roots are in the first groups who went into the villas,” said Di Paola. “We continue working in the same places, but with different challenges. For example, in Mugica’s era, there wasn’t paco. It’s the same spirit, the same strength, but the challenges are different.”

Mugica remains a major inspirational figure. His picture is emblazoned on Church relics like the Communion chalice and framed on small monument in the corner of the Santa Maria chapel to fallen curas villeros, including Rodolfo Ricciardelli, Jorge Goñi, and Daniel de la Sierra.

The Priests have not totally given up on an increased government presence within the villas. They routinely petition for more schools and health centres to accommodate the swelling population, for example.

But De Chiara said that today’s priests are careful to recognise the limits of their role.

“The Church can support a transformation, but that is not our job,” he said. “Our job is to support the people. But to create a transformation, that is the job of the government.”