In a poor, war-torn country where almost everyone is devoutly Roman Catholic, one popular church leader is a soft-spoken Lutheran. Medardo Gomez, El Salvador's first and only Lutheran bishop, has won the hearts of the Salvadoran people -- and the hatred of the Salvadoran government -- for his commitment to the very poorest of his country: refugees and the displaced.
At the request of the refugees, Bishop Gomez has become a leader of the repopulation movement in El Salvador. Last year he personally accompanied 70 families from the Lutheran refugee camp he directs back to their bombed-out homes, and he helped coordinate the massive repatriation of some 4,500 Salvadorans from the Mesa Grande refugee camp in Honduras. Now he works with these simple peasants as they try to rebuild their homes and their lives under constant threat of attack and harassment from the Salvadoran military.
For his work, Bishop Gomez has been abducted, imprisoned, and tortured by the Salvadoran secret police, and he has received telephoned death threats from unknown sources. But he has chosen to stay in El Salvador and to continue his work, strengthened by his knowledge that "that which is of God is impossible to destroy," and inspired by his belief that "evil does not win in the end."
Bishop Gomez was interviewed through an interpreter by Vicki Kemper in Washington, D.C.
-- The Editors
Vicki Kemper: Tell me about your spiritual journey. How did you get involved in working with Salvadoran refugees?
Bishop Medardo Gomez: I'm from the eastern zone of El Salvador. My mother is a primary education teacher, my father a mechanic. I have three brothers and sisters. Since I was very small I had the desire to become a pastor in the Roman Catholic Church. I studied in Catholic colleges, and I seriously considered becoming a priest. But the Roman Catholic Church then was very, very strict. When I made my request to become a priest, it was required that my parents had to have been married by the Catholic Church. But the reality was that my parents' had only been a civil marriage. When I asked them to do that, my father said that this didn't make sense. And so this removed the opportunity for me to become a priest.
When I was finishing my secondary education, one of my friends invited me to church, and ever since I arrived at that church I felt it was something that was calling me for the future.
After many months of being a member of the church, the pastor called me to talk with him. He said that he had observed me and asked if I was open to studying to become a pastor. I was really surprised. Somehow it seemed like he had known what my thinking was even though at that time I hadn't thought about becoming a pastor, and even though he didn't know that I had wanted to become a priest. He's the one who reawakened my desires. So I said yes.
I was only 18 years old when I went into Augsburg Lutheran Seminary in Mexico City in 1965. I studied in Mexico until 1970, when I married a Mexican woman who had graduated from the Baptist seminary. I was first assigned to work as a pastor in Guatemala. There we founded a congregation, and now it's one of the largest congregations in Guatemala.
After two years, I was transferred to San Salvador. There we initiated the Lutheran Resurrection Church in 1972, and after 15 years it's become a church that represents the service of Christ in favor of the people. With the brothers and sisters of this church, we have given ourselves to serve the people in the greatest need in our country.
We give this because, knowing the reality of our country, we have to make a decision: In whose favor are we going to work? Are we going to work in favor of the small number, the few who are powerful in the country, or are we going to work in favor of the immense majority of poor people in the country? Of five million people in the country, four-and-a-half million are poor. So we decided to work in favor of the people who are suffering the most.
We are very conscious that this decision is going to mean problems for us. We know that throughout the story of Christianity, there appears to be a law, one that prohibits the practice of the love of God. The law is the law of evil that persecutes the children of God, the ones who carry out good, the ones who dedicate their lives to the service of the poor, the "good Samaritans." Maybe this isn't a written law, but you can see the existence of this law in practice.
The reason for this is what the story of the Good Samaritan tells us. A man falls and is abandoned in the street, and, on seeing him, people pass by -- the teachers, the priests. But one person actually tries to help the person who has been abandoned, and what you conclude from the parable is that it's the person who pays attention to the one who has fallen and been abandoned in the street that receives the oppression of those who have actually maltreated the abandoned one.
This work we do is marvelous because at the very end you receive the satisfaction that it is God who has actually helped you and that Christ is the one who has been badly treated. This is the thinking that we went into our work with, and we knew for sure that we were going to have problems. But at the very same time, we knew it was a service to God, a meeting with God, and so this really filled us with great strength to choose to work for the brothers and sisters in greatest need.
The war in my country has caused the rise of people who are in even greater need. These are the displaced people. These are people who arrive from the areas of conflict, who have seen the bodies and the soldiers and police. They've seen them kill. They've seen their loved ones killed.
And these displaced people, because of fleeing, and looking for refuge, are afraid to look to the institutions of the government for help. The only institution that they look to for help is the church, because the church is the only place that is not going to put conditions on its help. Even if they were bad people, or evil people, if they were the worst of the world, we wouldn't allow them to perish.
But they're not bad, they're not evil. They are people of God. They're wonderful, good people. They're old people, they're suffering women, they're children. They have great love for their children, and they are children.
Upon offering them our services, they've given more to us, really, than we've given to them. We've learned with them that giving something in the name of God is very dynamic. It's so dynamic that we actually receive more than we give. This is what has happened to us as a church. With the little that we've done, we've received so much more, so much that the church in El Salvador has arrived to the point of having international recognition.
We haven't only risen in prestige on a national and international level but also in our spiritual life. It is the great faith of the brothers and sisters we serve that has inspired us. These brothers and sisters are the ones who have greater authority to speak of God, to speak of faith, to speak of trust in God, to speak of hope. I say that they have even greater authority because God is with them. They depend so much on God, and they call to God day and night.
They call to God for their needs, for their problems, for their suffering. Despite having absolutely nothing, when they have problems and necessities, the one who they go to is God. You really feel this dependence on God when you're with them. And for this reason, they teach others about faith. They teach others about spirituality. They teach me much more than I as a pastor could teach them in this sense.
What kind of work were you and your church doing with the poor that got you into trouble with the government? And could you talk about your experiences of being threatened and abducted; who did that and why?
Those who persecute us and want evil to come to us say that it's not for Christian reasons that they persecute us. But we can't lie about the history of Christianity. The work of God has always been attacked in Christian history and always interpreted in the wrong way.
It has always been the Christians who, because of their commitment of love, have been treated as subversives and confused with revolutionaries. It's true that they're revolutionaries, but not in the style of political revolutionaries. They're revolutionaries in the aspect of looking for a better life, looking for an atmosphere in which God reigns, where there is peace and justice.
When men from the death squads took me as a prisoner, one of their first words was that I was in their hands because they were an anti-communist body. They said that I had been taken because they knew I was a collaborator with subversives. And they suspected me and believed it because of the work that we carried out in favor of the people who are in greatest need, who suffer the most.
Their interpretation was that the displaced -- the older people, the women, and the children we serve -- are the masses of the guerrillas. It's possible that some of these children, for example, are children of guerrillas. We don't know, but even if we did, we wouldn't abandon them because they're children and it's not their fault. The authorities wouldn't only abandon them, they would also do evil to them.
It's been a tradition within Latin America that all of those who help the poor are accused of being communist in order to destroy the work of those who help the poor, especially the work that the church does. It's a work that tries to help people gain skills and overcome their conditions. For example, our church teaches people how to read and write. And we also conscienticize them so that they think about their own dignity and their rights and their needs. We do this so that the people will be able to unite and organize themselves in their own communities.
Clearly this bothers the people who have power because when the people are ignorant, they don't protest anything and they don't ask for anything. But when they know what their rights are, and when they know that they have dignity and equality with other persons, they begin to demand what they see as their rights. And this causes problems.
When you were kidnapped and tortured in 1983, did you think about stopping your work with the poor?
The logic of God is not the same as the logic of humans. And for this reason the ones who persecute us are mistaken because they work with their logic. They believe that by killing, they're going to be able to destroy the work of God. But what they don't know is that it makes the work even stronger. They believe that by criticizing and attacking the people, they're going to make them flee. But they don't know that that's the way to make a people even stronger. And that's what happened in my case.
I was already committed in favor of the poor when they started to persecute me. I was held in prison four days -- two days with the death squads and two days with the police. By being held prisoner I became very afraid that the church would be destroyed because the newspapers were saying that I helped the guerrillas.
The church, of course, has to take care that its work isn't in favor of anybody or anything, but that it's the work of God. Many people thought that they were going to leave the church. So when I got out of prison, I was sure I wasn't going to find anybody in the church.
But when I came out, my great surprise was that the church was more filled than ever. And since then it has continued growing and growing, so much that we aren't able to attend to all of the needs that we should.
As for me, instead of leaving or fleeing, I felt an even greater commitment to continue to be there with my brothers and sisters. There was a moment when I was being held by the death squads that I was sure my death was certain. But I prayed to God, and I promised that if God saved me I was not going to leave the country but instead would continue with an even greater commitment. I said I would completely give myself over because I knew that the rest of my life was given to me to serve God.
When I got out, I forgot the commitment. On the very first day after my release, people proposed to me that I leave the country. Friends here in the United States offered me work, others offered me work in Europe, and they even offered me scholarships to study. And I began to think about leaving.
But with this temptation I also then remembered the commitment I had made. The few days that had passed in the jail gave me greater strength and a greater commitment to God so that I could completely dedicate my life now to the service of the church.
I agree with you that there are some mysteries of Christianity, such as the fact that even when the church is persecuted it still grows. In your experience, the experience of the church in El Salvador, how do you explain this mystery?
This is what I mean when I say that God has a different logic. We can't really understand it because it's always contrary to our logic. For this reason, the people who are enemies of the work of God make a mistake. It's true that if the work were only human it would be destroyed and they'd be right. But that which is of God is impossible to destroy. This is a hope and consolation for all of us.
Many times when we are so afflicted, we are so worried. What worries us so much is what seems like the triumph of evil. It seems like God isn't listening to us. It seems like God has abandoned us because we suffer so much. But if we look at history, we see that at the very end evil does not win out. The struggle of good continues and goes on again.
When they tried to kill Jesus, he was a young boy. They killed so many children in order to detain the work of God, but they weren't able to detain that work. The child grew and got to the point of completing his mission.
Then they crucified him, and they thought that there everything would end. But, nevertheless, Jesus was resurrected. He was resurrected, as the Word says, in order to communicate the message of the Resurrection to us and to communicate the message of eternal life. And that means the will of God and all of the divine values are never going to die.
Can you speak about your work with refugees now?
In my preparation as a pastor, I never imagined that I'd be working with displaced people. There had not been any kind of pastoral ministry for the displaced.
As we began to work with the people, we thought that we were going to teach them. And we put ourselves in a position to direct their system of life for their community, and there were lots of problems. But we learned that they could carry out their own work. They could organize themselves, and they'd be able to plan their own lives.
When the displaced people took over their own situation, there were no longer major problems because they knew how to live. We learned that it's much better and more dignified not to get ourselves involved without them permitting that we get involved. And so the position of our church now is to accompany them and only to do what they wish us to do.
As for the refugees who wanted to repatriate from Mesa Grande refugee camp in Honduras, I had visited them on different occasions to see what their situation was. But in the spring of 1987, I received a letter inviting me to visit Mesa Grande in order to listen to their idea of repatriation. They wanted the church to accompany them. And so, responding to their request, we went and they asked us to help them. We saw that their desire was just and necessary, and it was within our vision of being of service.
We hope to help them with their most basic necessities for about a year. And that, too, was their decision. They believe that in a year they will be able to be self-sufficient.
What is the situation now that the refugees have returned from Mesa Grande? What are their lives like?
Their spirits are high and happy. They have a lot of work to do because they have to make their communities anew. Their homes were completely destroyed. But in the midst of this great work they have ahead of them, they demonstrate that they are really happy.
It was their feeling that it was better to be in their own land in spite of the fact that they would suffer from problems. They were very clever in having decided to return at this point in time because they are taking advantage of a moment when the government is putting out propaganda about democracy to show that they're in agreement with the return of the people.
In the beginning, the government was not in agreement with the refugees' return. They proposed that the refugees return in smaller groups and not all together. But the refugees said that they wanted to return together, and in one single day. So because of the pressure of the refugees themselves, it was impossible to destroy their plans. Even the U.N. High Commission on Refugees, which was very much in agreement with the government position, was actually obligated in the end to protect and offer all the help they could to the refugees.
Now what we worry about is their future. The government seems to be putting out a lot of propaganda about democracy, and we fear that this propaganda and the search for peace will be used in order to try to get international recognition. And after having gotten international prestige, the government won't put into practice what they made a commitment to. This is what really makes us afraid.
[Last December the Salvadoran military occupied the repopulated town of San Jose las Flores. The military abducted the village's school teacher and prevented food and other supplies from reaching the village. Other repopulated villages have also been subject to continual military harassment and denied access to food.]
One of the things President Reagan tells the people of the United States is that the situation in El Salvador is much better, that the death squads are no longer active, that the government is much better, that people are not being killed, and so we should keep giving money to the government of El Salvador. Do you agree with that?
Sometimes it's very difficult for people to believe us. Lots of times they prefer to believe the politicians. The word of President Reagan seems to have a lot of value for his people, and people believe him.
My response is to invite brothers and sisters from the United States to go to El Salvador -- to come to know our reality directly and see that the situation hasn't changed -- and not just to believe what we say.
The situation is worse, and most recently the violence has worsened. The death squads have returned. Now people who are assassinated appear in the public streets and in the roads.
Is it true that you have received death threats recently?
Yes, I have received death threats by telephone. They always carry out this kind of threat and it confuses me: If they really want to kill someone, why do they advertise it? At a certain point, you actually trust that they're not going to do anything because they advertise it.
But, nevertheless, the practice has demonstrated to us that this type of threat is not only theoretically a threat but it is something they are actually thinking about doing in reality. Recently they were also threatening Herbert Anaya, the president of the Non-Governmental Human Rights Commission of El Salvador. And they made it a reality.
I only have one more question. The situation in El Salvador has been very bad for a long time. Do you have hope that things will get better and, if so, where does that hope come from?
This is a virtue of a Christian -- that even though the conditions are very bad, we always have Christian hope. It's Christian inspiration that really feeds us. We don't lose our hope in spite of the fact that the logic of so many years of not seeing different conditions might make us forget hope. We try to get a hold of this hope in the different things that happen.
The hope in the change of the people of God is really a beginning. But we realize that peace doesn't come unless we actually work for it, and for this reason we are working and doing something in favor of the search for peace. But Christian hope tells us that whether it be sooner or later, we can be sure peace will come.
Vicki Kemper was news editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.
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