Arturo Rivera y Damas (September 30, 1923 – November 26, 1994) was the ninth
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution.
In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is ca ...
and fifth
Archbishop
In Christian denominations, an archbishop is a bishop of higher rank or office. In most cases, such as the Catholic Church, there are many archbishops who either have jurisdiction over an ecclesiastical province in addition to their own archdi ...
of
San Salvador
San Salvador (; ) is the capital and the largest city of El Salvador and its eponymous department. It is the country's political, cultural, educational and financial center. The Metropolitan Area of San Salvador, which comprises the capital i ...
,
El Salvador
El Salvador (; , meaning " The Saviour"), officially the Republic of El Salvador ( es, República de El Salvador), is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south b ...
. Msgr. Rivera's term as archbishop (1983–1994) coincided with the
Salvadoran Civil War
The Salvadoran Civil War ( es, guerra civil de El Salvador) was a twelve year period of civil war in El Salvador that was fought between the government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition or ...
. He was the immediate successor of Archbishop
Óscar Romero
Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez (15 August 1917 – 24 March 1980) was a prelate of the Catholic Church in El Salvador. He served as Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of San Salvador, the Titular Bishop of Tambeae, as Bishop of Santiago d ...
. During Romero's archbishopric (1977–1980), Rivera was Romero's key ally. He had been the auxiliary of Romero's long-reigning predecessor,
Luis Chávez y González
Luis Chávez y González (1901 – 1987) was the seventh Bishop and third Archbishop of San Salvador, El Salvador, and immediate predecessor of Archbishop Óscar Romero. Unlike Romero, who served for three years before being assassinated in ...
(1938–1977).
He was also a friend of
Mother Teresa
Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu, MC (; 26 August 1910 – 5 September 1997), better known as Mother Teresa ( sq, Nënë Tereza), was an Indian-Albanian Catholic nun who, in 1950, founded the Missionaries of Charity. Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu () was bo ...
, who stayed at his family home on her visit to El Salvador
Biography
Rivera was born in
San Esteban Catarina, El Salvador, on September 30, 1923.
[Archbishop_Arturo_Rivera_Damas_[Catholic-Hierarchy]](_blank)
/ref>__He_was_ordained_a_Priest_of_the_order_of_Salesians_of_Don_Bosco.html" ;"title="atholic-Hierarchy]">Archbishop Arturo Rivera Damas [Catholic-Hierarchy]
/ref> He was ordained a Priest of the order of Salesians of Don Bosco">atholic-Hierarchy]">Archbishop Arturo Rivera Damas [Catholic-Hierarchy]
/ref> He was ordained a Priest of the order of Salesians of Don Bosco on September 19, 1953. "I joined the Salesians", Rivera told the National Catholic Reporter, "because I wanted to work with the poor, and back then they were the ones who were
doing that."
He was appointed to his first tour as Auxiliary Bishop of San Salvador on July 30, 1960. At the same time, he was appointed Titular Bishop of Legia. In light of the social foment that began in the archdiocese in the 1970s, Rivera supported the controversial pastoral work undertaken by Father Rutilio Grande
Rutilio Grande García, SJ (5 July 1928 in El Paisnal – 12 March 1977 in Aguilares) was a Jesuit priest in El Salvador. He was assassinated in 1977, along with two other Salvadorans. He was the first priest assassinated before the Salvad ...
in the rural outskirts of San Salvador. According to Jesuit academic Rodolfo Cardenal, Rivera "supported the pastoral and theological innovations" being carried out by the Jesuits
The Society of Jesus ( la, Societas Iesu; abbreviation: SJ), also known as the Jesuits (; la, Iesuitæ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
. However, the Church hierarchy apparently disapproved because, when Archbishop Chávez retired in 1977, they overlooked Rivera, Chávez' auxiliary, and selected the more conservative Óscar Romero as Archbishop of San Salvador, to the liberals' dismay. By that time, Rivera had been tarred as a "red bishop" because of his activism.
In September 1977, Rivera was appointed Bishop of Santiago de María—filling Óscar Romero's old post. During Romero's stormy tenure as archbishop, Rivera was often Romero's lone ally in the Salvadoran Bishops' Conference, which became divided over Romero's leadership. The bishops were split between a conservative sector, allegedly aligned to traditional institutions of power in Salvadoran society, and progressive groups influenced by the reformist doctrines of the Second Vatican Council
The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly known as the , or , was the 21st Catholic ecumenical councils, ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church. The council met in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome for four periods (or sessions) ...
and the Medellín Bishops Conference of 1968. Msgr. Rivera attended both influential synods.[NCR, supra](_blank)
/ref>
After Romero's assassination on March 24, 1980, Rivera was named apostolic administrator
An Apostolic administration in the Catholic Church is administrated by a prelate appointed by the pope to serve as the ordinary for a specific area. Either the area is not yet a diocese (a stable 'pre-diocesan', usually missionary apostolic admi ...
of the archdiocese, but not archbishop—in what his friends saw as one more Vatican slight—until February 1983.[Conferencia Episcopal de El Salvador - Reseña Histórica de la Conferencia Episcopal de El Salvador](_blank)
Rivera's tenure was a delicate time, during which he sought to avoid Romero's fate, while still denouncing injustices and crimes of war in emphatic terms. The Church under Rivera played a role as monitor of the peace process alongside the United Nations.[12/12/94 Independent obit, Supra](_blank)
/ref> In 1989, Archbishop Rivera presided over one of the darkest moments in the Civil War period, when the Jesuit staff of the Central American University of San Salvador Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas"
José Simeón Cañas Central American University ( es, Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas"), also known as UCA El Salvador, is a private university with nonprofit purposes in San Salvador, El Salvador, run by the Society of Je ...
were massacred in assassinations that harkened back to murders at the inception of the war, such as the Romero assassination. Rivera reportedly told Alfredo Cristiani
Alfredo Félix Cristiani Burkard (born 22 November 1947) is a Salvadoran politician who was President of El Salvador from 1989 to 1994.
Life and career
Born into a wealthy family in San Salvador, his father Felix Cristiani was an Italian immig ...
, the President of El Salvador to post soldiers outside his offices. "Don't get me wrong", Rivera then told the president. "It's not that I trust the soldiers. But if I'm killed, I want it clear who did it."
The UCA massacre put pressure on the government to end the war and sign a peace deal. Rivera moderated the negotiations of the final Peace Accords signed between the FMLN and the Salvadoran government in 1992. In the final years of his ministry, Rivera eagerly instituted a canonization
Canonization is the declaration of a deceased person as an officially recognized saint, specifically, the official act of a Christian communion declaring a person worthy of public veneration and entering their name in the canon catalogue of ...
process for his martyred predecessor.
Rivera died on November 26, 1994. During a 1996 visit to the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Holy Savior (''Catedral Metropolitana de San Salvador'') where Rivera and his predecessors are buried, Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...
said that Rivera "entered into eternity after having seen the peace, for which he and the other bishops of El Salvador had worked tirelessly, burst over the horizon."
Footnotes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rivera Y Damas, Arturo
1923 births
1994 deaths
People from San Vicente Department
Roman Catholic archbishops of San Salvador
Salesian bishops
Participants in the Second Vatican Council
20th-century Roman Catholic archbishops in El Salvador
People of the Salvadoran Civil War
Roman Catholic bishops of Santiago de María