Mario Enrique Ríos Montt,
C.M. (born March 17, 1932 in
Huehuetenango
Huehuetenango () is a city and municipality in the highlands of western Guatemala. It is also the capital of the department of Huehuetenango. The city is situated from Guatemala City, and is the last departmental capital on the Pan-American Highw ...
, Guatemala) is an emeritus auxiliary bishop of the
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Guatemala
The Archdiocese of Santiago de Guatemala is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or archdiocese of the Catholic Church in Guatemala.[Efraín Ríos Montt
José Efraín Ríos Montt (; 16 June 1926 – 1 April 2018) was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who served as ''de facto'' President of Guatemala in 1982–83. His brief tenure as chief executive was one of the bloodiest periods i ...]
, a dictator accused of genocide in Guatemala during the period when he was in power from March 1982 to August 1983.
Biography
Early years and political views
Mario Montt was born in Huehuetenango on 17 March 1932, in a large family of 13 children of a ruined rural merchant. Biographers of the family Rios Montt contrasted Mario Enrique to his elder brother José Efraín, saying that Efraín liked
map
A map is a symbolic depiction emphasizing relationships between elements of some space, such as objects, regions, or themes.
Many maps are static, fixed to paper or some other durable medium, while others are dynamic or interactive. Although ...
s and military parades; Mario every morning went to
Mass
Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...
and prayed after school with the priests.
He entered in the
Pauline Fathers
The Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit ( lat, Ordo Fratrum Sancti Pauli Primi Eremitæ; abbreviated OSPPE), commonly called the Pauline Fathers, is a monastic order of the Roman Catholic Church founded in Hungary during the 13th century.
Thi ...
and was ordained priest on 12 July 1959. On 13 July 1974 Montt was appointed Titular Bishop, titular bishop of Tiguala and prelate of Roman Catholic Diocese of Escuintla, Escuintla by Pope Paul VI and was ordained bishop on 27 September of the same year by Apostolic nuncio um Guatemala, Archbishop Emanuele Gerada. His co-consecrators were the Bishop of Roman Catholic Diocese of San Miguel (El Salvador), San Miguel, José Eduardo Alvarez Ramírez, CM, and Victor Hugo Martínez Contreras, Auxiliary Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Huehuetenango, Huehuetenango.
Montt adopted the Left-wing politics, left-oriented liberation theology (which opposed him to his elder brother Efraín who converted himself to evangelicalism from Catholicism). He still supported anti-government political speeches of the Guatemalan Catholic Church - protests against repression, calls for active social policies and the fight against poverty.
Political confrontation with his brother
On March 23, 1982 as a result of a military coup to power in Guatemala came the military junta, led by
Efraín Ríos Montt
José Efraín Ríos Montt (; 16 June 1926 – 1 April 2018) was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who served as ''de facto'' President of Guatemala in 1982–83. His brief tenure as chief executive was one of the bloodiest periods i ...
, who took office as President of Guatemala, president. The regime of Far-right politics, ultra-right dictatorship was established and a Guatemalan Civil War, civil war and political repression have reached unprecedented scale. At the same time, the ruling group was distinguished by a fanatical Protestant evangelism and was suspicious of the Catholic population.
Under the Riosmontist regime, Mario Rios Montt publicly opposed the repressive policies of his elder brother. On the advice of the head of state, the titular bishop had to leave the country temporarily and move to Italy.
Bishop and human rights
After the change of power in August 1983, Montt returned to Guatemala and on March 3, 1984 resigned as prelate of Escuintla.
On 24 January 1987 he was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Guatemala and since 1998 he is the Vicar of Pastoral of the same.
On 26 April 1998 Bishop Juan Gerardi was assassinated, two days after publishing his report Guatemalan genocide, Guatemala: Never Again, where he presented evidence forty years of repression in that country: 200,000 Indians killed and one million exiled. Nine out of ten victims were unarmed, mostly indigenous, civilians. More than 90% of the crimes had been the responsibility of the Guatemalan State. Mario Enrique Ríos Montt took over in this year his duties in the Office of Human Rights of the Archdiocese of Guatemala (ODHA) and became an influential and powerful opponent of his brother.
Montt criticized the former military regimes for brutality and civil governments for corruption.
In the socio-political aspect, Mario Enrique Rios Montt was the opponent of Jose Efraín Rios Montt. However, the brothers meet at family celebrations and communicate in a friendly manner, trying to avoid discussing politics.
Retirement
On October 2, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI accepted his resignation for reasons of age and on July 26, 2011 Montt was appointed apostolic administrator of the Apostolic Vicariate of Izabal, Vicariate of Izabal, where he replaced Bishop Gabriel Peñate Rodríguez till 9 February 2013.
References
External links
Catholic Hierarchy website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rios Montt, Mario Enrique
Living people
1932 births
20th-century Roman Catholic bishops in Guatemala
21st-century Roman Catholic bishops in Guatemala
20th-century Roman Catholic titular bishops
Guatemalan human rights activists
Vincentian bishops
People from Huehuetenango Department
Liberation theologians
Roman Catholic bishops of Escuintla