nuns have themselves been the victims of murderous repression-2 years ago, four U.S. churchwomen: Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke, Ita Ford, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, and lay missionary Jean Donovan were brutally murdered by Salvadoran soldiers. Over 1 year ago when the then-President Duarte appeared before the Foreign Affairs Committee, I asked him about the status of the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for the murders. To this day there has been no investigation of the high-level officers who may have ordered their murders, and no prosecution or conviction of the soldiers who actually carried out those orders. The tragic assassination of Archbishop Romero illustrates the problems of the church vividly.

In nearby Guatemala, two American priests were assassinated: Father Stanley Rother in August 1981 and Brother James Miller in February 1982. Both of these men worked with indigenous communities in rural Guatemala, and both were gunned down by "death squads." A Mennonite missionary, John Troyer, was also killed by unidentified gunmen. Eight Guatemalan priests and dozens of Catholic catechists were victims of government violence last year. The Catholic Church has experienced similar repression in Chile and Brazil. In these countries, the church has emerged as an advocate for the poor, the oppressed, and the tortured.

In Nicaragua, church activities were restricted under the Somoza dictatorship, and priests and nuns were persecuted. I am concerned that church-state relations continue to be tense under the Sandinista government. Prominent clerics have been attacked, the church' access to the media is restricted, and there is an increasing tendency to substitute mob rule for dialog and discourse. And the Moravian Church, an important advocate for the Miskito Indians who have been subject to relocation by the Nicaraguan authorities, is under increasing pressure.

Because of our close proximity to our Latin American neighbors, relations between U.S. church groups and Catholic and Protestant churchworkers in Latin America have been particularly close. We are honored to have with us today several distinguished representatives of the U.S. church community who have close ties with their Latin American coreligionists.

Mr. Gejdenson, would you please assume the chairmanship?
Mr. GEJDENSON. Father Hehir, you may proceed.

STATEMENT OF REV. J. BRYAN HEHIR, OFFICE OF INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE AND PEACE, U.S. CATHOLIC CONFERENCE Reverend HEHIR. I testify today on behalf of the U.S. Catholic Conference, the public policy agency of the Catholic bishops of the United States. I am accompanied by Thomas Quigley, adviser for Latin American Affairs at the USCC. I want to express our appreciation not only for the opportunity to testify again in this important series on religious persecution as a violation of human rights but appreciation as well for the signal importance of this subcommittee.

Furthermore, let me express my appreciation, after 10 years of experience working with this committee, for the work it has done. Cardinal Dearden of Detroit, representing the Catholic bishops tes

tified at the first of the hearings of Congressman Fraser, and we have found this subcommittee an enormously valuable voice for human rights in international affairs, and we are very grateful for the opportunity to be able to come before it again and again on a variety of issues, from Eastern Europe through East Asia, Latin America, and the functional role of human rights in U.S. foreign policy.

Mr. Chairman, in the general hearings of this subcommittee, in defining the right of religious liberty I appeared at the first hearing, and I tried at that time to indicate something that will be important to my remarks this afternoon; and that is, the way the right of religious freedom is defined within the Catholic church. Religious freedom is not understood simply as a personal right but it is also a social and corporate right of religious organizations. Religious freedom is not exhausted by the right to worship. It also includes the right of the church to function in a social way, and particularly the right of the church to announce the gospel in support

Religious freedom is connected integrally with a whole range of human rights. The right of religious freedom is the right to speak on a whole range of human rights. In Latin America today the right of religious freedom as it affects the Catholic church is not principally the question of whether the Catholic church can worship in Latin America. In some other places in the world that is the principal issue. In Latin America it is precisely the social expression of the right of religious freedom which is the key issue. The role of the church, in the words of the Vatican Council, is to stand as the sign and safeguard of the transcendent dignity of the human person. And that task of standing as the sign and safeguard of the transcendent dignity of the human person involves the church in a whole range of other human rights concerns, in exactly the same way that the church in Poland expressing the right of religious freedom must stand in the name of other human rights, like the right of working people to organize.

This testimony about the church in Latin America and human rights is held on a symbolically important day. Tomorrow we commemorate in the church the death of four American missionaries in El Salvador. In a certain sense this testimony can be offered as a tribute to their lives and the lives of other Catholic missionaries in Latin America who daily serve the gospel by serving the poor, and who daily risk their lives in many instances precisely because of their religious conviction and their service to the poor.

In the universal church, the church's teaching on religious freedom and human rights is based in a conviction about the dignity of the human person, the person who is the expression of the image of God. In the universal church that teaching on human_rights, that Biblical teaching, is elaborated from Pius XII to John Paul II. There is hardly any theme in Catholic theology that has received more attention from the papacy since Pius XII than the question of human rights, extending from the rights of the unborn through social and economic rights to the right to live in human decency in any society under any government.

Very explicitly the Vatican Council of the church said, in paragraph 76 of the "Constitution on the Modern World" that the task

of the church is to stand as a sign and safeguard of the dignity of the human person. To do that means one has to be involved in a whole range of human rights questions. There is no place in the world, there is no regional part of the universal church where the language of Vatican II has been taken more expressly and decisively into action than the church in Latin America. It has taken the task of standing as the sign and safeguard of the human person, and that has brought it directly into the whole range of social, political, and economic rights that affected the dignity of the person. From the time of the Medellin Conference in 1968 through the Puebla Conference in 1979, the church in Latin America has defined its role as an active role in the transformation of society. It has identified systemic bases for human rights violations, rooted in long-term injustice and human rights violations in the social and economic order.

The church has explicitly said that its work is to make a preferential option for the poor, to stand for those who have no voice. And so the life of the church in the last 15 years in Latin America has been a dramatic story, where the life of the church, the right of religious liberty and protection and promotion of human dignity and other human rights are integrally entwined.

In our testimony we have looked at three cases that are designed to span geographically the sections of Latin America and to span chronologically the last 15 years. We have looked at the church in Brazil, the church in Chile, and the church in Central America. In those three cases we draw three points.

First, the church has been the voice of those who have no voice. That is where it has meant to make a preferential option for the poor, that the church has spoken for those who cannot speak in social and political orders because they simply do not have institutional representation in a way that allows effective protection of human rights. The church has continuously expressed itself in support of them.

Second, the church has suffered, does suffer direct, if at times selective, persecution precisely because of its defense of human rights. The Latin American church lists martyrs in the precise definition of that term over the past 15 years.

Third, we want to stress that outside actors like the policy of the U.S. Government, like the activity of the church in the United States, can be helpful in ameliorating the human rights situation in Latin America and, therefore, stand in support of the church's exercise of religious freedom and ministry thereof.

The Brazilian case, it was the first church to encounter the emergence in the early sixties of the authoritarian military governments that swept across Latin America from the early sixties through the midseventies.

In Latin America those kinds of governments are called governments of the national security state. The Brazilian church was among the first to tie directly the protection and promotion of human rights to the ministry of the church. Today, questions of human rights suppression are less visible in Brazil than they were in the seventies, but they are still present and the Brazilian church continues to press them.

In Chile from 1973 to 1982, the church became the most visible church in Latin America in support of human rights. Through the Committee of Peace and the Vicariate of Solidarity, the church became not only protector of the civil and political rights of people, but also the protector of the social and economic rights of the person.

Central America is a case that is more recent. It is in the late seventies and the early eighties that the Central American case has become visible. We testified before this subcommittee in 1977 about religious persecution of the church in El Salvador because the church at that time had already become a voice for the voiceless and had come under attack.

We have laid out these cases in some detail. I won't take the time of the subcommittee to describe them. Let me move to the question of the impact of outside actors on a human rights situation; namely, the impact of the U.S. Government and other groups in the United States regarding questions of human rights and religious freedom in Latin America.

Our conviction that the task of this subcommittee; namely the support of the human rights factor in American foreign policy, is enormously important. Our experience in dealing with the church in Latin America, and we have dealt with it in almost every country of Latin America, is that when the human rights factor is raised in American foreign policy it is enormously effective, precisely for those people within those Latin American countries speaking for human rights.

The Cardinal Archbishop of Sao Paulo, Brazil, perhaps today the most visible human rights spokesman in Latin America, came to Washington 2 months ago and said directly that the emphasis given to human rights in foreign policy provides breathing space for people in Latin America, and when that emphasis is subordinated, is diminished or dissolved by distinctions that seem not to matter in Latin America, academic distinctions at times, then the space to live and work is reduced.

We have some policy recommendations flowing from the three cases of human rights violations and religious freedom. The Brazilian church sees religious freedom as at the heart of the human rights question. It extends its vision of religious rights to other questions of human rights. We feel that the defense of workers, the defense of Indian rights and the defense of land rights in Brazil are all crucial questions that the church is directly involved in.

The church is under attack for being involved in those three things. We think a role of quiet diplomacy between the United States and Brazil could be helpful in all three cases.

Regarding Chile, you will find in the testimony the report of July 1982 of the Vicariate of Solidarity, the archbishop's human rights agency in Chile, about the present situation. In light of that, those six points that are listed on pages 12 and 13 of the report, we wish those things be considered when the question of certification of Chile arises.

There is presently a debate about whether certification will in fact enhance the situation. All the evidence we know of says that certification at this time of aid to Chile will send the wrong signal on human rights. The church, in the exercise of religious liberty

standing for human rights, I think, would not find helpful at this time that kind of certification for the country.

Regarding Central America, obviously the church's role in human rights and its expression of religious liberty as a social right has taken it in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, into a very public role.

Finally, our recommendations on all three countries are what they have been since 1981 when the Bishops Conference of the United States adopted its statement on Central America. In El Salvador we think the primary imperative of the moment is to foster that kind of political dialog which will lead to the protection of human rights, including religious freedom for all sectors of the population by ending the civil war.

In Guatemala we continue on the basis of human rights criteria and what we have heard from the church there to oppose any military assistance to Guatemala. In Guatemala, two more Americans were killed as missionaries within the past 2 years, once again not for praying but for their role in working with people. So we cannot disassociate religious freedom from that other role of the protection of the larger range of human rights.

In Nicaragua we have been concerned about human rights violations. The president of our conference in September expressed his concern about things that were happening in terms of the nonpublication for a period of time of the Papal letter in Nicaragua, of the access of the church to the media, and particularly the way in which one particular incident of the archbishop's secretary was handled in the press. We protested that.

At the same time we also feel that the kind of external action that confronts Nicaragua with almost a warfare situation, the kind of rhetoric raised and the threats that seem to be implicit against Nicaragua simply tighten the situation internally and make protection of human rights more difficult.

We feel particularly concerned as the church in the United States to address U.S. policy as it touches Nicaragua, even though we will continue to watch the human rights questions within Nicaragua.

In all three of these cases, I am saying that religious freedom is a social right; that the church's exercise of that social right takes it into the human rights arena in a whole series of areas and that U.S. action affects religious freedom and human rights in each of the countries. I appreciate the opportunity I have been given to say that.

[Rev. Hehir's prepared statement follows:]