Luis Chávez y González
Encyclopedia
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 1980, Msgr. Chávez had an archbishopric that was long and low key. Chávez was Archbishop of San Salvador for 38 years (1938 - 1977), longer than any other Salvadoran bishop. Like his more famous successor, Msgr. Chávez is also a candidate for the sainthood. His beatification
process was started in June 2001.
Chávez was born on April 24, 1901 in El Rosario, El Salvador
in the Cuscatlán Department
. Chávez and Pío Romero Bosque
, a future president of El Salvador, were both students of a distinguished Salvadoran master, Néstor Salamanca, in Suchitoto
, where Chávez would spend his latter years. He was ordained a priest at the age of 23, on November 16, 1924. He was parish priest in Ilobasco
, San Juan Cojutepeque and the historic La Merced church in San Salvador. Fourteen years later, he was appointed Archbishop of San Salvador at the youthful age of 37. He was named on September 1, and ordained on December 12, 1938, and would reign until his resignation on February 3, 1977. Chávez was an influential bishop in the region, making pastoral travels to neighboring sees, such as Matagalpa, Nicaragua
, where he visited in 1942. That same year, Chávez organized a eucharistic congress to celebrate the first centennial of the San Salvador archdiocese. He also established a Central American Bishops' Conference. In 1945, Chávez authorized veneration of the Child Jesus of Bethlehem image that reportedly appeared at the beach in Acajutla
, in Sonsonate, El Salvador.
Msgr. Chávez had a conservative bent, inviting Opus Dei
to establish bases in El Salvador. He approved the creation of a cinematic censorship office in 1963. Chávez also signed a bishops' letter warning against the dangers of Communism
. But, Chávez was a prolific writer, and his 52 pastoral letters also included some that established a tradition of social justice in the archdiocese. In August 1966, he published an influential pastoral letter, "The responsibility of the layperson in the temporal order," which highlighted the Church's obligation to denounce injustice, the specific grievances of the Salvadoran people, and the attribution to those grievances to the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few.
As archbishop, Msgr. Chávez encouraged vocations, building the principal seminary in San Salvador, San José de la Montaña. He recruited Rutilio Grande
into the priesthood and supported Jose Inocencio Alas
who helped to introduce Liberation Theology to the country.
He was said to have been deeply influenced by the Second Vatican Council
, implementing its progressive reforms in pastoral work throughout his archdiocese. Chávez is said to have attended every session of the Council, and was a member of its Central Planning Commission. He established an institute to teach the Social Doctrine of the Church, and sent priests to study abroad. Some of these priests came from rural families, not the urban middle class, and could have been more sympathetic to the peasant poor. Msgr. Chávez encouraged peasant cooperatives as alternatives to agricultural sector expansion in the 1950s. He also sent priests to Canada to study the organization and function of peasants cooperatives. Similar communitarian activities were later advocated by the Salvadoran Christian Democratic Party
(Partido Democrata Cristiano or PDC). In 1970, Oscar Romero, Chávez' eventual successor, was named auxiliary bishop of San Salvador -- Chávez' second in command -- but Romero was said to be cool to Chávez' reformist agenda, and was transferred out of the archdiocese in 1974. Chávez' new auxiliary would be Msgr. Arturo Rivera y Damas
, who would later also be archbishop.
Msgr. Chávez maintained largely cordial relations with the government, as typified by his blessing the legislative palace in March 1973. Because of his long tenure, he had a hand in many institutions of Salvadoran Catholicism: he inaugurated the famous Savior of the World Monument at Plaza de Las Americas in western San Salvador ; he presided over the reconstruction of the San Salvador Cathedral
after the Old Cathedral burned in a fire in August 1951 , and he established a cult to the Virgin of Fatima in El Salvador .
Msgr. Chávez resigned as archbishop in 1977, the year he entered the mandatory retirement age for bishops, 75. Later that same year, his sister, Carmen Chávez de Hernández, died. After leaving the archdiocese, Msgr. Chávez volunteered to work as parish priest of Suchitoto
. Archbishop Romero told the story of the elderly Chávez volunteering for the job:
In May 1978, Msgr. Chávez' work was acknowledged by an act of the Salvadoran legislature, which awarded him a special citation. Msgr. Chávez died on March 27, 1987 as Archbishop Emeritus of San Salvador. In June 2001, the San Salvador archdiocese instituted a beatification process for Msgr. Chávez. It was spearheaded by the same cleric who headed the diocesan investigation of the canonization
cause for Archbishop Romero. In February 1996, Pope John Paul II
may have bolstered the prospects of Chávez' sainthood when he called the prelate a "model of virtues" when he visited the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Holy Savior (Catedral Metropolitana de San Salvador)
where Chávez is buried. He added, referring to Chávez' and his two successors, "I am sure that they intercede for the Church that they loved and served until the end of their days, and whom they leave a particularly eloquent message."
"Do you want to be a priest?" (to Rutilio Grande
, later an assassinated cleric).
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...
and third Archbishop
Archbishop
An archbishop is a bishop of higher rank, but not of higher sacramental order above that of the three orders of deacon, priest , and bishop...
of San Salvador
San Salvador
The city of San Salvador the capital and largest city of El Salvador, which has been designated a Gamma World City. Its complete name is La Ciudad de Gran San Salvador...
, El Salvador
El Salvador
El Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...
, and immediate predecessor of Archbishop Óscar Romero
Óscar Romero
Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez was a bishop of the Catholic Church in El Salvador. He became the fourth Archbishop of San Salvador, succeeding Luis Chávez. He was assassinated on 24 March 1980....
. Unlike Romero, who served for three years before being assassinated in 1980, Msgr. Chávez had an archbishopric that was long and low key. Chávez was Archbishop of San Salvador for 38 years (1938 - 1977), longer than any other Salvadoran bishop. Like his more famous successor, Msgr. Chávez is also a candidate for the sainthood. His beatification
Beatification
Beatification is a recognition accorded by the Catholic Church of a dead person's entrance into Heaven and capacity to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in his or her name . Beatification is the third of the four steps in the canonization process...
process was started in June 2001.
Chávez was born on April 24, 1901 in El Rosario, El Salvador
El Salvador
El Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...
in the Cuscatlán Department
Cuscatlán Department
Cuscatlán is a department of El Salvador, located in the center of the country. With a surface area of , it is El Salvador's smallest department. It is inhabited by over 200,000 people. Cuscatlán or Cuzcatlán was the name the original inhabitants of the Western part of the country gave to most of...
. Chávez and Pío Romero Bosque
Pío Romero Bosque
Pío Romero Bosque was President of El Salvador 1 March 1927 - 1 March 1931.He was one of the few if not the only president that found a balance in the government. This balance is often known as the "natural mix", a balance between concession and repression in a country...
, a future president of El Salvador, were both students of a distinguished Salvadoran master, Néstor Salamanca, in Suchitoto
Suchitoto
Suchitoto is a municipality in the Cuscatlán department of El Salvador.Suchitoto is widely known throughout El Salvador for its church and for its cobblestone roads...
, where Chávez would spend his latter years. He was ordained a priest at the age of 23, on November 16, 1924. He was parish priest in Ilobasco
Ilobasco
Ilobasco is a municipality in the Cabañas department of El Salvador. It is located 30 miles northeast of the capital, San Salvador....
, San Juan Cojutepeque and the historic La Merced church in San Salvador. Fourteen years later, he was appointed Archbishop of San Salvador at the youthful age of 37. He was named on September 1, and ordained on December 12, 1938, and would reign until his resignation on February 3, 1977. Chávez was an influential bishop in the region, making pastoral travels to neighboring sees, such as Matagalpa, Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
, where he visited in 1942. That same year, Chávez organized a eucharistic congress to celebrate the first centennial of the San Salvador archdiocese. He also established a Central American Bishops' Conference. In 1945, Chávez authorized veneration of the Child Jesus of Bethlehem image that reportedly appeared at the beach in Acajutla
Acajutla
Acajutla is a seaport and municipality in Sonsonate Department, El Salvador. The town is located at on the Pacific Coast of Central America and is El Salvador's principal seaport from which a large portion of the nation's exports of coffee, sugar, and balsam are shipped. As a municipality,...
, in Sonsonate, El Salvador.
Msgr. Chávez had a conservative bent, inviting Opus Dei
Opus Dei
Opus Dei, formally known as The Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei , is an organization of the Catholic Church that teaches that everyone is called to holiness and that ordinary life is a path to sanctity. The majority of its membership are lay people, with secular priests under the...
to establish bases in El Salvador. He approved the creation of a cinematic censorship office in 1963. Chávez also signed a bishops' letter warning against the dangers of Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
. But, Chávez was a prolific writer, and his 52 pastoral letters also included some that established a tradition of social justice in the archdiocese. In August 1966, he published an influential pastoral letter, "The responsibility of the layperson in the temporal order," which highlighted the Church's obligation to denounce injustice, the specific grievances of the Salvadoran people, and the attribution to those grievances to the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few.
As archbishop, Msgr. Chávez encouraged vocations, building the principal seminary in San Salvador, San José de la Montaña. He recruited Rutilio Grande
Rutilio Grande
Rutilio Grande García was a Jesuit priest in El Salvador and a promoter of liberation theology. He was assassinated in 1977, along with two other Salvadorans. He was a close friend of Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero...
into the priesthood and supported Jose Inocencio Alas
José Inocencio Alas
José Inocencio "Chencho" Alas was born in Chalatenango, El Salvador, in 1934, one of ten children. He was a Catholic priest for many years, a friend to Archbishop Óscar Romero, and an advocate of peasant rights. Alas founded the Foundation for Self Sufficiency in Central America , and is...
who helped to introduce Liberation Theology to the country.
He was said to have been deeply influenced by the Second Vatican Council
Second Vatican Council
The Second Vatican Council addressed relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the modern world. It was the twenty-first Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church and the second to be held at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. It opened under Pope John XXIII on 11 October 1962 and closed...
, implementing its progressive reforms in pastoral work throughout his archdiocese. Chávez is said to have attended every session of the Council, and was a member of its Central Planning Commission. He established an institute to teach the Social Doctrine of the Church, and sent priests to study abroad. Some of these priests came from rural families, not the urban middle class, and could have been more sympathetic to the peasant poor. Msgr. Chávez encouraged peasant cooperatives as alternatives to agricultural sector expansion in the 1950s. He also sent priests to Canada to study the organization and function of peasants cooperatives. Similar communitarian activities were later advocated by the Salvadoran Christian Democratic Party
Christian Democratic Party
Christian democratic parties are those political parties that seek to apply Christian principles to public policy. The underlying Christian democracy movement emerged in 19th-century Europe, largely under the influence of Catholic social teaching, and it continues to be influential in Europe and...
(Partido Democrata Cristiano or PDC). In 1970, Oscar Romero, Chávez' eventual successor, was named auxiliary bishop of San Salvador -- Chávez' second in command -- but Romero was said to be cool to Chávez' reformist agenda, and was transferred out of the archdiocese in 1974. Chávez' new auxiliary would be Msgr. Arturo Rivera y Damas
Arturo Rivera y Damas
Arturo Rivera y Damas was the ninth Bishop and fifth Archbishop of San Salvador, El Salvador. Msgr. Rivera's term as archbishop coincided with the Salvadoran Civil War. He was the immediate successor of Archbishop Óscar Romero. During Romero's archbishopric , Rivera was Romero's key ally...
, who would later also be archbishop.
Msgr. Chávez maintained largely cordial relations with the government, as typified by his blessing the legislative palace in March 1973. Because of his long tenure, he had a hand in many institutions of Salvadoran Catholicism: he inaugurated the famous Savior of the World Monument at Plaza de Las Americas in western San Salvador ; he presided over the reconstruction of the San Salvador Cathedral
Catedral Metropolitana de San Salvador
The Metropolitan Cathedral of the Holy Savior is the principal church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Salvador and the seat of the Archbishop of San Salvador...
after the Old Cathedral burned in a fire in August 1951 , and he established a cult to the Virgin of Fatima in El Salvador .
Msgr. Chávez resigned as archbishop in 1977, the year he entered the mandatory retirement age for bishops, 75. Later that same year, his sister, Carmen Chávez de Hernández, died. After leaving the archdiocese, Msgr. Chávez volunteered to work as parish priest of Suchitoto
Suchitoto
Suchitoto is a municipality in the Cuscatlán department of El Salvador.Suchitoto is widely known throughout El Salvador for its church and for its cobblestone roads...
. Archbishop Romero told the story of the elderly Chávez volunteering for the job:
- Our beloved predecessor, Monsignor Luis Chavez y Gonzalez, at his 75, almost 76, years of age, tells me that he is available and proposes to go work in Suchitoto. "Whatever you please, Monsignor, your gesture touches me," I tell him. "Then, I will make my Profession of Faith," he says. "But, Monsignor, no one is going to doubt your faith!" - "No," he says, "this is mandatory." And rising to his feet before the Crucifix on my desk he prays with the humility of the most humble Christian, "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, I believe in the Church..." And after saying the Creed, he says to me, "I swear allegiance to my superior." Brothers and sisters, who was superior there? I felt so small before that marvelous example!
In May 1978, Msgr. Chávez' work was acknowledged by an act of the Salvadoran legislature, which awarded him a special citation. Msgr. Chávez died on March 27, 1987 as Archbishop Emeritus of San Salvador. In June 2001, the San Salvador archdiocese instituted a beatification process for Msgr. Chávez. It was spearheaded by the same cleric who headed the diocesan investigation of the canonization
Canonization
Canonization is the act by which a Christian church declares a deceased person to be a saint, upon which declaration the person is included in the canon, or list, of recognized saints. Originally, individuals were recognized as saints without any formal process...
cause for Archbishop Romero. In February 1996, Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II
Blessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...
may have bolstered the prospects of Chávez' sainthood when he called the prelate a "model of virtues" when he visited the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Holy Savior (Catedral Metropolitana de San Salvador)
Catedral Metropolitana de San Salvador
The Metropolitan Cathedral of the Holy Savior is the principal church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Salvador and the seat of the Archbishop of San Salvador...
where Chávez is buried. He added, referring to Chávez' and his two successors, "I am sure that they intercede for the Church that they loved and served until the end of their days, and whom they leave a particularly eloquent message."
Quotations
"The people of El Salvador are highly dedicated to work, and I would thank those who are responsible for maintaining peace and order if they would give these people the opportunity to emerge from the poverty in which they find themselves to a state more worthy of a human being.""Do you want to be a priest?" (to Rutilio Grande
Rutilio Grande
Rutilio Grande García was a Jesuit priest in El Salvador and a promoter of liberation theology. He was assassinated in 1977, along with two other Salvadorans. He was a close friend of Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero...
, later an assassinated cleric).