Samuel Ruiz

Courtesy of Upsidedownworld.org, here's a marvelous commentary by Emma Volonté on the great Samuel Ruiz. To paraphrase an old quip by Trotsky: If there were more men like Ruiz in the catholic church, I'd be a catholic too:

In January 2004, Samuel Ruiz wrote a pastoral letter in which he said: “The question that God puts to us at the end of our existence will be: What side were we on? Whom did we defend? Who did we choose? Questions that nobody, not even the powerful, can escape at the end of their life”.

Amen.

Don Samuel Ruíz, continued

Another excellent obituary of Don Samuel Ruíz Garcia, entitled, "The Inconvenient Bishop," by Salvador García Soto of El Universal:

"Inconvenient to the Mexican Catholic curia, with whom he disagreed in order to lead a life not full of luxury or excess, like most bishops, but by opting for the disadvantaged and not the rich and powerful, to which almost all the Catholic leader are so inclineds. Also uncomfortable to the Vatican and the Roman curia, who tried and was about to remove him from the diocese of San Cristobal in 1993, when Girolamo Prigione, in his crusade against the "rebel or social" bishops, " he poisoned the hierarchies of Roma, who opened a trial and accused him of "excessive politicization."

As the Vatican rushes to lavish praise on  Samuel Ruíz, let's not forget that the upper clergy, in particular in Mexico, absolutely loathed him. What a badge of honor

Don Samuel Ruíz: The "miracle" is that he lived to die of natural causes at 86

Don Samuel Ruíz: A wonderful and thoughtful obituary, of sorts, by Laura Carlsen of the CIP Americas Program, that also touches on a most uncomfortable truth, given the onslaught of popes John Paul II and Benedixt XVI on liberation theology and the progressive gains of the Vatican II, of which Samuel Ruíz was a participant: With the most honorable exception of Raul Vera, bishop of Saltillo, Coahuila, how many of the progressive catholics remain in the upper echelons of the church? To me it seems sadly to be very few, given its rightward turn the past two decades or so.