Their connection to Vatican II was highlighted during the beatification ceremony presided over by Cardinal Becciu in the Argentinean city of La Rioja
At 10:42 a.m. on Saturday, April 27, 2019, Francis’ seventh year of pontificate, Angelelli and three other people were formally registered as blessed. During a frisky April morning on a stage erected in the park of the city of La Rioja, a esplanade surrounded by palm trees against the mountain backdrop of the pre-Cordillera, the Pope's envoy, Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu spoke of "Christian witness given until martyrdom", of "military dictatorship marked by a regime that considered indecent whatever social justice action aimed at the promotion of the weakest within the framework of the Church's social doctrine", "of a faith - the faith that today's four blessed strove to promote - that had an impact on life in such a way that the Gospel would become a leaven of society and generate a new humanity".
Becciu also spoke of men "in love with Christ and their neighbour, who lived and died out of love", then, at the end of the homily Becciu quoted Angelelli’s famous phrase, which sums up his pastoral vision: "With one ear to the people and one to the Gospel".
The first thing evident in the four beatifications celebrated in the land of Bergoglio is the thread connecting Angelelli to Francis through the Second Vatican Council in whose sessions the murdered bishop participated from the beginning. Angelelli was elected auxiliary of the second Argentinean city, Cordoba, at the end of 1960, almost at the same time as John XXIII summoned the Church to the assembly. He participated as a council father in three of his four sessions, in 1962, 1964 and 1965. "He intervened with a vote in the deliberations of the Council," remembers Marcelo Colombo, the current Archbishop of Mendoza, and a firm supporter of the cause, which this Saturday came to a solemn conclusion in Argentina.
Angelelli then joined the work of the Argentine Church in the effort to rapidly implement Vatican II to the reality of the country. Coepal, the Episcopal Pastoral Commission created ad hoc by the bishops of the South American nation, was the body through which Angelelli had a decisive role in elaborating the "Theology of the People" of which Bergoglio was also part. "This commission - assures Marcelo Colombo - carried on the applicative intention of the Council, while Angelelli, who worked mainly in the area of popular religiosity, was president of the commission itself and participated in the drafting of the text that proposed to implement Vatican II into Argentinean society. The text is known as the "Document of San Miguel", and was made public in 1969, therefore fifty years ago".
In his homily, Cardinal Becciu made explicit reference to the path linking Angelelli to the Council, defining Angelelli and his companions as true and proper "martyrs of the Council decrees". For "their work of formation in the faith, their strong religious and social commitment rooted in the Gospel and in favor of the poorest and most exploited, carried out in the light of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, in the keen desire to implement the Council's dictates".
Also significant was the passage in which the papal envoy commented on how the commitment to social justice and to promoting the dignity of the human person was fiercely obstructed by the civil authorities of the time. "Officially the political power professed itself respectful, indeed defender, of the Christian religion, yet it aimed to exploit it, demanding a supine attitude on the part of the clergy and a passive one on the part of the faithful, forced to express their faith only in liturgical and religious manifestations. But the new blessed strove to work for a faith that would also affect life, so that the Gospel would become a leaven in the society of a new humanity founded on justice, solidarity, equality.
Blessed of the Council, therefore, very present in today's Argentine society and of the Church. 43 years have passed since the violent death of Angelelli, Murias, Longueville and Pedernera, four after of the opening of the process of beatification, only six years from the condemnation to life imprisonment of the senior officials who perpetrated the crime, and just year from the declaration of martyrdom in hatred of the faith that opened the way to their beatification.
We spoke to many people who in these days participated in the celebrations across the province were the four blessed lived and died: places like Punta de los Llanos where Angelelli was murdered, Chamical where priests Murias and Longueville were kidnapped and killed, and Soñagasta where the "family man" Pedernera was killed. Most of these people knew Angelelli in person and were part of his communities.
Many have lived with Murias and Longueville, have received baptism or some other sacrament from their hands, have in some way witnessed their kidnapping, have seen their corpses defaced. Wenceslao Pedernera's wife, Martha Ramona Cornejo, with one of her three daughters, Maria Rosa, has listened in the park of the city of La Rioja to the proclamation of her husband blessed, the same man she saw shot to death at her front door on July 26, 1976.
At the end of the ceremony, Arturo Pinto, Angelelli's driver at the time of the accident caused on the road that connects La Rioja to Chamical, recalled that last trip and spoke of Angelelli as a "tough guy" who did not abandon the road and his flock: "They had to take him off the road in a bad way" to stop him.
When the first of the three groups of Argentine bishops travelled to Rome to meet the Pope, the Archbishop of the city of Paranà, Monsignor Puiggari, announced that among the purposes of the trip there was also that of inviting Bergoglio to his own country. In a certain sense we can say the Pope "travelled" to Argentina by sending something of himself: a strong message about a caring Church, a "synodal" church, as the current Archbishop of La Rioja, Dante Braida, calls it, a church "committed to the poor, well rooted in the people, attentive to the enhancement of the laity, present and active in public life".
