Salvadoran Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas (1923-1994) accompanied by his clerical assistants and political leaders visit a town in central El Salvador, May 1, 1984. Rivera y Damas was named Archbishop in February of 1983 after the post was left unfilled following the March 1980 assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero. Rivera y Damas was similarly outspoken in denouncing injustice and crimes committed by the state and he led the Church as a monitor in the country’s 1992 UN-backed peace process.
Roberto D'Aubuisson (1944-1992), center left, shakes hands with Roman Catholic Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas (1923-1994), right, at an event in San Salvador, El Salvador, June 1, 1983. Salvadoran President Álvaro Alfredo Magaña Borja (1925-2001), center, looks on. D’Aubuisson helped establish the paramilitary network of death squads around the country in the late 1970s was named responsible as giving the orders for the assassination of Rivera y Damas’ predecessor, Archbishop Óscar Romero, on March 24, 1980.
Clerical members of the Episcopal Bishops Conference of El Salvador meet at a press conference to discuss the visit of Pope John Paul ll to El Savador two weeks prior, San Salvador, El Salvador, March 25, 1983. The clerics are left to right: unknown, Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas, center, Monsignor Marco René Revelo, Monsignor José Eduardo Alvarez, and right, Monsignor Oscar Barahona Castillo. The Pope’s visit to Central America highlighted the conflicts between the Vatican and followers of liberation theology within the Church, and presented the newly-appointed Archbishop Rivera y Damas as a progressive caught within a site of Cold War tensions.