U.S. churches rip Salvador repression // Clerics denounce White House stance

A crackdown by the Salvadoran government on church workers itviews as sympathetic to leftist rebels has sparked strong protestsfrom a loose coalition of U.S. religious leaders and raised the levelof criticism of U.S. policy in the region.

What began as shocked American church reaction to the murder ofsix prominent Jesuit priests, their woman employee and her daughteron Nov. 16 has reached a crescendo of demands that the Bushadministration suspend military aid to the Salvadoran government,whose security forces are suspected in the murders.

The top official of President Bush's own church, EpiscopalPresiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning, has become one of the mostoutspoken critics of the U.S. response to the escalation of arrestsand expulsions of church workers.

Referring to what some missionaries have described as a brutaldismantling of their efforts on behalf of the Salvadoran poor - thechief victims of the war - Browning said recently of Bush, "I'mconcerned, deeply concerned . . . that he has not spoken out."

Until recently, Roman Catholic bishops had taken the lead indenouncing U.S. military involvement in El Salvador. Now in theforefront of the opposition, in addition to Episcopalians such asBrowning and a group of United Methodist bishops, are national andregional leaders of the Presbyterian, Evangelical Lutheran, Disciplesof Christ, Mennonite, Brethren, American Baptist and Moravianchurches.

Spokesmen for all of those denominations, as well as for theNational Council of Churches, are circulating a statement declaringtheir "outrage over the deliberate and calculated campaign bygovernment forces in El Salvador to intimidate and harass thechurches in that country."

This criticism was directed not only at the government of ElSalvador. "We believe action of the United States government to datehas not been sufficient to bring about any significant change in thebehavior of the Salvadoran government," they said.

Meanwhile, Jesuit superiors throughout the United States havebeen expanding on the vigorous protest issued a week ago by the RomanCatholic archbishop of San Salvador against what he charged was"violent" and "coercive" interrogation by the U.S. State Departmentand FBI of the only witness provided by the Salvadoran church in theslaying of the six priests.

Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas said the 40-year-oldhousekeeper who implicated the Salvadoran military in the murders washeld incommunicado in Miami, "submitted to an authentic brainwashing,and blackmailed with deportation."

The Rev. Patrick J. Burns, president of the United States JesuitConference, said Lucia B. Barrera de Cerna had been questioned"inappropriately during an eight-day period in Miami" before she wasreleased Dec. 3 into the care of the Jesuits.

Said Burns, "The witness and her husband, Jorge Cerna, wererepeatedly urged to confess that she had been instructed to say shesaw uniformed men in the courtyard of the Jesuit residence inSalvador just before she heard the gunfire which killed the sixJesuits, their cook, and the cook's teenage daughter. During thequestioning they were pressed repeatedly to implicate the Jesuitfathers in the alleged falsifying of her (earlier) testimony.

"The witness, exhausted . . . finally yielded to the pressureexerted on her and said that an official of the Archdiocese of SanSalvador had suggested she give the testimony she gave.

"Afterwards, however, while still in State Department custody,she retracted that statement. . . ."