Chilean specialist talks about his country's transition to peace

Published: 2008-04-17

NOTRE DAME, Ind. (CNS) -- Participants at the Conference on the Future of Catholic Peace-building who are in the throes of violence and conflict at home could get a hopeful glance at a possible peaceful future from Eduardo Rojas of Santiago, Chile. Rojas, a human rights specialist and director of planning and development at Cardinal Raul Silva Henriquez Catholic University in Santiago, can tell the horror stories of the regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, when thousands were executed and tens of thousands exiled. Today, Chile receives thousands of people into its peaceful, stable society from violent zones in Africa, the former Yugoslavia and Colombia. It has the largest Palestinian community in South America, if not the entire Western Hemisphere. "Chile was in a very difficult situation during the Pinochet dictatorship, and the Catholic Church had a fundamental role in resolving it peacefully," Rojas told Catholic News Service through an interpreter during the April 13-15 conference at the University of Notre Dame. The key to the change, he said, was the establishment of national institutions that people could trust, including a tireless demand for a system of legal justice.

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