Why Chilean Protesters Set Fire To Churches
(ANALYSIS) Sunday, Oct. 18, was not a day of worship in Chile’s capital city center.
Groups of hooded protesters entered two Catholic churches setting fire to the St. Francis Borgia Church, which is the parish of the Carabineros, Chile’s police force, and to the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Both churches are among the oldest in Santiago. Both were severely damaged, possibly beyond repair.
One protester who goes by Peppadelkaos, or Peppa of chaos, posted a photo, now deleted, of herself inside the burning sanctuary of St. Francis Borgia Church in Santiago. In her caption, she said, “The only church that illuminates is a burning church."
Television images showed masked protesters filming and cheering outside the building as the spire of the Church of the Assumption collapsed and crashed to the ground.
The scene even caught the attention of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who called it “Christphobia” on Twitter.
One protester posed inside of the burning church and shared the picture on social media with the caption: "The only church that illuminates is a burning church." (In Spanish: “La única iglesia que ilumina es la que arde.”) The account was created on Sunday, Oct. 18, leading some to believe it’s a bot account.
The infamous quote actually evokes the writing of the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin. And it may have been popularized in Hispanic America by Buenaventura Durutti, a central figure in Spanish anarchism during the period leading up to and during the Spanish Civil War.
Probably, the woman in the picture in flames never heard of any of these anarchists, but her anger reflects a progressive disenchantment toward the Chilean Catholic Church in recent years. Just 1 in 10 says they trust the church - down from 51% to 13% in two decades - according to the Center for Public Studies (CEP).
“Violence is evil, and whoever sows violence reaps destruction, pain and death. Let us never justify any violence, for political or social purposes,” the Archbishop of Santiago, Celestino Aós said.
By now, it is not about two churches burned down, or the many others attacked before; it is about the institution itself. In Latin America, Chile is one of the countries with the most sexual abuse cases in the church, just after Mexico. And those scandals have horrified Chilean society widely.
The Chilean Network of Clerical Sexual Abuse Survivors keeps an updated map that lists at least 360 public sexual abuse allegations against a Catholic Church official. The list includes some infamous cases, like Fernando Karadima and Cristián Precht, two former priests sanctioned by the Vatican and eventually removed from the priesthood by Pope Francis.
The Head of the Catholic Church had a first-hand experience during his papal visit to Chile in 2018 - a nation with about 55% nominal Catholics. Francis was questioned about these cases and allegations of cover-ups by officials at the Vatican. A few months later, all Catholic bishops in Chile resigned together over the sex abuse scandals. But that was not enough.
Pope Francis knew that something else had to be done on his side. He invited over to the Vatican some of the most notorious Chilean victims. “I want to say sorry for what happened to you, as the pope and also for the universal church,” was the first thing he told them. “I was part of the problem, and that is why I am saying sorry.”
However, it seems that it is not sufficient yet to heal a no longer Catholic nation. And indeed, there is still more to do as more abuse cases come to light.
Sunday’s demonstrations in Santiago were the largest since the beginning of the pandemic. In just a few days, on Oct. 25, Chileans will vote in a referendum on whether to replace the Pinochet-era constitution, one of the critical demands when the protest movement began.
The current constitution of 1980 facilitated the privatization of public sectors such as health, pensions, and education, helping Chile became one of Latin America’s richest but most unequal countries. Poverty rates were reduced, but the country’s growing middle class struggled, saddled by debt and reliant on credit payments.
Augusto Pinochet was Chile’s military dictator who seized power in 1973 after a U.S.-backed coup and ruled until 1990. He toppled a Marxist government and led the country into an era of big economic growth, but under his leadership, thousands of Chilean dissenters were tortured, detained, disappeared, exiled and executed.
Chile has been roiled by continuing and sometimes violent street protests since the uprising last October when a student protest over a modest increase in subway fares turned into a much larger and broader movement with a long list of demands that mainly focus on economic inequality.
Since the so-called “Chile’s awakening”, and probably before, a part of public opinion has highly discredited another traditional Chilean institution: the Carabineros, the national police. Damning allegations of human rights abuses, cover-ups and impunity are eroding the people’s trust in the police.
Even Amnesty International presented a report this month calling for police reform and immediate criminal investigations into high-ranking officials in the Carabineros.
Thus, it is not a coincidence that the parish of the Carabineros was one of the churches attacked last weekend, for the second time. Rioters have previously set fires inside St. Francis Borgia Church; in January, the church suffered massive damage after fires were set, and demonstrators blocked firefighters trying to access the church.
In broad strokes, Chile appears polarized between progressives who see a new constitution as a path to more social justice order and conservatives who believe the existing document brought stability to Chile at a time of chaos.
Nevertheless, what people witnessed on Sunday, including the two burned churches, may have convinced some undecided voters. Will it affect the result of the referendum? We will only know on Sunday, the day of worship.
James Gatica Matheson is an international correspondent native of Chile, now based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He’s a 2019 fellow of The Media Project. Follow him on Twitter @JamesGMatheson.