The Scandalous Priest

When Felix Berrios, the Bishop of San Felipe, added up in his mind the scandals touched off by the parish priest of Catapilco, they made an astonishing total.

There was, for a starter, the charge of threatened arson. One night not long after Padre Antonio Zamorano took over the parish in 1942, his flock, mostly peasants who lived and worked on neighboring estates, came to the church in tearful anger. A landlord, annoyed by one of his farmhand tenants, had refused to pay any of them for their work that week. The priest, whose life until then had been the unharried existence of a Catholic school teacher of algebra, Latin and Greek, was shocked. "Is weeping all you propose to do?" he roared at his parishioners. "Let's teach that man a lesson." He there upon organized a torchlight parade that marched round and round the landlord's house. The landlord paid the wages, but he called the parade a threat of arson.

Dancing in the Churchyard. After that the landlords gave less and less to Padre Zamorano's church, and that led to the incident of the gambling party. Right in the churchyard, the peasants played roulette, held a raffle, drank wine and danced; Padre Zamorano himself pounded the piano and sang. The proceeds, fortunately, were substantial and went to support Catapilco's school, founded by Zamorano.

Later there was the case of assault--the day the priest, armed with a hammer, chased a quack healer out of town. And a case of battery--the day Zamorano beat up a knife-brandishing thug. Worst of all, there was a political scandal.

It seemed to Padre Zamorano that the main problem of his flock was its poverty, which he blamed on the 15-c--a-day wages paid by the landlords. "The villagers cannot pray on an empty stomach," he insisted, and he sought a political solution. He persuaded his parishioners not to sell their votes to the landlords and urged them to register. At length his advice caught on. Last March Catapilco's people picked a peasants' candidate to represent the village on the township council. The candidate's name: Padre Zamorano.

Victory at the Polls. Stridently, the landlords appealed to the bishop. "That priest is a social agitator," said Daniel Perez, whose family has held the same land since the Spanish conquest. The bishop took heed. "If you run as a candidate, you will be suspended," he warned the priest. Zamorano--torn between his superior and his backers--decided to run. He won, last month, by 196 to 8.

"Zamorano is a very good man," the bishop admitted, but his warning was no idle threat. Last week the people of Catapilco held an angry testimonial meeting to back Zamorano; then, even angrier, they staged a one-day protest strike. The governor had to send ten fully armed carabineros to keep order. All protest failed. Padre Zamorano was duly dismissed as parish priest of Catapilco. But he stayed on as the village's elected councilman.

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