Brother Anselmo

"The history of the last ten years in Colombia is full of Luis Ignacio Andrade," said the magazine Semana last week. And for all those years, Andrade was a name that sent chills up thousands of Colombian spines. In 1949, the police under his Ministry of Government slaughtered Liberals by the hundreds, scared the rest from the polls, and imposed a Conservative President in a one-party election. When many backlands Liberals turned into guerrillas and vengefully killed his cops, Andrade publicly proposed to "shoot ten prominent Liberal politicians for every dead policeman."

But if in public life Andrade was ruthless and belligerent, in private life he was a man afflicted and humble. When doctors in 1948 told him that his wife was incurably ill of cancer and would die in three months, he turned to his Roman Catholic religion for help. If his wife could live a year, he promised in prayer, he would join the Claretian Order of the Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. She lived until last year.

Last week Luis Andrade went to the Claretian monastery in the town of Bosa, near Bogotaa for services marking his entrance into the novitiate. After the ceremony he had a last chat with old political friends. Then, taking the name Brother Anselmo, Luis Ignacio Andrade, 63, turned and climbed a flight of stairs to Cell No. 23. Later he will serve a two-year novitiate in Rome, where he was once the Colombian Ambassador to the Holy See. After that he will become a missionary, probably in the Far East.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.