St. Patrick's Day Massacre: Bill to declare church a National Historic Landmark introduced

The scene is as follows: it's a very cold July morning , and in a living room on the first floor of the San Patricio parish house, on the border between the Buenos Aires neighborhoods of Belgrano and Villa Urquiza, there are three priests and two seminarians, one next to the other and awake. Some are wearing pajamas, others are in their night clothes . Just a few meters away, there are several men pointing firearms at them. In seconds, the priests are shot dead. Their bodies are left on a red carpet, some with their hands behind their heads, blood beginning to form puddles on the floor.

It could easily be the description of a fragment from a crime novel or a thriller. But it happened in reality , in the early hours of July 4, 1976 , when a task force from the last dictatorship killed Fathers Alfredo Kelly, Alfredo Leaden and Pedro Dufau, and seminarians Salvador Barbeito and Emilio Barletti, in what became known as the "San Patricio Massacre."

The slow-burning quintuple crime reverberated over the years in books, films, plays, and in public spaces , with the placement of plaques, monuments, and the naming of streets and even a subway station.

Along these lines, a bill to declare the temple a National Historic Monument will be presented to Congress on Monday, and the proposal allows for the reconstruction of a possible sample of how culture sought to represent these homicides , committed just meters from the church's main altar, where just hours before one of the victims had celebrated a wedding.

“The initiative arose from the drive of Palotinos por la Memoria, la Verdad y la Justicia, in a work that we have been developing with the author of the project, Congressman Eduardo Valdés, and with Mónica Capano , who until recently served as president of the National Monuments Commission, the competent body in these matters, which was recently dissolved,” says Ramiro Varela , a former student of the San Vicente Palloti school, dependent on the parish, former member of the Catholic Action Youth (JAC) in the late 80s and a representative of the organization promoting the movement.

After years of silence, imposed by censorship and fear, the cause began to gain visibility in the public sphere . For example, in 1996, the neighboring Pasaje Sancti Spiritus was renamed Mártires Palotinos. In 2005, an architectural project was completed next to one of the church's entrances, designed by architect Roberto Frangella, a parishioner and acquaintance of the victims. In 2011, the Buenos Aires Legislature declared the site a Historic Site of the City of Buenos Aires .

In 2016, the Pallottine community painted a mural at the intersection of Echeverría and Mártires Palotinos, which eight years later was declared of "cultural interest" by the Legislature. And in 2018, three "tiles of memory" were placed on the sidewalk of the church , commemorating the victims and embodying a phrase uttered in 2001 by the then-Archbishop of Buenos Aires , Jorge Bergoglio, during the Mass for the twenty-fifth anniversary: ​​"The tiles of this site are anointed with their blood."

Speaking of oral tradition, that same year León Gieco released the song "Todo está guardar en la memoria" (Everything is Saved in Memory), which mentions the Pallotine Fathers and Bishop Enrique Angelelli, who was also murdered by the dictatorship in a fake car accident in La Rioja. In 2023, the name "Mártires Palotinos" (Pallotine Martyrs) was added to the Echeverría station on Line B.

"It is the national State's obligation to protect and ensure the preservation of this property, due to its historical importance , because it was the scene of the greatest bloodshed committed against the Argentine Catholic Church and one of the most resounding crimes committed by state terrorism," Varela added, referring to the initiative that will be presented to Congress on Monday at 6 p.m.

The crime itself has led to two cases : one, canonical , seeking to have the five declared martyrs by the Church, and the other, criminal, led by federal judge Daniel Rafecas , seeking to establish who was responsible for the massacre, with evidence that for now points more toward federal police than marines, which was the hypothesis held for many years.

Two days before the incident, the Montoneros had detonated a bomb in the cafeteria of the Federal Security Superintendency, killing 23 people. In the following days , police task forces committed particularly visible crimes in response to the attack , such as the shooting of a disappeared detainee in front of the Obelisk and the leaving of eight bound bodies with bullet wounds in a San Telmo garage. At least temporarily, the San Patricio massacre coincides with this string of reprisals.

“If Congress approves the declaration of San Patricio as a National Historic Monument, like all other tributes, including the city's historical heritage, the plaques on the corner, the Mártires Palotinos Passage, and the Echeverría-Mártires Palotinos station, would contribute to the canonical cause in what is called the 'fame of Martyrdom,'” explains Father Juan Sebastián Velasco, parish priest of San Patricio and postulator of the canonical cause.

“Reputation of martyrdom” means that a significant portion of society considers certain Catholics to be martyrs because they died violently for their faith.

“Because it's not just us, the Pallottine Fathers, who ask for canonical recognition of martyrdom,” continues Velasco, who was also part of the San Patricio JAC in the 1980s, “but it comes from the people, from the people, from governments. Over the years, the people, with their popular faith, in some way, have been saying what we have been maintaining for years . This happens in many causes, in which people recognize a candidate for sainthood or martyrdom, like ours, before official recognition by the Church is granted. And this, in the long or short run, ends up helping.”

Beyond plaques and monuments, the first book reconstructing the massacre was only published in 1989. The San Patricio Massacre, by journalist Eduardo Kimel and published by Dialéctica, was the first comprehensive account of the crime, and it pointed to the direct responsibility of the task forces.

The perpetrator was brought to trial by the first judge in the case, Guillermo Rivarola, for considering the statements about his actions offensive. He was convicted of "slander and libel." For years, the only person judicially sanctioned for the incident was the person who first investigated it : no police officer, soldier, or civilian intelligence agent.

When Congress decriminalized the practice in 2009 for cases of public interest, Kimel's image and work were reinstated . A few months later, the journalist died of cancer.

The second book to address the topic was The Honor of God: Pallottine Martyrs: The Silenced History of an Unpunished Crime by Gabriel Seisdedos (Editorial San Pablo), published in 1996. In the work, among other aspects, the author recounts seminarian Barletti's activism in the Montoneros.

Twenty years later, theologian and catechist Sergio Lucero published Together They Lived, Together They Died. The Surrender of the Five Pallottines , published by Editorial Claretiana. And in 2023, the same publishing house published Witnesses of Faith in Christ with Word and Blood: Homilies 1964-1976 , which compiles these texts by Pedro Dufau, another of those murdered.

Around 1997, Seisdedos directed an audiovisual version of his book , titled The Honor of God , which was shown on American television. Locally, the documentary July 4th , by Juan Pablo Young and Pablo Zubizarreta, released in 2007, is particularly noteworthy.

The film, which lasts just over an hour and a half, reconstructs the crime and features, among others, the neighbors who saw the armed men before they entered the parish, the cars they arrived in, and the police vehicle that identified them. They also heard an officer's warning to guard Álvarez not to go inside if he heard gunshots because the occupants of the Peugeots were "going to beat up some leftists."

Another key figure in the film is the aforementioned Kimel , who narrates both the crime and the investigation he carried out and the judicial persecution to which he was subjected, while the masterminds and perpetrators of the massacre enjoyed freedom.

The film also highlights the story of Roberto "Bob" Killmeate, a Pallottine seminarian at the time of the crime. He was in Colombia at the time of the bloody crime. The filmmakers follow his story, as he survives the dictatorship. After leaving the church, he dedicates himself to promoting cooperatives and the grassroots economy in Dina Huapi, on the outskirts of Bariloche.

The stage also reflected this story . In 2001, Carlos Salum, who frequented the parish in the 1970s and had produced The Honor of God , premiered his own play The Voice That Cries Out to Heaven . In 2024, the Tadron Theater in Palermo hosted The Crime of Saint Patrick , written and directed by Elba Degrossi and based on Kimel's book. This Saturday, starting at 5 p.m., a new production will take place at the House of Identity, in the former ESMA.

On another note, and still within the performing arts, Coghlan, one of the neighborhoods very close to San Patricio, is also the name of a puppet show created by Teresa Orelle and Sergio Mercurio, which focuses on the quintuple murder. The creation also has a graphic version.

Perhaps because it was the largest attack against members of the Argentine Catholic Church in a single day; or because of the brutality of the crime, committed in front of defenseless victims, in their own home, on a property adjacent to a church where love of neighbor and the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" are commemorated.

Or for almost cinematic details , such as the fact that it happened on a winter morning in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, with silenced gunshots and graffiti on the walls “accusing” the victims of Third World priests and claiming “the comrades dynamited in Federal Security.”

Or perhaps because of the climate beforehand, with threats against the religious , and with murmurings from some powerful neighbors, who hated Alfredo Kelly for his homilies and for having given too much space to the seminarians' initiatives.

For any or all of the above reasons, that massacre continues to be talked about , in murals, posters, books, plays, films, and in the very presence of the parish itself, that enormous brick building topped with a bell tower, which could be declared a National Historic Landmark. Another echo could be the publication of Father Kelly's diaries in the future. Will that happen?