Sandro F. Piedrahita
A Thorn In Guitemie’s Flesh
A.M.D.G.
“I have taken off my cassock to be a truer priest."
Father Camilo Torres Restrepo
In his second letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul writes that a “thorn in the flesh” was given to him, a “messenger of Satan to torment him,” so that he would not become arrogant and proud. Saint Paul confesses that he asked the Lord three times to rid him of such a thorn, that it would depart from him, but that the Lord had declined to do so, telling him “my grace is enough for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
I was given a similar thorn in the flesh the night I met Father Camilo Torres Restrepo. Saint Paul never explained what his thorn was, but I suspect it might have been similar to the thorn that assaulted my spirit, my very being that distant night in Paris. Perhaps Saint Paul felt a stubborn attraction to a woman he could never dream of making his own. I fell in love with a man who was beyond my reach, not because he became a revolutionary, but because Camilo always considered himself a priest – and this even after Cardinal Luis Concha Cordoba, archbishop of Bogota, virtually defrocked him. And he was always faithful to his vows, certainly with me, even after he ceased wearing a cassock and stopped celebrating Mass in public. Although our intense friendship lasted almost a decade, although for years we lived in the same home, he never touched me or insinuated we might have anything more than a platonic relationship. And like Saint Paul, I prayed nightly to be rid of the thorn in my flesh, my attraction to Camilo, but the Lord never answered my prayers. Until the day his death was announced in all the newspapers of Colombia – President Valencia stated that Camilo had “preferred to die by killing rather than serving his fellow citizens” – I asked the Lord to quash my longing to be Camilo’s wife. I have always been a devout Catholic and knew it would have been a mortal sin to marry him given his priesthood. But I would have willingly sinned had Camilo consented.
The news came slowly at first – initially a frantic call from one of his former students asking for information, then a number of other calls – but after seeing the article in the newspaper I could no longer keep lying to myself or to his mother Isabel, who also lived with us. It had been Camilo’s first skirmish against the military and he had lost his life. I later learned from Fabio Vasquez – leader of the elenista troop to which Camilo belonged – that shortly before his death Camilo had shot a soldier and claimed his weapon, following a ritual of the ELN. Fabio explained that after engaging in his first killing the revolutionary had to take the dead soldier’s rifle as a trophy. And yet I wondered how Camilo could have been brought to such an act. Although he felt violence was the only choice left to the campesinos, I know it must have been incredibly difficult for him to take a human life, contrary to everything he had learned as a seminarian and as a priest.
His mother Isabel could not contain her tears. She had initially struggled with his radical choices – like when he had suddenly announced his intentions to become a Dominican – but in the end she always supported him. When he had become an acclaimed public figure and orator, celebrated by the masses for reminding the oligarchy about the true conditions of the country’s poor, his mother had stood at his side even though she herself was a daughter of privilege. When he had started publishing his leftist newspaper Frente Unido, she had praised his articles even though she had never followed radical politics. When he delivered speeches, even those calling for revolutionary violence, she did not hesitate to join in the applause. She wasn’t advised ahead of time that he would be leaving Bogota to become a guerrillero in the mountains, but when she heard of his choice, she lit a candle in front of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in order to seek protection for her son and told me she was proud of his courage.
Soon a number of people started visiting the home I had shared with Camilo and his mother for so many years – university students, fellow sociologists, Communists, Christian Democrats and all manner of activists – and they had a single message: el cura Camilo was a hero and a martyr. They treated me as if I had been his widow, and I was glad for that, for in some sense that was how I felt. After I had arrived in Colombia, we lived as husband and wife, sleeping under the same roof, although we never shared a bed. I had been at his side always, accompanying him in many of his travels throughout Colombia and sometimes to distant places – Lima, Buenos Aires, Caracas – and I had always typed the manuscripts of his speeches and other important papers, at times giving him editorial suggestions. After all, I was the one who had started him on his journey from priest to revolutionary, and he had not forgotten.
The response of the Church hierarchy to Camilo’s death had been cutting. Cardinal Luis Concha Cordoba, a nemesis of sorts for Camilo, had said he thought Camilo had suffered from some psychiatric condition and said he prayed the Lord had forgiven him in His mercy, all the while implying that He had not been forgiven. Camilo’s fellow priests did not agree with the Cardinal. They arrived to our house in droves to offer me their pesame, some saying Camilo had been the champion of a “new” Christianity. I’m sure many of them assumed we had marital relations and they, too, treated me as if I was his widow. It is not surprising that after the execution of Camilo, three Spanish priests decided to follow his example and become members of the ELN. Eventually el cura Manuel Perez, married to a former nun, became head of the ELN and drove it to acts of barbaric violence, including the assassination of Monsignor Jesus Jaramillo, an act which led to el cura’s immediate excommunication. El cura was not following Camilo’s example. My dear Camilo saw the revolution as a manifestation of el amor eficaz – an efficacious love – and he would never have engaged in gratuitous acts of violence.
Perhaps if I had been allowed to join Camilo in the guerrilla war as we had planned, things would have turned out differently. Perhaps I could have protected him. Or perhaps it would have provided a final opportunity for me to become his lover. But the head of the ELN at the time, Fabio Vasquez, had decreed that he wanted no women rebels among his ranks. Camilo fervently desired that I follow him on his journey to revolution and during his three months hidden in the mountains, he never ceased to send me letters, always reminding me that le Maitre – the Master – was still with him. Even after having forfeited his right to consecrate the Eucharist, after joining in a war which would make him kill, my Camilo continued to think of himself as a committed Catholic and as a priest. In a strange way he felt that his Catholicism was what motivated him to fight in the armed struggle. He never ceased carrying a Bible with him, even as he slept at night in the mud with his fellow guerrillas, to whom he frequently spoke of Christ and of God’s plan of salvation.
“The revolution is not only permitted but obligatory for Christians,” he wrote me in his final letter, repeating something he had often said during his speeches. “I say it is a mortal sin not to participate in the revolution. After the revolution triumphs, I promise you, Guitemie, I’ll be able to say Mass again. And you shall be sitting on the pews listening to me. I promise you that as well.”
***
I met Camilo in 1957, while he was on vacation in Paris from his doctoral studies in Belgium. From the beginning, what most attracted me to him – the fact he was an ebullient and happy priest – was the very reason I could never expect us to have anything more than a deep friendship. We first met at the home of some common Colombian friends and I spent the whole night speaking with him, fascinated by his joyful explanation of the Gospel of Love. He wasn’t serious, austere and apolitical, like so many priests I had met in the past. On the contrary, he was mirthful when speaking about light topics and showed a keen interest in learning when the other Colombians talked to him about the political condition of their country. At the time, nobody really believed in the possibility of a revolution in Latin America – this was before Castro’s victory over the American mercenaries at Playa Giron – but many spoke about the deplorable conditions of the poor in Colombia. At the time Camilo wasn’t a revolutionary – far from it – but he had already done some pastoral work in the forgotten barriadas of Colombia and felt that the Church had an imperative to help the oppressed.
After the soiree was over, Camilo and I continued our conversation in a local bar until the wee hours. He expounded on his theory that the Church in Colombia had to do more – much more – to push for social change in his country. He explained that the Church and the Catholics of Colombia could do much to change the social structures of the country without any need for bloodshed or violent revolution – a position he would abandon in later years but which he firmly adhered to at the time. I asked him if he was sure such a transformation of his nation could be achieved without violence and he responded with a resounding yes. He explained with great confidence that people of good faith, if they were properly guided by committed leaders, could achieve a revolution of peace, such as the one preached by Jesus. He made it clear that he recognized the socioeconomic challenges of his country were titanic, that a few oligarchs controlled Colombia, but he was certain that Christ could lead His people to the Promised Land. During that first night, I fell in love with him, the pipe-smoking priest in his black cassock, and the following week when I went to Confession I confessed that I had sinned. My French Confessor told me I was being overly scrupulous and assigned me three Hail Marys. But my love for Camilo would be a stubborn temptation. Throughout the following eight years of my relationship with him, I never ceased seeing him as a man instead of a forbidden priest.
Perhaps if he had never met me, my Camilo would never have become a revolutionary. Or perhaps I’m giving too much importance to my role in his life. Perhaps given the social injustice in his country, a man of his generosity and abiding faith in the Gospel of Love would perforce have gravitated toward armed insurrection. But I can’t fail to recognize that I was the one who first explained the concept of revolution to Camilo and that I was the first to tell him that violent revolution, under certain circumstances, wasn’t incompatible with the Master’s message. After all, I was living in France during the Algerian war and genuinely believed that the Algerians’ struggle for independence from their colonial masters was justified in the eyes of God.
I told Camilo that with the assistance of several Catholic priests I worked to help the Algerian immigrants who lived in the slums of Villejuif and that as a seventeen-year-old I had flown to Algiers to help fight in the Algerian revolution. I even admitted to Camilo on that first night – me, a practicing Catholic – that I had performed small acts of sabotage on behalf of the Algerian National Liberation Front. I had never taken any lives, but I had helped bomb cars in front of police headquarters, had destroyed public property, had helped transport weapons that I knew the Algerian rebels would later use to punish and terrorize their French opponents. So in a way I was complicit in the violence. When Camilo heard this confession, he didn’t judge me or criticize me for my deeds. He simply asked me to explain.
“Well,” I told him, “the French have granted independence to all their French colonies in the Maghreb, but they refuse to do so with Algeria. They claim that it is a part of the French nation, no more and no less than Guadeloupe or New Caledonia. So faced with such obstinacy, the National Liberation Front has decided to take up arms. It is a struggle for liberation, justified in the eyes of God and man. The French haven’t learned from their experience in Vietnam.”
“And are the Algerians fighting a just war? Do they engage in legitimate battle with the French military or do they engage in terrorism against the innocent?”
I became somewhat flustered with the question.
“It’s an asymmetrical war,” I told him. “What some label ‘terrorism’ is the only means the Algerians have to fight the vast French army. You have to remember the French have deployed hundreds of thousands of troops to Algeria. And the French have engaged in the wholesale torture of Algerians in their quest to continue to subjugate them.”
Camilo puffed on his pipe.
“But does that justify the murder of innocents at the hands of the Algerians? Could that ever be acceptable in the eyes of God? Couldn’t the Algerians achieve the same goal by imitating the peaceful resistance of someone like Gandhi? Didn’t Jesus say ‘offer no resistance to one who is evil?’ Didn’t He say to love your enemies? I think He said that repeatedly – and when Jesus said something He meant it.”
“That’s the priest in you,” I responded. “You think that so-called ‘peaceful resistance’ is an alternative to the armed struggle. You dream that prayers will suffice. If the Algerians follow Gandhi’s model, they will be decimated and their revolt will fail. Violence is the only option. You have to understand the National Liberation Front is not a regular army. They can’t match the French military in battle, so they must resort to guerrilla tactics.”
“What are ‘guerrilla tactics?” the Colombian priest asked as he puffed on his pipe. I’m sure he understood what the term meant in general terms, but he wanted to probe my conscience.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Perhaps ambushing a military squad when they least expect it. Dynamiting a government building. Placing a bomb in a restaurant frequented by the French army.”
“I don’t know if any of that would be pleasing to le Maitre,” Camilo said. He always referred to Jesus as ‘le maitre’ and sometimes as ‘el Patron.’
“You have to understand that I lived in Colombia during El Bogotazo,” he continued, “when three-thousand people were killed by mobs in the public streets after the assassination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan. That convinced me that political violence is inherently anti-Christian, that there is always a better way. Although that doesn’t mean that I don’t realize that progressive Catholics have a gigantic task ahead of them if they want to transform the country without violence.”
“The Algerians don’t have a choice, Camilo. It’s either guerrilla tactics or surrendering to the French.”
“Perhaps it’s best to surrender,” Camilo answered in a pensive voice. “Perhaps the prize of independence isn’t worth the price of committing crimes. To perform acts of violence for a political goal is a mortal sin.”
***
During his brief stay in Paris, I met with my Camilo almost nightly. He was a great gourmand and didn’t mind having a drink from time to time, always puffing on his pipe. We discussed so many subjects, but often he would turn to religion. I had the sense that he delighted in his priesthood, especially celebrating the Mass and consecrating the Eucharist. And he loved to bring the peace of Christ to the faithful, especially those who sought the Lord in humility, for Camilo detested pride.
“What I most enjoy is saying the first Mass, at seven in the morning. That’s when all the maids come to church during the week, since they must begin their work at eight. Their faces are so full of faith, Guitemie. They fully believe that Christ is present in the Eucharist. And no matter how hard their lives are – a lot of them live in abject poverty in what you French call bidonvilles – they have a deep trust in Jesus. They do not ask impossible questions, as some of the university students do. They just believe!”
“Do you ever doubt, Camilo?”
“No, I don’t, Guitemie. I have an abiding faith in le Maitre. I don’t think anything could take that from me. Now do I ever wonder about what the Church does? Sure. The Church could do more – and it will do more, I’m sure of it, Guitemie. I think the Colombian Church should be modernized. As far as my faith in Christ and my discipleship in Jesus, they are utterly unshakeable.”
“You really enjoy being a priest, don’t you?”
“More than you can imagine. You know, I had a sudden metanoia, like Saint Paul on the road to Damascus so many centuries ago. I was something of a layabout who liked to drive a red sportscar at suicidal speeds through the streets of Bogota. I decided to study law mainly because that is what men of my social class were expected to do. Then I met two French Dominicans in their white habits, Father Blanchet and Father Nielly, who told me all about their mission and invited me to join it. The Dominicans taught me that with Jesus I could find peace, love and deep lasting satisfaction. I couldn’t think of anything better to do with my life – nothing more noble or meaningful – so I joined the Church, almost on a whim. Both my parents were violently opposed to my decision, but I was stubborn and ultimately they gave in. It’s now been almost ten years since I joined the seminary. I have never regretted my decision to become a priest. God alone can satisfy the desires of my heart.”
“I see great things in your future,” I said to him. “Maybe you can bring faith closer to the people.”
“I really don’t aspire to much in a worldly sense, Guitemie. I know my mother dreams of seeing me become a bishop, maybe even a Cardinal, but that’s not where my interests lie. I want to help the poor, the oppressed, the sinner. So maybe yes, I can change the Church. Maybe I can do so in my own little way, following the example Saint Therese de Lisieux. Frankly all I want to do is embody the Gospel of Love, to share it with the people, to be a fisher of souls like Saint Peter.”
“And what about the vows you’ve had to take? Do you find it hard to keep them?”
I regretted having posed such a question, thought perhaps I was being impertinent, then I locked my eyes with his. “What do you think about the issue of married priests?”
Camilo laughed, not exactly the response I was expecting.
“Everybody thinks that the vow of chastity is the most difficult part of being a priest. But it really isn’t. To me the most difficult vow is that of obedience. As a priest, you have to obey whatever your bishop orders, even concerning the most elemental questions, where to live, whom to help, what to do. By way of example, I needed my bishop’s permission to study in Belgium. And if my bishop wants me to return, I’ll have to do so without objection or complaint. I even had to ask for permission from the bishop to read certain Marxist texts at the university.”
“So you don’t think priests should be allowed to marry?” I probed.
“I think that would be contrary to the mission of a priest. As the Dominicans say, a priest must transmit to others the truths learned in contemplation. I’m not sure a priest would have much time for contemplation if he has a wife and a family. And the priest must imitate the Christ. We must look at the celibate Jesus as our model and supreme ideal. In the end, I see joyful celibacy as a gift. Does that answer your question?”
“Yes,” I replied, trying to disguise my discomfiture. He was out of reach, completely out of reach. I had to convince myself of that fact time and again. And the following Sunday, I returned to Confession and admitted once again that Camilo the priest was the object of my unrequited love.
My Confessor told me my love for Camilo was no sin. He advised me to offer my inability to marry him as a way of carrying Christ’s Cross.
We continued seeing each other whenever Camilo visited Paris and we made a joint pilgrimage to the Cathedral at Chartres, where I was struck by Camilo’s deep devotion to Our Lady. Later, I had the great privilege of seeing him celebrate the Mass one July afternoon in a small village church in Paris. Receiving the Holy Eucharist from his hands was one of the most moving experiences of my life. And then he parted for South America, leaving me alone in Europe, and I feared that I would never see him again.
A week after Camilo left Europe, Fidel Castro entered Havana, proclaiming the success of la revolucion. I didn’t understand it at the time, but that event would change Camilo’s life as well as mine.
***
During all those years of absence, Camilo wrote me a letter every month, giving me some idea of his slow but relentless transformation. I remember waiting anxiously for the arrival of his missives once a month and how I used to despair when they did not arrive on time. Had he forgotten about me? Had I received the last of his letters? But soon I would open my mailbox to find a new letter from Camilo, always with the same post data at the end: “Le Maitre is still with us!”
No matter what he would write about – and eventually he wrote about his fury at the institutionalized Colombian Church and Cardinal Luis Concha Cordoba in particular – he never hesitated to remind me of his abiding trust in Christ. During those years of absence, I developed a fervent faith in Jesus and attended Mass daily, frequently went to Confession and briefly thought of becoming a nun myself. Sometimes sitting in the silence of the church I wept. I was twenty-four years old when I met Camilo and still a virgin. That had not changed with his absence. What had attracted me to him had been his deep spirituality, coupled with his infectious laughter, and I could not find that combination in any other man. If Camilo had not worn a black cassock, if he had not preached about the Gospel of Love with such intensity, I probably would never have fallen in love with him and my life would have been completely different.
His first letters were brimming with hope. He had obtained a position as a professor of economics at the Universidad de Colombia and soon of sociology as well, which gave him the opportunity to be with the students – “the hope of the country” – and teach them to put Christianity into practice rather than just giving alms to the poor from time to time to assuage their consciences. He told his sociology students that he didn’t want them to learn only from books, but that they should be out in the field among the impoverished masses. Given such a mission, Camilo led his pupils weekly to the shantytown of Tunjuelito so they could learn what it meant to be desperately indigent and to help the poor in their work. For most of his students, it was literally an opportunity to open their eyes anew. Although shantytowns surrounded the city of Bogota, most of Camilo’s students had never seen them up close. It was a parallel world in which they had never stepped despite its physical proximity to them. Camilo had also been appointed auxiliary chaplain of the university, which gave him something of a bullhorn to teach his students about “el amor eficaz” – an “efficacious love” – by which he meant an activist love for the poor and the oppressed. At no point did he espouse violence, but he did upset the powers that be in the Colombian Church early in his career by once preaching in a sermon that Communists could go to Heaven because their intention was to help the poor.
And then his letters took a different turn. A number of students attacked various buildings in the Plaza de Bolivar and threw stones that shattered the windows of Cardinal Luis Concha Cordoba’s residency. Twelve left-leaning students were promptly expelled from the university, including Maria Arango, a professed Communist who had once been the winner of a student beauty contest and was an intimate of Camilo. Rumors started to circulate that she and Camilo were lovers as soon as he rose to her defense and that of the other students who had been expelled. Of course it was a vicious lie, but a very efficacious one.
“Imagine!” Camilo protested in one of his letters. “I have never been with a woman and now I am being accused of being in the back seat of a car with one of my own students! And the thing is most people believe it! I heard the Cardinal snidely said, ‘Perhaps that’s why our pipe-smoking professor is so taken by the idea of married priests.’”
But Camilo had not desisted in the face of opposition and had loudly appealed the order to throw the students out of the university, since there was absolutely no evidence against them. As a result, the Cardinal fired Camilo from his post at the university and relieved him of his duties as auxiliary chaplain. Camilo was ordered to immediately move to the small church of Veracruz, where he would work as a parish priest. For the first time in his priesthood, he found it hard to comply with the vow of obedience which he had so willingly taken eight years earlier.
“Don’t think for a moment, my dearest Guitemie,” he wrote, “that I am upset because I have been demoted from being a university professor to being a simple parish priest. I have never aspired to high honors in the Church and – thank the Lord – pride has never been one of my weaknesses. I can do the slow work of God wherever He places me. But what infuriates me is that I have been silenced, that I have been punished for having spoken out in defense of my students and for other things I’ve said. I know the Cardinal has had me in his sights ever since I criticized Monsignor Joaquin Salcedo for inciting hatred against the Communists on his radio station. I don’t think hatred against anyone is consistent with the Gospel of Love and hatred against political opponents only breeds violence. I think committed Christians can ally themselves with the Communists in the struggle for social justice. As far as the Cardinal’s accusation that I am a fierce advocate of marriage for priests, that is a gross oversimplification of what I said. I merely stated that the prelates at the Second Vatican Council should look closely at the possibility of allowing some priests to marry. While marriage is not the vocation for me, I think it might make priests understand the needs of their parishioners better if they also lived in the context of a Christian family. And many great priests leave the Church because they cannot lead fruitful celibate lives. I have not come to this decision lightly or because of any self-interest. I have prayed about the matter and after years of contemplation, I have come to the conclusion that marriage for priests is justified in the eyes of God.”
I immediately responded to Camilo’s letter, asking him not to get discouraged and to continue doing his work for Colombia’s poor.
“As far as the issue of married priests,” I added, “I think your position is the right one. I have gone to church to pray that the Lord might enlighten Pope John XXIII so that he will allow marriage among priests.”
I don’t know if Camilo realized, upon receiving my letter, that I was thinking about him. He didn’t address the issue in his response, but simply re-affirmed that no matter what the Cardinal said or did, he would not be silenced.
And in that same letter he invited me to visit him in Colombia. It was not a hard decision for me to make. I took the next flight to New York City and, from there, to Bogota.
My relationship with Camilo had not ended. In fact, it was just beginning.
***
When we arrived at his apartment after Camilo picked me up at the airport of El Dorado, his mother immediately objected when he told her I would be staying in their guest room during the course of my vacation in Bogota.
“I don’t think it’s advisable,” she said, “for you to have a young woman living in your home, even if I live with you also. I know you think that you cannot possibly violate your vow of celibacy, but lust enters through the eyes and skin. You are creating a massive temptation for yourself. And even if you don’t give in to the devil’s tricks, what will the other priests say? What will Cardenal Luis Concha Cordoba think? You know a great fuss was raised about your relationship with the Communist beauty queen. Living with a beautiful Frenchwoman will only confirm the suspicions of all those who doubted you had the intention or the ability to remain chaste.”
“It’s just Guitemie!” he responded, almost as if I wasn’t even a woman and could not possibly be the object of his desires. “We’ve been friends for years. While I was in France, sometimes I’d fall asleep in her apartment and nothing happened. And I don’t care what the Cardinal thinks. I know he dislikes me with a passion. He didn’t criticize my relationship with Maria Arango because she’s a beautiful woman but because she’s a Communist. As long as I am sinless in the eyes of God, I don’t care about all the rumors spread by those who detest me for political reasons.”
Soon it became clear that I intended to stay in Bogota indefinitely and Camilo suggested that I become his secretary at the Institute of Social Instruction where he worked. By then, Camilo had convinced the Cardinal that he should be allowed to leave the parish of Veracruz and do something more in keeping with his background as a sociologist. The Cardinal had begrudgingly agreed to Camilo’s request, thinking he would just be another bureaucrat at the Institute and wouldn’t be able to continue poisoning the minds of his students with his pseudo-Communist pablum. The stated mission of the Institute was to promote “scientific” methods of production among the peasants and thus increase their productivity. At first, Camilo threw himself enthusiastically into his new position, thinking the lot of the peasants could be improved through the work of the Institute. With the passage of time, however, he became disillusioned by the Institute’s unending bureaucratic wrangling and inability to get anything done. After a project he had developed to build a school for the campesinos of Yopal failed to receive the support of the Institute’s board, he arrived home and exploded in fury. After listening to Camilo’s complaints, I convinced him not to give up on his plan to build the school so easily and to try to obtain financing elsewhere. I personally visited various authorities to resurrect the project even as Camilo was beginning to despair. Several months later, funding was secured from an unexpected source and the school in Yopal was built, but the whole experience led Camilo to doubt he could do much through “legitimate” channels. If it took so much effort just to build a rural school, how could he ever dream of doing anything more significant for Colombia’s poor?
At the time, he still didn’t believe violence was the solution to the problems of Colombians’ impoverished masses but he was certainly moving in that direction. His relentless faith in God was leading to a relentless faith in the heroism of the campesinos. He was being radicalized – no one could fail to see that – and it was happening fast! Without knowing it himself, he was moving closer to the two decisions that would transform his life – his abandonment of the priesthood and his entry into the ELN.
Working as Camilo’s secretary allowed me to spend the whole day with him, an unbridled joy, especially since I continued to live with him. Even before he left the Institute, he became increasingly active in politics and I continued to be at his side, typing everything he wrote. At the same time, the Second Vatican Council was in full swing and there was a growing call in some Catholic quarters for the law of celibacy in the Catholic Church to be rescinded or at least made optional. I didn’t broach the subject with Camilo again – I didn’t want to frighten him into deciding that we should live separately – but I did discuss the issue with some other priests who frequented Camilo and whom I had befriended. They told me the abolition of the rule on priestly chastity was a “strong possibility” and that it would “definitely” be a topic of discussion at the Second Vatican Council. I prayed for such a change relentlessly, thinking that was the only way I could possibly marry Camilo. He delighted in his priesthood and at the time I did not think he would abandon it for any reason.
***
I think what transformed Camilo from being merely a “thinker” into being an “actor” is what happened in Marquetalia. For years, the peasants of Marquetalia had called their province “an independent republic” and had refused to be subject to the dictates of the central government in Bogota. They had their own laws, their own system of agriculture, even their own army. Then President Guillermo Torres Valencia had declared that he was prepared to launch a war against the campesinos of Marquetalia if they did not subject themselves to the central government’s hegemony. With great fanfare, Valencia announced that he was prepared to spend thirty million dollars and send sixteen-thousand troops to “liberate” Marquetalia. Camilo and two other priests offered to go to the province to see if some sort of peace accord between the peasants and the government could be achieved. But as usual Cardinal Luis Concha Cordoba – whose dictates Camilo had to follow to the letter – disapproved of what Camilo proposed and repeated his mantra that priests should not be involved in politics. Camilo chafed at the Cardinal’s orders, but he was not yet at the point where he felt he could reject them outright. So a cataclysm followed as the province of Marquetalia burned.
President Valencia tried to bomb the peasants of Marquetalia into submission, but the campesinos, rather than accepting defeat, formed guerrillas with peasants from neighboring provinces and continued their resistance. That moment was a turning point in Camilo’s life. For the first time he concluded without any second thoughts that it was not sufficient for him to support the peasants from the sidelines, but that he had to assist them actively. By then, Camilo had already been preaching the need for a revolution in his public speeches, drawing greater and greater crowds, but after the government’s crime at Marquetalia, he became much more strident and said revolution was imminent, that the marginalized classes shouldn’t even consider participating in the coming elections as the results were preordained to help the oligarchy. He even began to perform small favors for the revolutionaries of Marquetalia – this reminded me of my collaboration with the Algerian militants in Paris so many years earlier – and he helped obtain false documents for the guerrilleros, hid them in churches, procured medicines for them, even helped them in the transport of hidden weapons. By then, he had already forgotten the qualms he had once expressed about supporting the violence of the Algerian revolutionaries. No longer did he believe that helping revolutionaries was a sin against God. On the contrary, after hearing of the relentless bombing of Marquetalia, he publicly declared that it was the Christian’s duty to join in the revolution. And given Castro’s success in Cuba, he asked the crowds why a similar feat could not be accomplished by the guerrillas of Colombia. He was beginning to believe that the success of a revolution in Colombia was not only possible but inevitable.
“I’m getting closer to the paso final,” he told me one night as he gave me some fiery speeches to type which he meant to deliver to boisterous crowds the following day. “I am thinking – I’m still not sure – that maybe I need to join the peasants in their war of self-defense. And I hope that when I take that final step, Guitemie, you will be with me. You are my lifelong companion. Of course, I wouldn’t brandish a weapon, but I would support the campesinos in an act of solidarity, perhaps help them remember Jesus is with them in their struggle. I am thinking that perhaps I need to risk my very life for the justice of their cause.”
“Whatever you decide to do, Camilo,” I said to him, “I will be with you. Even if we need to perish together in the mountains I will be at your side.”
By that time, Camilo already knew that Fabio Vasquez had formed his Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional – the ELN – and that his group had trounced the Colombian military at Simacota and later at Papayal.
Camilo told me that he was filled with joy.
“This group might just be what Colombia needs,” he added. “I intend to enter communications with them as soon as possible.”
***
From the outset, Cardinal Luis Concha Cordoba had criticized the sermons and speeches of his recalcitrant priest and had even decreed that abstaining from participating in the elections was a mortal sin. But as Camilo continued to deliver his speeches tinged with what the Cardinal considered Marxism, the Cardinal became increasingly irate. He demanded that Camilo resign from his post with the Institute and cease all political activity. The Cardinal told him that instead, Camilo should join a commission on Catholic sociology whose members would discuss various pastoral matters related to how to run the archdiocese of Bogota. That selfsame night Camilo wrote a brief letter in longhand, asking the Cardinal to relieve him from his duties as a priest. He felt he could not help the poor if he accepted a bureaucratic position with the diocesan curia.
“Are you sure?” I asked him as I was typing the letter. “Do you want to renounce the Church you love so much? You once told me the vow of obedience was the most difficult for you, but that it was essential. Do you really want to break that vow at this point?”
“The Cardinal wants to muzzle me, Guitemie. He’s done it before. How can I continue being a priest when the Cardinal is requiring me to abandon my most important duty as a priest, to be in solidarity with the poor? He even wants me to stop working with my little peasant school at Yopal.”
“Maybe you should sleep on it.” I told him. “Think about it a little more. Give it time.’
“I’ve been thinking about it for months, Guitemie. What I need to do in this juncture of Colombian history is something Cardinal Concha Cordoba will never tolerate. So it’s a decision between the priesthood and the revolution. I may need to end my priesthood in order to be a truer priest. Don’t think for a moment that this choice isn’t agonizing. But my conscience is telling me to do so, and one’s conscience is always the voice of God.”
“Pray about it,” I said to him. Although I realized that if he ceased being a priest a relationship with him might be possible, I did not want my own wishes to shape the advice I was giving him. I knew that abandoning the priesthood, for Camilo, would be a harrowing and painful decision.
Finally, Camilo decided not to quit the priesthood but sent a long letter to the Cardinal’s assistant explaining why his work with the archdiocese was not the best solution. The Cardinal begrudgingly agreed, but came up with an alternative. Why didn’t Camilo return to Belgium and finish his long-delayed dissertation and obtain his doctorate? At first, Camilo enthusiastically agreed, not fully digesting the ramifications of such a choice. Perhaps, he thought, some time away from Colombia would help him clear his thoughts. But as the day of his flight to Europe approached, he was beset with deep reservations about this new commission. It was clear that Cardinal Concha Cordoba wanted Camilo out of Colombia for one reason and one reason only: to cease all of his political activities on behalf of the poor. And Camilo wasn’t sure if he wanted to spend even a few months in Europe, given the importance of the present moment in Colombia’s history. For the first time in centuries, the peasants had a realistic possibility of radically transforming their lives.
Before the projected date of his flight to Belgium, Camilo continued to criss-cross the country, from Cali to Cartagena, from Medellin to Barranquilla, developing what would later be called his “platform.” The more his message spread to the masses, the greater were the crowds who attended his speeches. He no longer spoke of the “revolution” in abstract terms. He emphatically pronounced that popular violence was the only way to overthrow Colombia’s hierarchy and create an egalitarian country. At the same time, he insisted that the revolutionary struggle was a priestly and Christian mission, all of which reached the ears of Cardinal Luis Concha Cordoba and caused him a deep consternation. The Cardinal did not hesitate to tell the press that the rebel priest was deluding the masses by telling them the revolution was commanded by the Gospel. What most displeased the Cardinal – and this was on the front page of every newspaper in Bogota – was that Camilo’s clerical collar and cassock allowed him to appear as the purveyor of Church truth when in the Cardinal’s view he was preaching a doctrine antithetical to the Catholic faith. But the Cardinal did nothing to censure Camilo during those days, since Camilo had told him he had already booked his flight to Belgium.
***
On the night before Camilo’s scheduled flight out of the country, the students of La Nacional decided to give him a collective farewell and, after having accepted their invitation, Camilo appeared at the university along with me and his mother. The celebration coincided with the recent death of a student protester at the hands of the police, a fellow by the name of Jorge Useche, and the crowds were multitudinous and angry. There must have been more than fifty thousand people at the university, anxious for their master to speak and to persuade him not to leave Colombia. When Camilo began his speech, he made it clear that his projected trip to Europe did not signify that he no longer believed in the ultimate success of the Colombian revolution. The only time the crowds booed was when he mentioned his plan to leave for Belgium. Otherwise, his entire speech was met with boisterous applause.
“You are all rebels now,” he said, “since you are in the protective space of the university. So you grow long hair and beards and dress like bohemians. But as soon as you go into the so-called ‘real world,’ your revolutionary fervor wanes as you are presented with the temptations of a comfortable bourgeois life. Don’t think by throwing stones at municipal buildings, you are doing anything to help Colombians’ poor. The revolution requires sustained engagement. The Gospel of Christ tells us that we must not just help the poor, we must become the poor – in their misery, their failings, their struggle. It’s in the Beatitudes. So after you leave the hallowed halls of academia, don’t compromise with the powers that be. Don’t accept a position where you will be forced to abandon the principles which you claim are so dear to your heart today. If you dream of being an architect and that causes you to become estranged from the poor, then accept a future as a foreman in a quarry. If you dress like the poor today because you can, dress like the poor in the future because you must. Remember that Saint Francis of Assisi said the Lord is well-pleased by poverty that is voluntary. The Christ met with the lepers and championed those who were oppressed. You do so as well. And if that requires that you must pick up a weapon as a response to the violence of the State, then do it without hesitation. It is the poor who have heroically suffered violence in this country, decade after decade, but now it comes to the ruling classes. If Jesus were alive today, he would be a guerrillero.”
On our way back home from the university, Camilo was silent for a while, keeping his thoughts to himself. Then he turned to me and said, “When we get home, Guitemie, call the airline and cancel my flight. I can’t tell these brave kids to sacrifice all for the revolution if I don’t do so myself. Also, I’ll need you to type a letter to the Cardinal, telling him I have changed my plans. I want you to send it out tomorrow, first thing in the morning. I expect he will be furious.”
At some point, after an exchange of letters published in the newspapers, Camilo finally had his meeting with the Cardinal. When Camilo soon returned – apparently the meeting had taken no more than five minutes – he told me simply, “It is finished.” Then, burying his face in my chest, he began to weep.
“The Cardinal told me that I have a choice,” Camilo said amid his tears. “Either I abandon politics altogether, stop giving speeches throughout the country, or I shall be defrocked. He said my job was to celebrate the Mass, listen to Confessions and deliver the Eucharist, not to preach a political platform which is contrary to every doctrine of the Catholic Church. When I asked what part of the platform he was referring to, he simply waved his hand in the air and said, ‘all of it.’ Apparently someone gave him a transcript of the speech I delivered to the students. When I insisted that he tell me what he objected to in particular, he sat up and looked fixedly into my eyes. ‘Your attack on private property,’ he began. ‘Your exhortations that the students engage in acts of violence against the forces of public order. Your defense of peasants who refuse even to fly the Colombian flag.’ And then he sat up and said ‘that is all I have to say. Let me know your decision as soon as you can. And pray for the Lord to guide you. You are straying far from His path.’”
“You’ve made your decision, haven’t you?” I asked Camilo as I tried to console him, caressing his hair.
“I’ve dedicated my whole adult life to the Church,” he said, still sobbing. “And now I’ve being ousted from it for following an authentic Christianity.”
Up to that point, I had never been as physically close to Camilo as I was on that sultry afternoon. I felt a frisson of desire as he placed his head upon my lap and continued to bawl like a child. I gently kissed him on the forehead and let my lips linger there for a while, felt his tears run down my face, smelled the aroma of tobacco coming from his mouth. I recognized at that moment that he was vulnerable, that perhaps all that was necessary was a gentle prodding from me, that perhaps he would succumb to me in his moment of despair and love me like a woman.
But it was not to be. He steadied his nerves and rose from the sofa.
“Onward!” he cried out. “I shall be the priest for the armed struggle. It is all for the best. Now I am completely free.”
And from then on, he spent his life dedicated to the revolution. He would replace his breviary with a rifle and still have no room in his heart for a woman. We would cease to be merely friends and become comrades, but never lovers. I was destined to live a life as chaste as that of a nun, since I couldn’t possibly leave him. His house had become my convent. I told him I would support him wholeheartedly in his decision to foment the revolution, just as I had supported him at over other stage of his life.
***
At some point, Camilo parted for the mountains near the town of Santander, where Fabio Vasquez had formed a small nucleus of guerrillas under the banner of the ELN. Camilo wasn’t sure whether Fabio would ask him to stay and join in the popular war or return to Bogota. At either event, Camilo was ready to accept whatever mission was assigned to him. He had firmly decided to cast his lot with the revolutionaries, and he viewed Fabio as he had once viewed his Cardinal, as the man he had to obey without complaint or grievance. In the end, Fabio told him to return to Bogota and continue to incite the masses in support of the revolution. He was much more powerful as an agent of propaganda than as just another guerrilla fighter, for Camilo had become an incredibly popular figure in Colombia, welcomed by adoring crowds all over the country. The fact that he had defied Cardinal Concha Cordoba and given up his priesthood rather than give up the struggle to help the peasants only added luster to his message.
From then on, Camilo’s message became more and more demanding. He stated in plain terms what he had only suggested obliquely in previous speeches. And he was constantly speaking, through the length and breadth of Colombia, sometimes assembling crowds in different cities every day of the week, preaching to millions. As usual, I typed his speeches, as well as his column in a newspaper he had founded called Frente Unido. Sometimes he was so busy that he dictated his words to me as he was taking a shower, not caring that I would see him in the nude. He wasn’t embarrassed that I would see him naked, nor was his lust aroused. I had to satisfy myself that he simply didn’t see me as a woman. He saw me as a lifelong collaborator in the varying passions of his life and that was it. By then, his mother Isabel didn’t care about our relationship and I’m sure she wouldn’t have objected even if we became lovers. She detested Cardinal Concha Cordoba and celebrated Camilo’s giving up the cassock, telling him he should have done so many years earlier. And unlike Camilo, Isabel nursed political ambitions for her son.
“At some time the masses are going to clamor for you to become President of the Republic,” she told him more than once. “You’re going to accomplish much more outside the Church than you could ever have dreamed of achieving within it.”
At some point, however, all of Camilo’s plans had to be changed. Apparently the Colombian military had invaded the house of a fellow elenista in Bogota and found some correspondence which identified Camilo as a member of the ELN. The decision was made that he would have to immediately join the guerrillas in the mountains, lest he be incarcerated or assassinated in Bogota. Only three people in all of the city knew of the plan – Camilo himself, a fellow ELN revolutionary named Jaime Arenas, and myself. I was so close to him – in every sense of the word – that he couldn’t fail to tell me about the plan, even as he kept news of his projected departure from his mother.
The next day, I accompanied Camilo to the site where a guerrilla had told him to meet, in order to take Camilo to the mountains where the elenistas were congregated and fighting their popular war.
“Can’t you take me with you?” I pleaded.
“I would want nothing more,” he responded.
“Then why not?”
“Fabio doesn’t want women in the guerrilla camp. He thinks women would distract the cadres and proclaims the rebels should be prepared to leave their wives and families in service of the revolution. In some ways, the armed struggle is as demanding as the Church. My life didn’t become easier just because I was defrocked.”
“Maybe I can join you in the future. Tell Fabio that I am ready to shoot the military hijos de putas without reservation. Tell him that I was a saboteur when I was in Algeria as a teenager.”
“Violence is going to be an issue for me,” Camilo confessed. “The guerrillas told me that they shot a traitor, but that he survived and was sent to a hospital. Two elenistas, feigning to be his friends, sought access to his room and then stabbed him to death. I told Fabio I wasn’t sure if I could engage in such conduct.”
“Are you prepared to kill, Camilo? You’re going to have to do so if you join the ELN guerrillas.”
“I don’t know, Guitemie. When Fabio asked me the same question, I told him I wasn’t sure. But he didn’t press me on the issue and quickly changed the subject. I think I may be more useful to the ELN as a symbol rather than as an actual fighter.”
“Don’t deceive yourself, Camilo. If you’re going to do this, do it with open eyes.”
“I’m taking my pocket Bible with me,” he said. “I’m sure le maitre will be with me, that He’ll direct my paths.”
“Oh, my don Quichotte,” I said. “How I shall miss you.”
“Oh, my Dulcinea,” he responded. “I promise I shall write to you.”
“Dulcinea and don Quichotte were never lovers, were they? Tell me, Camilo, why didn’t you ever take me as your own, even after you ceased being a priest? You must know that I would have gladly surrendered in your arms.”
“First, because I never ceased being a priest. I consider myself a priest to this day. It is because I am a priest that I’ve decided to join in the armed struggle of the peasants of Colombia. And second – how shall I say this? – second because my love for you has always been deeper than carnal love. Having sexual relations with you would somehow have diminished that. I don’t know how to explain it, my Guitemie. Perhaps I feared that knowing you in that sense would have polluted the deep spiritual love I felt for you. Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila shared a profound spiritual friendship which lasted a lifetime, but they were never lovers in a physical sense. Saint John was her spiritual director and Confessor. I assure you there can be no closer bond.”
Then the guerrilla arrived, ready to take Camilo to the new world that he had chosen. Camilo hugged me and kissed me chastely on the lips. But there was not there the excitement that should come when two mouths meet.
“Goodbye, sweet Guitemie.”
“Goodbye,” I said.
That was the last time I saw him. I wouldn’t even see his corpse after he was killed, for the Colombian military kept his burial site a secret, afraid it would become a site of pilgrimage for those inspired by his message and his life.
