EL SALVADOR: Attempted murder cause for great concern, bishop says

By ENS staff, March 19, 2010 [Episcopal News Service] Bishop Martín Barahona of the Anglican Church of El Salvador has said that a March 17 attempt on his life is cause for serious concern in a country that has been rife with gang violence and criminal activity since the end of the civil war in the early 1990s.

"I leave the authorities to do their investigation, but I am worried by this kind of violence we are all suffering," said Barahona during a March 18 press conference.

Barahona was accompanied by his driver Francis Martínez and a church musician on March 17 in Santa Tecla, El Salvador, when an unknown man approached and started shooting at them. Barahona was unharmed, but Martinez was hit in the stomach and his arm was broken by one of the gunshots.

Bishop Medardo Gómez of the Lutheran Church in El Salvador spoke at the press conference and expressed solidarity with Barahona. "As an ecumenical movement of the churches, we are worried," he said. "When the life of a man of God is attacked we cannot but think that it is the church that is being persecuted and that is why we are asking the authorities to investigate."

Gómez said it is would have been sad had another bishop been killed just days before the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Salvadoran Roman Catholic Archbishop Óscar Romero.

Barahona, 67, became bishop of the Anglican Episcopal Church of El Salvador in 1992, and is the primate of the Iglesia Anglicana de la Region Central de America (IARCA). He is scheduled to participate in a service commemorating the anniversary of Romero's assassination on March 27 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

The Episcopal Church, at General Convention 2009, added Romero and the Martyrs of El Salvador to Lesser Feasts and Fasts, with observations falling on March 24, the day of Romero's 1980 assassination.

The Diocese of Los Angeles -- which shares a companion relationship with the Diocese of El Salvador -- has said it is responding with prayer to the news of the March 17 shooting. A March 24 Memorial Mass will be held at Trinity Episcopal Church, Los Angeles, in memory of Romero.