Friars Seek Sainthood for Defender of Indian Rights

Bartolome de las Casas, a hero to liberation theologians for his defense of the American Indians during the Spanish conquest, will be proposed for canonization in the Roman Catholic Church, the Dominican order announced in Berkeley.

“Las Casas was the first person to speak out for the rights of Indians in the New World,” said Father Antoninus Wall, O.P., president of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley. “There are some who would like to see him as the patron saint of the Third World,” Wall added.

A two-day seminar on Las Casas was held at the school this week, one of a series of symposiums around the world commemorating the Spaniard’s birth 500 years ago. Liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez of Peru, who credits Las Casas with inspiration for church work on behalf of the poor, was one of the speakers in Berkeley.

Las Casas’ father was aboard Christopher Columbus’ second voyage to the New World, and Las Casas himself made the trip in about 1502 when he was 18, arriving in Hispaniola (now Haiti). In 1516, appalled at the exploitation of natives in mines and maltreatment of the Indian women, Las Casas returned to Spain to plead their case with the king.

He went from colonist in the Antilles to priest, Dominican friar, a Central American missionary and eventually bishop of a vast diocese based in southern Mexico.

Before he died in 1566, he had crossed the Atlantic 10 times and was “still ‘telling the King’ that millions of Indians had been exterminated by conquest, (economic exploitation) and slavery--and still urging massive reforms,” wrote historian Helen Rand Parish of Berkeley, who has provided much of the research work for the canonization cause.

Although the Dominican friars voted in 1983 to seek sainthood for Las Casas, the formal public announcement was made Wednesday in Berkeley by Father Damian Byrne, O.P., master general of the order in Rome.

In recent months Archbishop John O’Connor of New York has mentioned the possibility that he will seek canonization for his New York City predecessor, Cardinal Terence J. Cooke, and Catholic social worker Dorothy Day. The process is long and detailed, however, as has been the case so far for Father Junipero Serra, founder of the California missions.

The multiracial Wilshire United Methodist Church has been chosen for NBC-TV’s live broadcast of an Easter service on April 7. Senior Minister William Boggs and five assistant clergy are designing a service especially for television. The 1,200-member church is 40% white, 30% black and 20% Korean, with 10% other ethnic minorities.