Homages To Angelelli
On 2 August 2006, two days before the 30th anniversary of Angelelli's death, President Néstor Kirchner signed a decree declaring 4 August a national day of mourning, and gave a speech in the Casa Rosada "commemorating the religious workers victims of state terrorism". Alba Lanzillotto, a member of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo who used to attend mass sung by bishop Angelelli, spoke then regarding the belated homage of the Catholic hierarchy: "I don't want Monsignor to be made into a stamp. He has to be alive in our memory."
On the day of the anniversary, Jorge Bergoglio conducted mass in the Cathedral of La Rioja in memory of Angelelli. In his homily he claimed that Angelelli "got stones thrown at him because he preached the Gospel, and shed his blood for it", though he did not explicitly mention the involvement of the dictatorship in the crime. Bergoglio also quoted Tertullian's sentence " blood of the martyrs seed of the Church". This was the first official homage of the Church to Angelelli, and the first time that the word martyr was used with reference to his murder by Church authorities in this context. After the mass, about 2,000 people (including the governor of La Rioja Ángel Maza) paid homage to Angelelli in Punta de los Llanos, the site of his death.
Read more about this topic: Enrique Angelelli