Word: efrain
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...point, the speech was the kind of bizarre and rambling homily that Guatemalans have come to expect from their born-again military President, Brigadier General José Efrain Ríos Montt, 56. As he has almost every Sunday evening since he assumed power in a March 1982 coup, the silver-mustached member of the California-based Christian Church of the Word last week appeared on Guatemalan television to deliver a sermon on patriotism, morality, local politics and the revelations of divine wisdom. He advised citizens against the use of drugs to combat high blood pressure because, he said...
...Paul and pro-Sandinista youths. But if the Pope had endured heckling from Marxists at the Managua Mass, he showed last week that he was no friend of anti-Communists who violate human rights. During a private meeting at Guatemala's National Palace, he chastised the President, General Efrain Rios Montt, for executing six men, who had been convicted of subversive activity, on the eve of the papal visit. The Pontiff saved some of his strongest criticism of injustice for a Mass attended by President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier in Haiti...
...script reads the same in Guatemala, where General Efrain Rios Montt seized power last year in a coup d' etat. Although estimates of the total deaths under Guatemala's several decades of authoritarian rule range from 50,000 to 100,000, Reagan decided that the country had gotten "a bad rap." So he certified Guatemala as having made notable progress in respect for human rights, and obtained $6.3 million in war materials for Gen. Montt (even though 8000 died in the first eight months after his takeover). The country officially remains in a "state of siege" as rebels fight authoritarian...
There were other reminders last week of the difficult political obstacles the Pope had to overcome if his spiritual mission was to succeed. John Paul's Guatemala stop, scheduled for Monday, ran into trouble when President Efrain Rios Montt ordered the execution of six suspected terrorists, ignoring a last-minute papal plea for clemency. In a message to Guatemalan Bishop Prospero Pernados del Barrio, John Paul confirmed that he still planned to visit Guatemala but condemned the executions. Said the Pope: "I cannot fail to think with immense pain of the recent executions that have taken place in your nation...
...which several priests hold high positions despite papal displeasure. John Paul will visit Panama and El Salvador, the first time a modern Pope has traveled to a nation in the throes of an all-out civil war. Then he moves on to Guatemala, where he will meet General Efrain Rios Montt, an eccentric born-again Protestant whose regime is accused of anti-Catholic bias as well as the murder of a large number of Indian civilians. After a day trip to Honduras, the Pope will fly from Guatemala to Haiti, making a six-hour stop in Belize. In the Haitian...