Samuel Huntington

The Third Wave

The national churches brought many resources to their war against authoritarianism. Church organizations and church buildings provided refuge and support for regime opponents. Church radio stations, newspapers, and periodicals articulated the opposition cause. As a countrywide and popular institution, the Church had, as in Brazil, a 'national network of members who could be mobilized.' It was, in a sense, a latent national political machine with hundreds or thousands of priests, nuns, and lay activists who could provide people power for opposition protests. The Church often had leaders, such as Cardinals Arns in Brazil, Sin in the Philippines, Romero in El Salvador, and Kim in Korea, who were highly skilled politically. The Church created organizations such as the Vicariate of Solidarity in Chile to provide support to the opposition and the second National Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL, or 'Nunfrel' as it was often called) in the Philippines to promote return to the electoral process and to ensure honest elections. (The first NAMFREL had been created for similar purposes by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in 1953.)

In addition, of course, the Church was a transnational organization. On occasion Vatican influence could be brought to bear, as well as that of other national churches and Catholics in other countries. The Brazilian Church, for instance, mobilized support abroad 'through the Vatican, sympathetic clergy and laymen in Europe and the U.S., and other human rights activists outside Brazil, thereby generating protests in the U.S. and European press. Criticism from those quarters made the Brazilian military especially uneasy.'

With the accession of John Paul II, the Pope and the Vatican moved to central stage in the Church's struggle against authoritarianism. In March 1979 in his first encyclical John Paul II denounced violations of human rights and explicitly identified the Church as 'the guardian' of freedom 'which is the condition and basis for the human person's true dignity.' Papal visits came to play a key role. John Paul II seemed to have a way of showing up in full pontifical majesty at critical points in democratization processes: Poland, June 1979, June 1983, and June 1987; Brazil, June-July 1980; the Philippines, February 1981; Argentina, June 1982; Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, March 1983; Korea, May 1984; Chile, April 1987; Paraguay, May 1988.

The purpose of these visits, like that of his many visits elsewhere, was always said to be pastoral. Their effects were almost invariably political. In a few cases, as in Korea and the Philippines, local supporters of democratization expressed regret that the Pope had not been more outspoken in backing their cause. More generally, however, he was quite explicit in supporting local churches in their struggles with authoritarian governments, and in Poland, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, Paraguay, and elsewhere he clearly identified himself with the opposition to the regime. His greatest impact, of course, was in Poland, where his dramatic 1979 visit, as one Polish bishop said, altered 'the mentality of fear, the fear of police and tanks, of losing your job, of not getting promoted, of being thrown out of school, of failing to get a passport. People learned that if they ceased to fear the system, the system was helpless.'