Paraguay’s Bishops Break With Authoritarian Rule

Under Alfredo Stroessner’s authoritarian rule in Paraguay, the Catholic Church underwent a dramatic shift from collaborator to critic. Influenced by the Second Vatican Council and the Medellín Conference, bishops began reframing the regime’s violent repression of indigenous peoples as a human rights crisis. In 1969, they resisted participation in the dictator’s annual pilgrimage to the Virgin of Caacupé and instead organized a public vigil of penitence. This act of symbolic defiance made the Church’s stance unmistakably clear. When police responded with beatings and violence against peaceful demonstrators, the Church continued to escalate. In 1971, bishops withdrew allegiance further by excommunicating a top government minister and the chief of police, publicly severing moral ties with Stroessner’s regime.

These high-profile acts revealed the brutality of the state’s assimilationist and land-grabbing policies targeting indigenous communities. Church leaders used international networks and public platforms to redeem both the role of faith institutions and the dignity of indigenous resistance. As global attention mounted, spurred by anthropologists’ charges of genocide and “ethnocide,” the Church’s moral authority lent credibility to opposition forces at home and abroad. By 1988, the Church had become a unifying force across sectors, culminating in a silent mass procession of 35,000 led by Archbishop Rolón, the largest anti-regime demonstration in Stroessner’s 34-year rule. This steady, escalating pressure helped weaken the regime’s grip, leading to its collapse in early 1989.

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