Annotations for Dates: 1993-05-19

In the poverty-stricken South Bronx, a controversy has erupted over the alister of an activist Puerto Rican minister. Supporters of Episcopalian priest, Father Luis Barrios, who preaches liberation theology want him reinstated at St. Anne's Church. But his superiors say Father Barrios has gone beyond the boundaries of a good Episcopalian minister. From the South Bronx, Mandalit del Barco reports.

[Background--Sounds--Crowd chanting] Supporters of Reverend Luis Barrios have been rallying with protest songs and prayers in front of the city's episcopal cathedrals, St. John The Divine. On May 19th, the popular priest was suspended from his parish at St. Anne's Church without explanation by Episcopal Bishop Richard Green. Parishioners of the mostly working-class Puerto Rican parish are furious over Barrios's suspension from a church that's been politically active since the 1960s.

Other priests have been doing exactly what Luis Barrios has been doing, and they have not been removed, they have not been taken out, they have not been suspended, and that's our concern that it's because he is the Puerto Rican priest at South Bronx that he's being removed.

Episcopal Bishop Richard Green, who notified Barrios of his suspension in the letter has been unavailable for comment and he reportedly refused to discuss his reasons with St. Anne's vestry, but his spokesman told the New York Times that Barrios had displayed vocational immaturity when he blessed the unions of gay couples and when he allowed a Roman Catholic priest and bishops from so-called schismatic churches to use St. Anne's. [Background--Sounds--Crowd chanting] On a recent Sunday, Barrios's supporters calling church leaders homophobic and racist rush the altar of St. Anne's Church chanting in solidarity and forcing a replacement priest to cancel mass. Meanwhile, this protest continued, Father Barrios has been waiting it out in another church, St. Mary's in Harlem. Looking back, Barrios says his troubles began in January after he delivered a sermon critical of the church.

My concern in that a particular moment in that sermon was that we talking about justice and transforming this society and the church need to play a very important role in changing society and getting into something that we call justice, but we need to start doing some cleaning inside the church. So my biggest concern, and it's still my biggest concern, is that we are in a church that is racist and homophobic, and if we are not going to deal with this, how we going to deal with the society preaching what we are not really practicing.

As a black Puerto Rican, Barrios wonders of his work for independence of the island led to his suspension, or perhaps he says it was his support for gay and lesbian rights, but being politically active is something he's always believed in, even as a child in Santurce, Puerto Rico.

The whole point was that I grew up in a church where the priest was a member of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party and at the same time a very respectful priest in the denomination. And I never saw the contradiction between politic and religion. And of course he always told me that do not believe that there is a separation between politic and religion. So I grew up with that in my mind.

Barrios is still waiting for church superiors to communicate with him directly. He also believes church leaders underestimated the impact of their action on St. Anne's worshipers.

This is a Latino Black priest. Nobody's going to do nothing or sometimes is this racism that do not let you see that this person has some capacity or some organizational skill. So they took it for granted that nothing was going to happen and said, oh God, that's very dangerous to commit that kind of stupid mistakes.

Supporters say they plan to keep the pressure on until Father Barrios gets a public apology and is reinstated. Church officials, meanwhile, still decline to comment on the case. For Latino USA, I'm Mandalit del Barco in New York.