Memento of the Living and the Dead: A First-Person Account of Church, Violence, and Resistance in Latin America

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In Memento of the Living and the Dead, Phillip Berryman relates his experiences as a Catholic priest in Panama City starting in 1965, and then, after leaving the priesthood to marry, in Central America in the late 1970s, as conflict and repression rose in Guatemala and El Salvador and the Sandinista revolution overthrew the Somoza dictatorship. Berryman was leading an ecumenical delegation in El Salvador when Archbishop Oscar Romero was murdered at the altar, and was at the archbishop’s funeral when it was attacked. Under increasing surveillance in Guatemala, he and his family returned to the United States in 1980, where he took part in the movement against US interference in Central America. Through study, travel, and research in South America, he followed the emergence and evolution of liberation theology and the rise of evangelical Pentecostalism. This memoir, which traces a trajectory from pre-Vatican II Catholicism to the Pope Francis era, presents the hopes and struggles of a generation of people, many of whom paid with their lives, starting with his friend Hector Gallego in Panama in 1971. Central threads are the struggle of the poor for a more dignified life and the defense of human rights.