Bishop criticizes the Government of Spain for reducing sentences for ETA terrorists

The Bishop of Vitoria (Spain), Mons. Juan Carlos Elizalde, has criticized the Spanish Government’s pact to reduce prison sentences for ETA terrorists, emphasizing that trivializing the meaning of punishment contributes to re-victimizing the affected people.

A “terrible injustice”

In an interview given to the radio program The Church Lantern of Cadena COPE, owned by the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), Mons. Elizalde has explained that this type of political reforms “have a part of terrible injustice, because in the end the proportionality of the penalty is an objective fact.”

“The penalty has to be in accordance with the damages, it has to repair public order and preserve security, but it also has a healing medicinal value,” he stated, to conclude regarding the government pact that involves “trivializing the meaning of punishment and reducing it.” unfairly”, which contributes to “re-victimizing the affected people”. “It is an objective injustice, it is playing with pain,” the prelate stressed.

A penal reform close to being approved

At the end of July, the main political group of the Government coalition, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, promoted a modification of the Penal Code that will result in the reduction of sentences for ETA terrorists, by discounting the time they have spent as prisoners in other European countries before being tried and sentenced in Spain.

The PSOE maintains a delicate parliamentary alliance that includes the EH Bildu party, whose general coordinator was convicted of belonging to ETA.

This initiative would be close to being approved in the Congress of Deputies despite having been rejected this Monday, October 14, by the opposition majority in the Senate. If the vote of the absolute majority of the deputies is obtained (at least 176 votes out of the current 350), the reform would go ahead and be sent for the signature of the King of Spain and its official publication.

“Five decades of pain and tears”

Mons. Elizalde explained, exemplifying the forgiveness of Saint John Paul II to his attacker Ali Agca, who never underwent a reduction in the penal consequences of his actions, that “there is a personal responsibility that cannot be avoided, that forgiveness cannot be avoided.” exempts from responsibility.”

The Bishop of Vitoria summarized that Basque society “is beginning to manage the wounds left by five decades of pain and tears,” and therefore it is the job of the entire society to “accompaniment, motivate forgiveness, understand the causes for try to have all the resources and not stay stuck in the past to forgive.”

For the prelate, it is essential that the wounds “do not close falsely, because then infection and social collapse occur.” To achieve this, mediations are necessary, he explained: “Thank God there are civil and religious teams that are having meetings and dialogues between the affected people, between the victims of ETA and its perpetrators.”

Regarding terrorists, Bishop Elizalde stated that “a person does not lose his dignity because he made a mistake, because he acted brutally. He also has the right, precisely, for that light within him to emerge, because he continues to be a human person with dignity.”

Bishop Elizalde also explained that the Catholic Church has an essential role in reconciliation, because “it has the experience of forgiveness as DNA” because “guilt has been redeemed, we have been saved. Therefore, the hope is always for conversion, it is of peace. The horizon is always one of resurrection. This is Christian optimism, it is not vain optimism.”