(LifeSiteNews) — December 22 will be the 50th anniversary of the martyrdom of Carlos Alberto Sacheri, who was besieged by a commando of the People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP) terrorist group while he was returning from Mass with his family in Buenos Aires. I do not hesitate to recognize that his death was a martyrdom, a fruit of his charity. There is throughout the history of the Church a history of martyrdom. Martyrdom does not consist in the suffering imposed on the martyr, but the charity that drives him to embrace the Cross. Charity, I stress, is the agape of the New Testament. The martyr surrenders himself to death with Christian fortitude.
Sacheri knew that his hour was approaching, though the attack was in fact a surprise. Almost two months prior, on October 28, 1974, philosopher and maestro of Catholic nationalism Jordán Bruno Genta was martyred at the hands of the ERP as he was leaving for Mass at a nearby parish. Sacheri, a Catholic thinker and patriot in a country beset by Marxist terrorists ready to turn it into another Cuba, understood that he was next.
He exercised his charity at his numerous conferences, both before educated university audiences and in popular settings. He was a faithful servant of the Church; he did not refuse to speak to a small parish group if requested. His Thomistic inspiration corresponded to his study of the Angelic Doctor under Father Julio Meinvielle. He also cultivated this philosophical inclination at Laval University in Quebec, Canada, where he frequented another teacher, Charles De Koninck, who came out against the personalist humanism of Jacques Maritain and opposed him on the primacy of the common good. Sacheri strengthened this approach in his study of the social doctrine of the Church developed in papal encyclicals.
Read the rest at LifeSiteNews…
