UVALDE, Texas – The day after an 18-year-old gunman massacred 21 elementary school students and teachers, state political leaders expressed outrage over the shooting, but quickly ruled out the possibility of new gun laws to curb violence. Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller was listening.
When he finished the briefing in the local high school media, he made a spontaneous and passionate call to some of the many journalists who had gathered in Uvalde: The nation must review its gun laws, limiting access to weapons designed to maximize carnage and suffering, He said. He must also abandon what he described as a disturbing cultural embrace of the violence posed by these weapons.
“We have to!” said Archbishop Garcia-Siller, who heads the archdiocese of St. Anthony. “We’re supposed to promote life, people’s lives.”
Since the attack, the archbishop, whose vast domain of approximately 796,000 Catholics includes Uvalde, has become one of the most visible and vocal advocates of gun control in South Texas.
He has given sermons, given public meetings, appeared on national television, and given interviews to local and international journalists. He argued that demanding changes to the laws of arms is no different from the Roman Catholic Church’s opposition to abortion or capital punishment, joining a collection of bishops who have pushed for the Church to take a stronger position in the gun debate.
However, unlike others, he is making this case in a place where guns are deeply rooted in culture, and most public leaders boast of their loyalty to the Second Amendment.
“We have made guns an idol in this country,” Archbishop Garcia-Siller said in a recent appearance on MSNBC. “I wholeheartedly believe that gun control needs to be done more radically.”
For the most part, the archbishop has been consumed in trying to pastor a grieving community, making the hour-long journey to Uvalde from St. Anthony’s again and again over the past few weeks, leading masses and presiding over the funerals. He grouped with teenagers who lost their parents. He was also asked to advise the mother whose son shot his grandmother and then assaulted Robb Elementary School on May 24th.
However, speaking also felt part of his mission, although he knew he did not expect a fully receptive audience within his archdiocese, which spans nearly two dozen counties around St. Anthony.
In an interview with The New York Times, he was asked how to reconcile his call to the community with his long hug of guns, his response was abrupt. “Weapons cannot be reconciled with life,” he said.
Gun control activists said he was speaking at a crucial juncture, as they maintained with some optimism that the anger and anguish of the shooting could lead people to reconsider long-standing views on gun rights.
“It gives Christians, Catholics in particular, a moment to pause when they notice the dissonance,” said Johnny Zokovitch, executive director of Pax Christi USA, a Catholic organization that advocates nonviolence, and noted how the comments from Archbishop “contrasts sharply with political leadership in Texas.”
In sermons, Archbishop Garcia-Siller, 65, may be mild. In a conversation, his voice is sometimes barely recorded above a whisper. But the archbishop’s position has been inflexible. It has also been, in a way, not at all surprising.
In more than a decade as archbishop in San Antonio, Mr. García-Siller, a native of San Luis Potosí in central Mexico, has developed a reputation for talking about social issues, especially in support of undocumented immigrants. He also harassed conservatives in 2019 after a gunman against Latinos opened fire on a Walmart in El Paso, calling on President Donald J. Trump on Twitter to “stop racism, starting with yourself.” (He later deleted the post and apologized for criticizing one person instead of focusing on the bigger issue.)
“He is known for taking a more progressive, pro-immigrant stance,” said Jacob Friesenhahn, who runs the religious studies program at Our Lady of the Lake University, a Catholic school in San Antonio.
A contingent of conservative Catholics argue that the church’s teachings, even on self-defense and the preservation of the common good, justify owning and carrying a gun. But scholars say Archbishop Garcia-Siller’s position is more in line with Catholic teachings and represents a strong position among Catholic leaders that has arisen from his exasperation at incessant violence.
“I don’t think it’s at all,” said Father Dorian Llywelyn, a Jesuit priest and president of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California. “It’s not like he’s making a radical new statement.”
Other Catholic leaders have spoken out against weapons in the days following the Uvalde massacre. Bishop Daniel Flores of the Diocese of Brownsville, Texas, said on Twitter, “Don’t tell me guns aren’t the problem, people are.” Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, who, as Archbishop of Chicago, has become one of the Catholic Church’s most persistent critics of armed violence and the forces behind it, acknowledged that efforts to change they might seem useless given the recurring bloodshed.
“The magnitude of the crisis and its horror,” Cardinal Cupich said in a statement, “makes it all too easy to raise your hands and declare ‘nothing can be done.’ But that is the advice of despair, and we are a people of hope. “
In a letter to Congress in response to lawmakers’ efforts to enact some arms control measures, several bishops urged elected officials to take “concrete action to achieve broader social renewal.”
“Among the many steps to address this endemic of violence,” they wrote, “is the approval of reasonable arms control measures.”
Reaction to Archbishop Garcia-Siller’s stance on gunfire among Catholics in South Texas has been marked not only by long-standing political beliefs and his horror at the Uvalde shooting, but also by their views on how and when it is appropriate for church leaders to step in. such a heated and seemingly insoluble debate.
“This is a political issue,” said Carlos Zimmerle, 54, after a recent Mass at a Catholic parish on the West Side of San Antonio. “Not because of religion.”
For others, it simply gave voice to the painful emotions fueled by the horrifying violence.
“The archbishop is like all of us,” said Daniel Casanova, 66, a gun owner he worships in a parish in Helotes, a town of just over 9,000 people northwest of San Antonio. “We’re human, and I think he sees the evil we’re all seeing.”
Scholars and other Catholics say the influence of church leaders has waned in recent years, eroded by institutional failures in responding to sexual abuse and a shift in society from traditional religious worship. By taking such a firm stand on arms, Archbishop Garcia-Siller is testing his dominance among his flock.
But beyond that, the response to the archbishop shows the broad spectrum of opinions that now coexist within the Catholic Church.
Nancy Kaluza, who adores Helotes, said she thought the archbishop had a right to say what she thought, and she largely agreed with him.
“I’ve never been able to find any valid reason for ordinary people to have assault weapons,” Ms. Kaluza, 72 years old. “I’m not against hunting, I’m not against having a gun to protect myself, but there’s no reason for people other than military and SWAT equipment, etc., to have assault weapons.”
Raymond Remirez, 59, said he understood why the archbishop raised the issue. But Mr. Remírez, who has no weapons, was seriously considering buying one.
He rolled up a list of shootings, including one last month at a grocery store in Buffalo and another in 2017 at a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, a community outside of San Antonio. “It could happen here,” Mr. Remírez. “I’d rather be judged by 12 than by six.”
But the archbishop said his mandate was to provide moral clarity to inspire compassion and change.
Between vigils and meetings with the families of the victims in Uvalde, he has visited Catholic schools spread across South Texas for the end-of-year festivities. He also gave a special sermon for children at a recent Mass in the Sacred Heart, the Catholic parish of Uvalde.
In the interviews, he repeatedly refers to what he had heard from elementary school children navigating at such a confusing time. One student, he said, asked if they should pray for the gunman and his family. Another said he believed God would help them. “We’ll be fine,” the archbishop recalled as the boy said.
“Oh, my God, go,” Archbishop Garcia-Siller said, startled as he recalled the interaction. He shared a line from the Gospel of Matthew that he has often repeated lately: “Let the children come to me.”
Faced with such a controversial issue as gun laws, he said, wisdom could also be drawn from children whose lives were lost.
“Can we let the little ones come to us? Can we pay attention to them? “Said the archbishop.” These innocent people who died become the source of light for us: to live better and to do better. “