CNA Newsroom, Jan 4, 2023 / 08:30 am
The pastor of Holy Cross parish in the Archdiocese of Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia, Father Raúl Arrázola, denounced the violent intrusion of a group of policemen into his church on Sunday, Jan. 1.
In a statement to the Bolivian newspaper El Deber, Arrázola said that a group of police officers “violated private property” and “the right of asylum that churches have and desecrated it” by forcefully entering the church to arrest people who took refuge inside.
Demonstrations were taking place in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra by citizens protesting the arrest of the governor of the Department of Santa Cruz (similar to a province), Luis Fernando Camacho, who is accused of participating in the massive protests of 2019 that ended with President Evo Morales resigning from office and fleeing to Mexico and then to Argentina, where both countries granted him political asylum.
The ex-president returned to Bolivia a year later on the day after the current president, Luis Arce, was sworn into office. Arce is a member of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party, founded and led by Morales, and considers the 2019 protests to have been a coup d’état.