Santa Lucía Milpas Altas (Guatemala) (Guatemala) (AFP) – Guatemalan priest Augusto Ramírez, tortured and killed by soldiers during his country's civil war (1960-1996) for refusing to reveal the confession of a guerrilla, was beatified on Saturday during a ceremony in an indigenous village.

Published on: 08/11/2026 - 15:54

The Franciscan was riddled with bullets on November 7, 1983 in the center of Guatemala City, after escaping with his hands tied and his bare feet from the vehicle in which he was detained.

The civil war in Guatemala, which pitted security forces against guerrilla groups for 36 years, left around 200,000 dead and missing. The assassination of Ramírez, considered a martyr for "the heroic defense of the secret of confession", remains unpunished to this day.

The beatification rite was celebrated by Cardinal Francisco Robles, delegate of Pope Leo XIV, in the indigenous Mayan village of Santa Lucía Milpas Altas, some 35 km west of the capital. According to the police, more than 10,000 faithful attended the mass, in the presence of around thirty bishops and 300 priests.

“Although his death 43 years ago was a cause for great consternation and pain, today this blood shed out of fidelity is a cause for joy,” the Guatemalan Episcopal Conference said in a statement.

Born on November 5, 1937 in Guatemala, Augusto Ramírez trained in Nicaragua and in Spain where he was ordained a priest in 1967. Eleven years later, he took up his duties as pastor of the San Francisco El Grande church, in the colonial city of Antigua, near where he was beatified on Saturday.

In June 1983, a guerrilla, Fidel Coroy, arrived at the church to confess to Ramírez. After this confession, the priest, accused of collaborating with the left-wing guerrillas, was arrested and tortured. Fidel Coroy, for his part, had survived the torture and, given up for dead, abandoned by his captors on the side of a road.

© 2026 AFP

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