Activist priest profiled

About 30 years ago, when Roy Bourgeois, a Vietnam veteran who had won the Purple Heart and returned to the U.S., heard that Jesuit Father Daniel Berrigan was appearing nearby to talk about protesting that war, he rounded up friends to oppose the priest's appearance. Berrigan, to Bourgeois, was a traitor.

How Bourgeois then became a Maryknoll priest who has served time in federal prisons for his own protests against the American government is the subject of "Father Roy: Inside the School of Assassins," airing on many PBS stations during April (WHMT in Schenectady has not yet scheduled the program).

The one-hour documentary makes no pretense at being objective. Funded by several liberal organizations as well as by at least two religious orders (the Maryknolls and Dominicans), the program has a powerful case to make: that the U.S. military runs a school that trains Latin American thugs in techniques of torture and brutality. Those thugs then return home to maim and murder poor people who want a better life and try to get it by organizing unions, demanding better health care and seeking freedom.

Georgia school

The school in question is the School of the Americas, located in Fort Benning, Georgia. The Pentagon calls the SOA, a 50-year-old institution funded by taxpayers, a successful program that teaches Latin American military personnel how to counter rebels, establish democracy, protect human rights and link with U.S. interests.

According to protestors like Father Bourgeois, however, the SOA (which they have nicknamed the School of Assassins) does none of those things. Instead, it helps prop up military dictatorships, trains troops to torture and murder their fellow citizens, and maintains unjust political and social systems that repress people.

Far from protecting human rights, they say, SOA graduates have trampled them again and again. Among the victims of SOA graduates, charge the critics, are Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador, the four Churchwomen who were raped and murdered there, several Jesuit priests, and an entire village of people, including small children.

To tell that story, "Father Roy: Inside the School of Assassins" focuses on a missionary who was expelled from Bolivia for his efforts to help the poor and who now concentrates on getting the SOA closed.

Life story

His story is fascinating. A Louisianan who wanted to grow rich from oil exploration and who volunteered to fight in Vietnam, he slowly found himself turned by God in another direction, partly through the example of a priest who ministered to war orphans.

That inspiration led to his decision to forsake riches and enter the priesthood, his experience as a missionary in South America, his experimentation with cloistered life, and his commitment to social protest, a commitment which has led to his imprisonment several times. In fact, he is currently in jail.

The documentary examines the issues surrounding the School of the Americas mainly from one side, allowing much time to the protestors' claims and evidence. An Army spokesman is given some rebuttal time, but the program does not pretend to be an unemotional witness. On the contrary, its repetitive use of news footage of the victims of Latin American atrocities shows that its stance is firmly against the SOA.

As a profile of a priest who has put himself on the line and as a presentation of the case against the U.S. military and the federal budget, "Father Roy: Inside the School of Assassins" is an intriguing hour of television.

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