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Juan José Gerardi Conedera was born in Guatemala City on December 27, 1922. He was a Roman Catholic bishop and human rights defender. For decades he worked in the countryside among the Mayan population. In 1988, the Episcopal Conference of Guatemala appointed him to participate in the National Reconciliation Commission, to begin the process of accounting for abuses during the civil war. He was also the driving force for creating the Office of Human Rights of the Archdiocese (ODHAG). Part of this institution’s work was the project Recuperation of the Historic Memory (REMHI). The results of the project were presented on April 24, 1998. On April 26, 1998, he was assassinated in his garage. In 2001, three army officers were convicted of his death and sentenced to long prison terms. A priest was convicted as an accomplice and also sentenced.
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Monseñor Gerardi was the second son of Doña Laura Conedera Polanco de Gerardi and Don Manuel Benito Gerardi, the latter an...
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References
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ODHAG (2001) Sentencia Penal. Causa No. C-7-2000. Organismo Judicial, Guatemala. http://www.odhag.org.gt/Caso%20Gerardi/Sent%20Caso%20Ger%20Prim%20Inst_1.pdf. Accessed 24 Oct 2017
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Althoff, A. (2019). Gerardi Conedera, Monseñor Juan José. In: Gooren, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions. Religions of the World. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27078-4_513
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