Cardinal from El Salvador visits Long Island

El Salvador's first cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal José Gregorio Rosa Chávez, visited Long Island, New York  last week and its large community of Salvadoran immigrants.   Long Island has suffered a series of recent murders tied to MS-13, and so Rosa Chávez was asked to offer his thoughts on dealing with the gangs:

Rosa Chávez, in an interview taped Friday by Telecare, the diocese’s cable television station, said that “in my country, there is a policy of severe repression” against gang members, with the philosophy that “a good gang member is a dead gang member.”... 

But the cardinal said the approach has proven ineffective, leading to an escalation of violence. 

“What happens? The gang member is a cornered animal, he becomes more savage, and they are killing police,” he said in Spanish. “That methodology doesn’t solve anything.” 

“At the same time, the people suffer because of what gang members do. They celebrate when a gang member dies,” he said. “We are at a moment that is very dehumanizing.” 

Rosa Chávez, who long served as a parish priest, said he has participated in gang prevention programs run by the church in El Salvador and has found that many gang members’ home lives are fraught with anger and dysfunction.

Gang interventions must deal with some of these root causes, he said.

For more of the visit of Rosa Chávez to the Salvadoran diaspora living in New York, see this local news report.