Javier Giraldo, Colombian Jesuit priest and human rights activist, has died

Javier Giraldo in 2015. Wiki Image

Fr Javier Giraldo Moreno SJ died in Bogotá on 25 August after a fall in his home.

Born in Colombia in 1944, is mother was an artist and his father was a hydro project administrator. He had three brothers and a sister. He decided to join the clergy when he was 15. After his ordination, his pastoral and research work led him to work with communities most affected by poverty, exclusion and violence.

He went on to became one of the most widely recognised and deeply respected spokespersons for human rights and the search for truth about the decades-long armed conflict in Colombia.

Fr Giraldo determined to try to document the circumstances of every killing in the conflict so that victims would not be anonymous and so that responsibility for each murder would be made clear. He challenged official accounts which concealed the involvement of state and state-backed agents in atrocities. This decades-long mission to establish the truth earned him the bitter hatred of many in the country's elite, who stood to benefit from the systematic violence unleashed against poor rural communities, indigenous people and workers struggling for better conditions. He was subjected to death threats and intimidation, but he never abandoned his work.

For decades, he was closely associated with the Jesuit-supported Centre for Popular Research and Education (CINEP), investigating human rights violations and demonstrating the connections between them. In 1988, he founded the Intercongregational Commission for Justice and Peace, an initiative that brought together religious communities to support individuals and organisations affected by violence.

Fr Giraldo believed that the formal end of the armed conflict between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas in 2016 could not be allowed to end investigations into all that had gone before. He continued researching and writing. Among the causes closest to his heart were support for the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado, subject to frequent attacks by paramilitaries with the connivance of the armed forces, and the search for the body of Camilo Torres, the former priest who was killed in a confrontation with the Colombian army in 1966. His request in 2019 to the Search Unit for Missing Persons eventually led to Camilo's remains being found in military storage and handed over to Fr Giraldo in a dignified ceremony in February 2026.

Colombian opposition leader Senator Ivan Cepeda described Fr Giraldo as "a person of enormous ethical stature," saying that "he will live forever in our memory … his life and commitment to loving the people guide us."

His work earned him international recognition, including various awards and numerous invitations to conduct speaking tours abroad. In November 2004, I accompanied him when he visited the UK as a guest of Colombia Solidarity Campaign. I felt humbled to be in his presence. He was a self-effacing man, utterly dedicated to the wellbeing of the oppressed and forgotten, and unconcerned about his own safety or comfort.

Dr Jude Lal Fernando, Associate Professor in Trinity College Dublin's School of Religion, worked closely with Fr Giraldo on a Tribunal on human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. Dr Fernando writes:

"Fr Javier Giraldo Moreno dedicated his whole life to the Indigenous communities in Colombia who were oppressed for centuries and massacred. He documented their forgotten and silenced voices in many volumes of books and revealed to the world their struggle for justice. He stated that their history is not only a history of genocide, but also a history of struggle. He did not believe in the false peace promised by the Colombian Peace Process which further strengthened the Colombian state and its imperial backer, the USA. He is one of the few people who exposed the close link between the armed drug cartels, Colombian military and the elite politicians of the country. He was constantly threatened by them, but continued to work with the Indigenous communities and lived with the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó.

"His heart went beyond Colombia. He was the Vice-President of the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal that investigates state crime and was a judge of the Peoples' Tribunal on Sri Lanka (Bremen, 2013; Berlin 2022) which declared that the massacre of Tamils is a genocide and the UK-USA are complicit in it. He travelled to Sri Lanka and joined the Mullivaikkal Memorial Day in Vanni and wrote: 'We participated in the ceremony in Mullivaikkal in May 2019. The event took place in the hot sandy earth covering thousands of dead Tamils.'

"His last wish was to be cremated immediately after his death and to spread the ashes in a river without any funeral service, testifying to the fate of thousands across the world whose deaths have no obituary, eulogy or a religious service.

"He was deeply inspired by the legendary priest Camilo Torres, who was murdered in 1966 by the Colombian army. One of his books was a reflection of Camilo's commitment to the poor in the light of Pope Francis's teachings."

The last article Fr Giraldo wrote was a piece co-authored with Dr Fernando on Camilo Torres and the prognosis of violence and peace in Colombia: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/interrogating-religion-and-peacebuilding-9798216379706/.