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177 6 G r a l . M . A c h a Av. Álvarez Thomas Del Pino Virrey D o n a d o E s t o m b a Av. Forest H o l m b e r g L u g o n e s G r a l . E . M a r t i n e z A v . M e l i á n M i l l e r Av. R. Naón M. Padilla P l a z a M á r t i r e s P a l o t i n o s Blanco Encalada Monroe Echeverría Juramento La Pampa Mendoza Av. Olazabal M. A. de Sucre S u p e r í T r o n a d o r W a s h i n g t o n Est. Dr. L. M. Drago 142 FCGBM LOCATION: CHURCH – ESTOMBA 1942; PASSAGE – BETWEEN ESTOMBA AND PLAZA TRANSPORTATION: BUSES: 76, 113, 114, 133. TRAIN STATION: L. M. DRAGO (MITRE LINE). VILLA URQUIZA San Patricio Church contains a monument honoring the Pallottine Martyrs, five members of the Pallottine Society who were murdered by the dictatorship on July 4, 1976 . The sculpture, completed in September 2005, is titled El Camino de los Palotinos (The Pallottines’ Way) . Buenos Aires City Council hung a plaque in the Church honoring these men in 2006, on the thirtieth anniversary of their deaths . A nearby passage running between Estomba and Plaza Streets was also named Mártires Palotinos (Pallottine martyrs) . The early hours of July 4 A Special Task Group* entered the Parochial House of San Patricio Church around one a .m . on Sunday, July 4, 1976, and murdered Fathers Alfredo Leaden, Pedro Eduardo Dufau, and Alfredo José Kelly and seminarians Salvador Barbeito Doval and Emilio José Barletti . The killers took the five men out of their bedrooms and led them to a windowless room, where they shot them from behind and left their bodies to bleed onto the red carpet . The next morning two young men named Luis Pinasco and Guillermo Silva reported to Pallottine priest Father Efraín Suedo Luque that they had seen two cars parked outside the Parochial House the night before . They had been accompanied by a third young man, Julio Víctor Mart ínez, son of an officer appointed by the dictatorship to direct the provincial government of Neuquén . Mart ínez had reported the men to Police Precinct No . 37 because he suspected they were planning an attack on his home, though he had to make several requests before the police would take his statement . Eventually Officer Miguel Angel Romano visited the church and spoke with the men in the suspicious cars . He then warned Pedro Alvarez, the security 142 . San Patricio Church – Pallottine Martyrs’ Passage DETAIL OF THE COMMEMORATIVE SCULPTURES. 178 guard stationed at Martínez’s house, not to go into the street if he heard shots because they were going to “trash the home of some lefties [zurdos] . ” Pinasco and Silva reported that around two a .m . armed men got out of the cars and went inside the Parochial House . The murderers later emerged and made a quick escape in their cars . At around 7:30 a .m ., sixteen-year-old church organist Rolando Savino discovered the bodies of the five Pallottines . Some parishioners had been waiting at the church doors to go in for Mass; when they rang the bell and no one answered, Savino climbed through an open window . He opened the door for the people waiting outside and went upstairs to look for the priests . A clipping from the comic strip “Mafalda” had been left on the body of Salvador Barbeito, depicting the comic’s main character pointing at a police truncheon and saying, “This is the little ideology-bashing stick . ” The men’s faces had been beaten beyond recognition, and the killers had written, “To avenge our partners killed in the explosion at Federal Security . We shall triumph . Long live Argentina ” (see “Coordinación Federal, ” p . 17) . According to several reports, they also left a message on the carpet reading, “These ‘lefties’ died because they were indoctrinating innocent minds and were members of the MSTM [Movement of Priests for the Third World – Movimiento de Sacerdotes del Tercer Mundo]” (Seisdedos, 1996) . Two days earlier the Montonero guerrillas had placed a bomb in the dining hall of what was then known as the Bureau of Federal Security (Superintendencia de Seguridad Federal), a police administration office that also functioned...

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