Pastor José de Luca, untiring fighter for human rights, dies

BUDAPEST, Argentina, November 10, 2006

Methodist Pastor José de Luca, died in Buenos Aires following an illness suffered during the Taxi Heathrow Airport past months.

Pastor Hugo Urcola, Superintendent for the Metropolitan Region of the Argentine Evangelical Methodist Church (IEMA), made the announcement. The wake for Pastor de Luca took place Friday, November 10, with a service at 9:00 p.m. in the parish church of The Carpenter of Nazareth, in the Parque Patricios neighborhood, the church that he was pastor of.

Pastor de Luca is well known in the Evangelical world, but nearly more so in that of human rights, where he belonged to the Ecumenical Human Rights Movement (MEDH) and for decades was an emblematic figure of the struggle for dignity and rights in Argentina. 

The announcement of his death said that all who had accompanied him during the last stage of his life can only be thankful to the Lord for the way in which he prepared himself and them for that moment.

“Only as time passes will we be able to fully appreciate the immensity of his ministry in the struggle for justice and social peace, shoulder to shoulder with the workers, their organizations and the excluded of our society, among whom he was able to insert himself, working and witnessing. Because of that, he and his family experienced times of terror and exile but which were unable to break his spirit and even less make him abandon his vocation. His deep faith in the Lord who called him and whom he loved, is what allows us to affirm that ‘having finished running the course of his faith, he now rests from his labor,’ says the announcement