Could an assassination attempt lead to religious liberty in Argentina?

On the morning of Oct. 21, gunshots rang out in a crowded neighborhood in the province of Córdoba, Argentina. Several of the bullets fired by unidentified gunmen hit the back of a small gray Renault Kangoo. Miraculously, none hit Pastor Marcelo Nieva or church member Daniel Carreño, who was riding with him inside the car.

On Thursday, officials convened the first court hearing to hear defense attorney Alejandro Zeverin’s appeal for further investigation into the incident. The court had granted federal guard protection for Nieva and Carreño, but Zeverin urged immediate action to identify and punish the shooters, as well as the culprits responsible for past harassment of Pueblo Grande Baptist Church. Nieva told me the court had identified between 20 and 25 suspects.

The court reviewed 40 charges of abuse against the church and its members, including beatings, property damage, and arson threats. Zeverin, a lawyer who has great influence in the country, admits the gravity of the situation. Nieva told me Zeverin said in his 40-year career he had never seen a worse case.

The attack is the first of its kind in Argentina but also the latest and most disturbing incident in a series of violent religious persecution that has occurred over the past four years in Córdoba, although official records count only three. When asked if this had happened to him before, Nieva repeated, “No, never, no.”He suspects the attack involved corrupt police, judges, and prosecutors with links to drug and human trafficking. Pueblo Grande’s work with former drug addicts and prostitutes has provoked retaliations of verbal and physical abuse.

Nieva ministers in the city of Río Tercero, “known as the city of human trafficking and drugs.”He oversees his church’s “Women’s Transit Home,”which restores drug addicts, prostitutes, and victims of other abuse. The ministry encourages Nieva: “To see that change is worth it. The church is the hope for those kids, they don’t have anyone else.” While his church advocates against religious persecution and human trafficking, it is rendered “legally helpless”by discriminatory laws that monitor non-Catholic churches through a National Worship Registry and outlaw broadly defined “psychological manipulation” by religious sects. Nieva hopes news of discrimination against his church will reach a wide audience who can support its cause:“This case and this suffering can be the first step towards a law of religious equality in Argentina.”

When I asked him whether all the suffering was worth it, Nieva took a long time to answer. “You know, I think if someone had told me this would have happened [when I started], I don’t know if I would have accepted,”he said. “But I think God put us in this. And I think it’s worth it. There are many people in Río Tercero, people we’ve met, who are kids who were prostituted by their own relatives, raped, beaten, and I think we have the responsibility before God to do something.”

After this week’s hearing, Nieva found the judges’favorable remarks and acknowledgement of the failures of the provincial government and police encouraging. In most court cases, he said, judges don’t give opinions or even ask questions. The court will hold a second meeting, scheduled for exactly one month after the attack,to continue its investigation.

But above all else, Nieva’s enduring hope is in Christ: “We’re learning our only hope is his word.”