One sent his bishop’s ring to the junta as “a modest contribution to the work of Chile’s reconstruction.” A few weeks later another said in reference to the abolition of the Congress, “It’s a great benefit to the country that the Honourable Governing Junta has imposed political silence for a long period.”Seeing the extent of the killings, torture, exile and other excesses Silva moved swiftly to create an ecumenical relief organisation, the Comite Pro Paz, to aid the victims. .”"And what does that mean? Are you going to shoot with that thing? Are you going to kill somebody?”About the same time Silva vetoed the wish of the successful plotters to have a Te Deum for the new regime celebrated in some military unit. Guided by Silva the bishops’ conference angered the military by its refusal to refer to the coup as a patriotic act of national salvation.Some of his brother bishops, however, were more enthusiastic for the putsch. Ascanio Cavallo, historian of the time, recounts how the Cardinal had the following conversation with the priest:”What on earth are you doing with that pistol in your belt, hombre?”"Your Eminence, these are dangerous times”"But you’re a priest!”"I’m a military chaplain, Your Eminence. During the Allende years his refusal to manoeuvre against the elected government and throw in his lot with those who were seeking its overthrow alienated him from many rich Chileans.Silva, as many other Chileans, suffered a rude awakening when the military plotters led by Pinochet overthrew their superior officers and staged a bloody putsch on 11 September 1973.An early experience of what things were going to be like came, for instance, when an emissary from Pinochet arrived at the Cardinal’s house a few days after the coup, accompanied by an army chaplain in uniform and carrying a pistol. “He was always prepared to talk and find a solution,” said the cardinal in an interview given in 1983. Allende, too, seeing enough threats at home and abroad, cannot have wanted the enmity of a powerful and well- organised church.In his memoirs Silva recounted how Allende had said to him, “I can promise you, Don Ral, that I won’t touch the Church, not even with a rose petal.” Though there were tensions with Allende, notably about reform of education, they were overcome.

The storm never came since the two men got on well, seeing in each other a shared concern for the common man and at the disgusting conditions in which Chilean society condemned millions to live. As with most of the Chilean hierarchy he had a good relationship with the Christian Democratic government of President Eduardo Frei Montalva (father of Chile’s current president Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle) who was elected in 1964 and handed over the sash of office to his constitutional successor the Socialist Dr Salvador Allende in 1970.Many foresaw a stormy relationship between church and state after the inauguration of Allende’s wobbly six-party Popular Unity coalition, not just on ideological grounds but also because of the wide difference in outlook between the undemonstrative and ascetic son of the soil and the ebullient middle-class politician, a bon vivant and freemason. He was appointed archbishop of Santiago in 1961, becoming cardinal the following year He played a major part in the Second Vatican Council. After taking a law degree in Santiago he entered the Salesian order in his mid- twenties, going on to study and be ordained in Turin in 1938, an experience which gave him an early experience of Fascism.John XXIII named him bishop of Valparaso in 1959. His retirement from the archbishopric in 1983, tendered to the pope when he reached the suggested retiring age of 75, was accepted with indecent haste.
The Vatican was nurturing its strong relationship with General Augusto Pinochet – which, as its recent intervention on his behalf with the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury has demonstrated, remains strong – and was happy that an irritant to that relationship was no more.Ral Silva was born the 16th of 19 children of a poor family in the southern city of Talca. He took a genuine pride in being from a family of huasos, Chilean peasants. As with many others of his outlook, notably the murdered Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador and Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, archbishop of Sao Paulo, his courage was seldom admired and his views seldom taken into account at the court of Pope John Paul II.

And it would be churlish to deny that, in attracting great singers, conductors, directors and designers, Glyndebourne has enriched operatic life. But whose?That’s another matter, and it isn’t just a question of how many seats are available, at what price, to non-members. While we grant all due credit to its touring company and educational work, they are not what is meant by “Glyndebourne” That remains more anachronism than miracle.Nick Kimberley. CARDINAL RAUL Silva Henrquez, former archbishop of Santiago, was an outstanding example of the best of the Roman Catholic episcopate in Latin America, a man of humility always active for the poor and for human rights, never free under right-wing dictatorships of threats against his life.

By and large, though, what interests him is Glyndebourne as Glyndebourne, a subject he finds endlessly fascinating. He is unstinting in his praise of every aspect of it, even down to the catering.Barely a dissenting voice is heard. He mentions, for example, that Jonathan Miller “did not feel at all at home at Glyndebourne” when he staged Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen there in 1975, but he has nothing to say about what made Miller feel uncomfortable. He’s keen only to accentuate the positive, so that his book reads like an enthusiastic and eventually tiresome report to the AGM.Is Glyndebourne, then, an “operatic miracle”? Well, it’s unique, although others (not mentioned by Jolliffe) attempt something similar: big house, pretty gardens, evening dress and picnics, opera in foreign languages.