This Sunday’s solemnity is all about sacrifice and commitment of the deepest order, sealed in blood. Guatemalan Roman Catholic Cardinal Rodolfo Quezada, who sacrificed much through his commitment to peacemaking and an end to the nation's long and bloody civil war, died on Monday at age 80.

Guatemalan President Otto Perez declared three days of national mourning and ordered flags to fly at half-mast as a mark of respect for Quezada. “He was a great fighter for peace and reconciliation in Guatemala,” said Perez, who this year became the first military man to assume the presidency in Guatemala since the war ended.

Quezada lent his negotiating skills to two organizations that tried to reconcile the bitter adversaries in the war, one of the most destructive to ravage Latin America. Starting his work at the head of the Commission for National Reconciliation in 1987, he also later chaired the Assembly of Civil Society, whose efforts helped bring about a peace accord in 1996—36 years after the conflict began.

The war pitted leftist guerrillas against the state and led to the death or disappearance of a quarter of a million people. A United Nations-backed "truth commission" found that the vast majority of abuses were committed by the army, which ruled Guatemala for most of the civil war. Quezada's colleague in the peace process, Bishop Juan Gerardi, was murdered in 1998 shortly after the publication of church-backed findings on abuses in the civil war.

Source: An article by David Alire Garcia for Reuters