July 4, 1976 On Sunday, July 4, 1976, Rolando Savino arrived at St. Patrick's Church to play the pipe organ at the 8:00 a.m. mass.  The usual group of early risers was congregated outside the church.   Celia Harper, the lady who usually helped the priests prepare for the ceremony, told Rolando she hadn't seen them yet.  The doors of the church were closed.   She had rang the bell several times, but no one had come downstairs to open.  Rolando decided to investigate himself.  He found the front door of the parochial house locked, so he decided to climb through a window to retrieve the keys.  He thought the priests were still asleep, so he called them.  No one answered.  Inca -- Father Kelly's dog -- came to greet him, but remained mysteriously silent.   Rolando went up the stairs, where he found strange phrases written in chalk on the room's wooden doors.  The house looked as if there had been a robbery.  Furniture, books, papers and clothing were scattered all over the floors and beds.  The door of the living room was ajar.  He pushed it forward.  The five priests' bodies were lying in a large pool of blood.  There were bullets and blood splattered all over the walls.  Father Pedro Dufau's hands were tied behind his back.  A poster depicting a Mafalda cartoon had been placed by the killers on top of Salvador Barbeito's body.  Rolando turned around and tried to run downstairs but his legs didn't move.  He took another look at the living room.  "I called for Celia and asked her to come upstairs with me because there had been a robbery.  While we were a few steps from the living room, I begged her to stop and turn around.  I told her we should go to the police and find out why nobody was in the house.  I suddenly became afraid she would die of a heart attack is she saw the bodies."  Rolando Savino was 16 years old at the time.  Many people who knew him then assure that what he saw that day erased his youthful smile forever. Father Kevin O'Neill gets the news "It was cold, quiet, and sunny. It promised to be an uneventful day. I was in San Antonio de Areco, at our sister parish, where I was planning the opening of a new church at 2 in the afternoon. I celebrated mass at 8:30, had some tea for breakfast, and read the paper. It was the bicentennial of the United States' Independence. The paper announced a big celebration.  At about 10 o'clock the phone rang. I assumed it would be the usual question about the masses' times. Without much interest nor hurry I picked up the phone. It was Father John talking. In a rambling way, he was telling me to cancel the celebration that afternoon because something had happened at San Patricio in Belgrano. I started to feel paralyzed. He mumbled that someone had found cadavers at the parish. I tried to understand. I thought that they had killed someone and thrown the bodies in the gardens or at the entrance. It wasn't so... The voice on the phone told me "they've killed the community... five people... the three priests among them." I suddenly lost all sense of time and space.  The floor moved, my mind stayed suspended, my limbs petrified, my mouth dry...I stayed like that, frozen, for about ten minutes, trying to understand the message in all its dimension, but my mind was incapable.  It had to be an error, it couldn't be right, I was dreaming. Three priests and two students were dead, but who? Father John couldn't tell me. Still dizzy, I went out to the empty street. I went to talk with the newspaper vendor, who was my friend. With his usual smile, he started talking about something that had happened, or that was going to happen. I tried to talk but I couldn't. He looked at me carefully, and asked me if I was feeling alright. Finally, I said "They've killed them...the priests.... all of them... and two other people." He looked at me as if I was delirious. He made me sit down on his chair. He told me that it had to be an error. I wanted to believe him, but I couldn't.I went back to the church. There were people at the door. The news have been spreading around the whole town.The phone rang again. They demanded my presence in Buenos Aires. Alfredo Leaden was dead, so I was in charge of authorizing any decision at San Patricio."  (Excerpted from Eduardo Kimel's book, "The Massacre at St. Patrick's")

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