Camila O`Gorman and Father Ladislao Gutierrez
Camila O’Gorman (1828 – 1848) was a wealthy nineteenth century Argentinean socialite, and one of the most famous romantic – and tragic- heroines of that country. She carried on a romantic relationship and marriage with a Roman Catholic priest, Father Ladislao Gutierrez, that scandalized the country and ended in tragedy for the lovers.
Born in Buenos Aires, Camila’s cultivated manners, ladylike education, suave beauty, and kindly disposition were at odds with the Argentina of her day, and belonged in a land of peace and beauty. Unfortunately, she lived in a brutalized country, whose dictator, an army general named Juan Manuel de Rosas, spiked town squares with the heads of political opponents.
A pillar of polite society, Camila was a friend of the dictator’s daughter, when she was introduced to a Jesuit priest, Ladislao Guiterrez. Something clicked between socialite and priest, and in 1847, the two began an affair. They eventually fled to a small provincial town, where they posed as a married couple, living as husband and wife, and launching the town’s first school.
The scandal soon took on political tones, when the dictator’s opponents used it as an example of the moral decay under Rosas – a notorious womanizer. Camila and Ladislao were eventually tracked down, kidnapped, and returned to Buenos Aires. Rosas’ daughter pleaded for clemency for her friend, but the dictator replied that the case warranted “a show of my undisputed power, as the moral values and sacred religious norms of a whole society are at stake“.
The dictator himself signed a decree for the execution of the lovers. Accordingly, on August 18th, 1848, Camila O’Gorman and Father Ladislao Gutierrez were executed by a firing squad in a prison town near Buenos Aires. She was twenty years old, and 8 months pregnant. As a last gesture of Christian charity, she was given holy water to drink, so her baby would go to heaven.