Isaías Duarte Cancino

The authorities were following the lead that the perpetrators of the crime were members of the Norte del Valle cartel. Surprising statements by a man arrested for carrying illegal weapons led prosecutors to suspect the FARC guerrilla. Ten years later, the Second Specialized Criminal Court in Cali convicted the FARC's top leader, alias Timochenko and three other guerrilla commanders, alias 'Efraín Guzmán', 'Pablo Catatumbo' and 'Iván Márquez', as intellectual authors. However, the High Court of Cali overturned the decision because the witness refused to testify in court on the grounds that the Public Prosecutor's Office had not honoured the agreements it had made with him. Five years later, in March 2017, it became known that the Colombian state had not paid the informant the reward of a billion Colombian pesos.

In 2012 Colombian justice determined that it was the commander of the Eastern Bloc of the FARC who gave the order to assassinate Duarte. But the commanders were exonerated in March 2013 by a judge of the High Court of Cali.

He was killed on 16 March 2002 by two armed men who shot him as he was leaving a religious ceremony (a collective marriage of more than 100 couples in the Buen Pastor church, Aguablanca district) in Cali. Pope John Paul II expressed his sorrow at the murder of the archbishop of Cali and urged Colombians to continue through dialogue and to reject any kind of violence, blackmail and kidnapping.

On August 19, 1995, Pope John Paul II named him Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Cali, replacing Monsignor Pedro Rubiano Sáenz. He took office on the following Saturday, September 23.

On June 18, 1988, he was named the first bishop of the Diocese of Apartadó, in the department of Antioquia, at a small city tormented by war.

On April 10, 1985, he was named titular bishop of Germania de Numidia and Auxiliary of Bucaramanga and was consecrated on the following June 17. He was the first Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Bucaramanga, whose Ordinary was the then President of the Episcopal Conference, Monsignor Héctor Rueda Hernández. His particular interest in establishing a section of the Pontifical Bolivarian University of Medellín in the Archdiocese of Bucaramanga deserves special mention. This was achieved almost immediately.

Incardinated in the Archdiocese of Bucaramanga, he arrived there at the end of 1964. He was the first seminarian in the diocese who had completed his studies in Rome and was now a new presbyter.

Then he entered the seminary of Pamplona, Norte de Santander. In Rome, during the Second Session of the Second Vatican Council, he was ordained a priest by Bishop Hector Rueda Hernandez on December 1, 1963.

Monsignor Isaías Duarte Cancino (San Gil, Santander, February 15, 1939 - Cali, Valle del Cauca, March 16, 2002) was a Colombian Catholic priest, who from 1995 until the day of his death was archbishop of the Archdiocese of Cali.

Isaías Duarte Cancino was born in San Gil, Santander on February 15, 1939, in the home formed by Crisanto Duarte Pilonieta and Elisa Cancino Arenas. He was the youngest of seven siblings. He did his high school in Bucaramanga at Colegio Santander.