Roman Catholic Archbishop. The youngest of seven children of Crisanto Duarte Pilonieta and Elisa Cancino Arenas, San Gil born Isaías Duarte Cancino frequented the Santander College in Bucaramanga before entering seminary in Pamplona. Furthering his studies in Rome at the Pontifical Gregorian University, he was ordained priest there by Bishop Héctor Rueda Hernández on December 1, 1963. Back in Colombia, he was incardinated with the Archdiocese of Bucaramanga, becoming thus its first seminarian to have completed studies in Rome. Curate of the cathedral of Bucaramanga, pastor of the latter's Holy Spirit parish and professor at the Major Seminary of Pamplona, he also rendered services in the parish of San Juan of Girón, in the Garcia Rovira province and in the city of Málaga. Soon becoming well known for his apostolic zeal and social concern, Duarte also assisted in the formation of priests as a teacher and spiritual director at the seminary of Pamplona and successively at the Major Seminary of Floridablanca. In addition he also served as spiritual director to candidates for the priesthood at the seminary of Bucaramanga and simultaneously as pastoral vicar of the archdiocese. Elected auxiliary for the see of Bucaramanga by Pope John Paul II, he received his episcopal consecration with the titular see of Germania in Numidia on June 17, 1985 from the named Msgr. Rueda Hernández. Being appointed on June 18, 1988 as the first bishop of Apartadó, a banana-growing region on the Caribbean coast near the Panamanian frontier which for years had been a battleground of guerrillas, drug-traffickers and arms smugglers, Duarte tried to bring them together in peace negotiations, but without much success. Appointed archbishop of Cali on August 19, 1995, he soon became an outspoken critic of Colombian guerrillas and drug traffickers. Having learnt firsthand while in Apartadó the reality of the brutal and ruthless violence of the armed conflict h understood that his pastoral service had to be of fundamental importance towards the innocent victims of violence. While in Apartadó infact he initiated among others a commission for life, justice and peace and promoted education with the opening of a minor and a major seminary and six colleges, aside from his continuous support towards the poor campesinos, launching for instance the Centro de Atención de Viudas y Huérfanos "Compartir", restoring hope of life and dignity to the mothers, displaced families, individuals who sought reintegration into civilian life, young peasants in their studies and other social problems. Thus in Cali, the Archbishop made a reputation for his tireless pastoral and educational work, criticizing President Andres Pastrana's attempts to negotiate a peace accord with the country's main guerrilla army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, saying it was absurd to try to negotiate with guerrillas who refused to lay down their arms while the talks were going on. His implacable opposition to the guerrillas earned him praise from Carlos Castano, the leader of the most powerful of many right-wing paramilitary death squads that sprung up all over Colombia to challenge the guerrillas. With Cali in south-western Colombia being home to two million people and some of the country's most powerful drug-trafficking organisations, Duarte took care in organizing as a response a spirituality centre, a catechesis centre, the Lumen Gentium University, the Archdiocese Food Bank, the research centre, more than twenty seven schools and forty two parishes, especially in popular neighborhoods. A peacemaker, friend of the youth and teacher of reconciliation, he publicly accused drug bosses of pouring money into the campaign coffers of local candidates in Colombia's 2002 congressional elections. Fiercely condemning the country's two major guerrilla groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the National Liberation Army (ELN), after the latter kidnapped more than 150 persons from a Cali church in 1999, he publicly excommunicated all its members. On the evening of March 16, 2002, Monsignor Duarte became the most senior of more than thirty Colombian clerics to be assassinated, when two young gunmen shot him at point-blank range as he emerged from the church of the Good Shepherd in Aguablanca, one of the poorest districts of his archdiocese, just after conducting a mass wedding ceremony for more than one hundred couples. His funeral took place on March 19, presided by Cardinal Pedro Rubiano Saenz, archbishop of Bogotá, in the presence of more than seventy bishops from throughout Latin America who traveled to the city of Cali, the President of Colombia Andrés Pastrana and his cabinet, and more than 20,000 faithful who showed up on Caycedo square in front of the cathedral. Archbishop Duarte remains the highest-ranking Catholic prelate in Colombia to be killed in the more than sixty years of internal armed conflict.