Dario Silva Silva

Darío Silva-Silva, shown on this page as Dario Silva Silva, was a Colombian journalist, writer, and Protestant pastor. He founded Casa Sobre la Roca Iglesia Cristiana Integral with his wife, Esther Lucía Ángel, in Bogotá on 1 September 1987. He died on Sunday 6 September 2026, aged 88. This profile is that pastor. It is not a page for the Uruguayan footballer Darío Silva, a different person. The slug is dario-silva-silva, not dario-silva.

He was born in 1938 in the Huila municipality of Tarqui. The year and the town are not in dispute. The day is. The church's Hechos y Crónicas timeline and a Pulzo article drawn from El Espectador give 27 June 1938. The church pastor page and the Spanish Wikipedia infobox give 17 June 1938. Neither day is treated here as a settled birthday. Spanish Wikipedia says that from childhood he wanted to be a journalist, and that at 17, after finishing school, he went to Garzón and became news editor of the new station Radio Garzón. Secular school names beyond that note are not made public.

In 1958 he was a cofounder of Los Papelípolas, described by the church and by El Espectador as the first cultural group of Huila, a circle of artists and writers that mattered to the department's literary life. Journalism then occupied him for about thirty years. The church biography says he worked in major Colombian radio and television newsrooms, wrote columns for regional papers, and had a business role at Telenoticiero Noticolor with his friend Darío Restrepo. Pulzo, citing El Espectador, says he directed and presented NotiColor from 1979 to 1983 on Inravisión's Cadena 1, and that the licence was not renewed under President Belisario Betancur. The same account says he later worked at RCN, covering the 1985 Palace of Justice siege and the Armero tragedy. In 1987 he and Francisco Tulande received the Premio Nacional de Periodismo Simón Bolívar for the RCN Radio investigation "La otra Colombia en Nueva York".

Other honours listed on the church pastor page include the Premio Internacional AIDE of the Inter-American Education Association, Buenos Aires, 1978; the Order of the Congress of the Republic in the grade of commander, 1981; and the José Acevedo y Gómez civil merit order of the Bogotá council, Gold Cross, 1995.

The public story of his conversion is consistent across church sources. Before he became a Christian he studied and practised various esoteric doctrines, a course the church says brought financial ruin and brought him to the edge of suicide. Esther Lucía Ángel, born 19 July (year not stated on the timeline), a former beauty queen, editor, decorator, and fashion coordinator from Armenia, Quindío, shared her faith with him at that point. The timeline says they spoke for seven hours a day on Christ-centred subjects, then began a difficult courtship and married. He told the story in the autobiography "El Hombre que Escapó del Infierno". An exact wedding date is not made public.

In 1984 he began training as a Protestant minister, studying alongside Esther Lucía while they led a prayer group. After their licentiates, the church timeline says he was ordained and consecrated as a minister of the gospel at Church on the Rock in the United States. The church pastor page lists further credentials: recognition in episcopal rank by the Traditional Episcopal Church; a doctorate in humanities and sacred theology from Saint James School of Theology and Seminary; honorary doctorates from Laud Hall Seminary and Logos Christian College; and a licentiate in theology and religious sciences from the major seminary of the Anglican Church of Gran Colombia. These titles are as stated by the church. Independent accreditation of each honorary degree is not detailed in the obituaries.

In 1986, the church timeline says, Matthew 7:24 became the founding text. Silva-Silva said the country was broken because homes were houses built on sand, that the family as the basic cell had been broken, and that people had to be led to build houses on the rock: solid homes practising Christianity as a way of life. He said the Lord wanted them to make the country a Casa Sobre la Roca. They inaugurated the church on 1 September 1987. The congregation began with 72 people in a corner house at Calle 102 and Avenida 9. The first expansion outside Bogotá, to Neiva, came in 1989. In 1990 the Bogotá building was enlarged. He took part in the political moment around the 1991 Constitution, which ended Colombia's confessional-state status and recognised freedom of worship. From 1992 he coordinated the Evangelical Confederation of Colombia's dialogue with the government on a religious-freedom law. The church biography says he resigned from the Confederation in 1996.

In 1993 the church created the school Nuevo Gimnasio Cristiano and the educational unit Ibli-Facter. In 1995 it launched the television programme Hechos y Crónicas, which he founded and directed, with a national magazine of the same name. He voiced the Spanish audiobook of Rick Warren's "Una Vida con Propósito". He wrote columns for Vida Cristiana and Libros News in the United States, and the church described him as a frequent guest on opinion programmes of Univisión, Telemundo, and América TV. He was a visiting lecturer at the University of Miami Koubek Memorial Center and a member of the advisory council of Logos Christian College in Jacksonville.

In 2001 Casa Sobre la Roca opened in Miami. That year Semana included him among "the forty most powerful Colombians", calling him the country's most influential non-Catholic religious leader, according to the church biography. Miami-Dade's mayor's office and county commission proclaimed 15 December as Reverend Doctor Darío Silva-Silva Day in 2001, gave him the keys of the city in 2002, and in 2005 the West Miami Gold Medallion. He later led the Miami congregation and served as president of the church's global council, while remaining founder and president of the denomination. The church website later described 27 congregations in Colombia and five abroad. El Colombiano, after his death, described 36 sites in five countries: Colombia, the United States, Canada, Panama, and Spain.

His books, as listed by the church, include "El Código Jesús", "El Fruto Eterno", "Las Puertas Eternas", "Sexo en la Biblia", "El Eterno Presente", "El Eterno Presente Las Llaves del Poder", "Sectas y Sectarios", "El Reto de Dios", "La Gran Solución", "Los Protestantes en Colombia", "El Engaño de la Nueva Era", and "El Hombre que Escapó del Infierno". His teaching, preserved on the church YouTube channel, returns often to freedom in Christ, the Holy Spirit, resurrection, and the idea of God as the eternal present. His last dated sermon on the church archive used here, "El Señor es el eterno presente", was posted 18 January 2026.

The church timeline records press attacks and insults from clergy figures as the church grew. No independent catalogue of those attacks was assembled here, so the record stays at what the church itself wrote. It also records a 2013 conversation on forgiveness and reconciliation with people connected to the Bojayá massacre, and a post-conflict centre called Pazcificadores. A 2015 rebuilding gave the Bogotá temple room for about 3,000 people.

On 4 September 2026 his X account asked followers to pray for his health, strength, peace, and recovery, citing Philippians 4:6-7. The post named no diagnosis, and none is inferred here. On Sunday 6 September the church announced his death. The presbytery said it was deeply sad and grateful for a life that left a mark, and that he had dedicated his life to the service of God, the teaching of the Word, and spiritual care of thousands of families in Colombia and elsewhere. It said it was saying goodbye to a man whose voice, leadership, and commitment to the gospel had marked generations, and closed with 2 Timothy 4:7. It did not give a medical cause. El Colombiano placed the death on the night of 6 September. Publimetro reported that he died in Bogotá. A hospital or other facility was not named. Children are not named in the church biography or in the September 2026 obituaries consulted. The word "hijos" appears in search suggestions, but names of children are not made public. Names should not be inferred from shared surnames among church pastors.

The church set a lying-in-state for Tuesday 8 September 2026, 14:00 to 21:00, at the Bogotá temple, Calle 102 # 14-20. Funeral honours will be held on Wednesday 9 September at 11:00, then the body will be transferred to Cementerio Jardines de Paz for cremation. The church suggested an olive plant as a floral gift, a symbol of peace and permanence, and asked the public to follow official church channels only. A cause of death remains not made public. The final place of ashes is not made public. After his death, President Abelardo de la Espriella was reported as calling him a man of faith, a spiritual leader, and a moral reference who spent his life serving God and sowing hope. That tribute is a reported paraphrase. A word-for-word capture of the full post was not independently fetched, so it is not stored here as a verbatim quote.