“If they kill me, I will rise again and live among the people of El Salvador”.These were the brave and prophetic words of Oscar Romero, a man who realized a profound truth and experienced a spiritual resurrection in his life after suffering a great hurt, a deep loss.
From a quite and peaceful life as a docile, non-involved cleric, he became a voice for the oppressed and the powerless of El Salvador.
He shook the dictatorship to the core with his quite but powerful sermons, broadcast on diocesan radio, calling for justice and an end of state violence against the people and for the formation of a just society where human and civil rights would be respected.
But this proved too much for some of his fellow Bishops who ostracized him.
The voice of this archbishop was politically catastrophic for the tyrannical regime that ruled the country with US backing.
After he appealed on radio to the soldiers of the regime to stop killing their brothers and sisters, that they were not obliged to follow immoral and illegal orders, he was brutally murdered.
He was shot dead by an assassin’s bullet as he celebrated the Eucharist and held aloft the chalice.
His blood spilled on the altar as he fell. His death led to the biggest gathering of mourners in Central America, over 250,000 people turned out.
But the military opened fire on them as they carried his coffin into the plaza and as many as forty to fifty men women and children were massacred. That was 24 March 1980.
Oscar Romero was the archbishop of San Salvador in Central America. He was as conservative as the Pope, as traditional as a monk, a devoted bishop of the church, supporter of authority and government and as pious as a priest if ever there was one.
That was until the cruel US-backed dictatorship of Arturo Armando Molina of El Salvador brutally killed one priest too many.
It was the Archbishop’s close friend, Jesuit Father Rutilio Grande, who lived a simple life among the rural poor and helped them overcome poverty by organizing them into self-sustainable communities.
That was not “church work” in the eyes of the dictatorship, it was socialism and in their ignorant uneducated minds - that was communism.
After the funeral of Father Grande, Romero said "When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead, I thought”, 'If they have killed him for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path”.
It was a turning point for him. A veil was lifted; he realized that the poor had risen up in rebellion against unspeakable atrocities, tyranny and injustice.
They were fighting for life, their own survival.
But 75,000 of them were to die in that momentous struggle.
I was there and saw for myself during that terrible time the risks and heroic sacrifices of priests, women religious and lay leaders.
The bodies of assassinated community workers and women religious were buried in shallow graves; others were thrown into the streets or left on garbage pits. It was a fearful time for a persecuted church. Twelve brave dedicated Catholic priests were assassinated in El Salvador between 1968 and, seven were Jesuits.
To this day, hundreds of thousands are serving the people and risking their lives in selfless work for the poor. For every single abusive priest you hear about, there are thousands of good ones and by their good lives and work you shall know them.
In these troubled times for the people of God, we have to remember that faith is in Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God, Son of Man and his message of salvation, love and service.
It’s the faith of the God’s people, their united belief in the eternal unchangeable values of life, in the dignity of every single life, the rights of the individual and the community to live in peace with justice and free from oppression, poverty, hunger and injustice.
This is the faith in Jesus we stand by and keeps us together.
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SIC: Spero