Oscar Romero: A Salvadoran Profile in Courage
We pause, at this moment, to remember Saint Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador, the anniversary of whose assassination was on Tuesday this week.
Oscar Romero was fatally shot n March 24, 1980 while celebrating Mass at the chapel of the Divine Providence Hospital in San Salvador, El Salvador. His murder was an act of repression by the Salvadoran government, which had been involved in the mass murder of the Salvadoran people during the unrest of the Salvadoran Civil War in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.
A “not-so-fun” related fact: The four American women martyrs, lay missionary Jean Donovan and Sisters Dorothy Kazel, Ita Ford, and Maura Clark, about whom I wrote a few posts back, were also murdered later on in the same year in a nearby area of El Salvador. The women were tortured, raped, and killed on December 3, 1980. The “crimes” of these American women were that they were teaching the Salvadoran children and medically caring for the people.
Romero, however, initially seen as a social conservative at the time of his appointment as Archbishop in 1977, was deeply affected by the murder of his friend and fellow priest Rutilio Grande. Following Father Grande’s death, he did a full turnaround and thereafter became an outspoken critic of the military government of El Salvador.
All five of these martyrs were killed by the hands of the same Salvadoran military forces, which were, by the way, supported and assisted by the U.S. government at that time.
I thought it would be significant to review here, on the 46th anniversary of his death, the words of Romero that are believed to have been those that directly prompted his killing.
In a lament to the young men of El Salvador’s military, Romero stated over local radio, that God’s law must prevail: “You shall not kill!”
It is time now for you to reclaim your conscience and to obey your conscience rather than the command to sin….
In the name of God, then, and in the name of this suffering people, whose laments rise up each day more tumultuously toward heaven, I beg you, I beseech you, I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression.”
Oscar Romero was assassinated the next day.
Oscar Romero was canonized as a martyr by Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Square, Vatican City on October 14, 2018—the conclusion of a long process that culminated in Pope Francis declaring him a saint. His feast day is March 24th.
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Justice has not yet been served.
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