On October 14, 2018, Pope Francis canonized Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero as a saint. The bishop was murdered on March 24, 1980, by orders of the government from a single shot to the heart while officiating the Eucharist. He was declared “saint” for the love for God and humanity. He was declared “saint” for the miracle of his sustained, passionate, self-giving and life-giving love for God and justice gifted to the impoverished and dehumanized masses in El Salvador.
It only took three years. On February 22, 1977, a few weeks after being named archbishop, Romero saw one of his friends, Rutilio Grande S.J., executed by the death squads. From that year through 1980, Romero set his face to carry his cross with Jesus as a faithful witness to life. He became the voice of those silenced, openly confronting the violence and crimes of the dictatorship, clearly delineating how it constituted a negation of the gospel and human dignity. By the end of the decade, government sanctioned killings exceded 30,000.
Bishop Romero’s homilies are treasures of passioned prophetic exposition. The love for Christ and justice comes through with unrelenting force. Consider his call for a church that is persecuted for her faithfulness to God:
Persecution is a reality that is necessary for the Church. You know why? Because the truth is persecuted. Jesus told his disciples: if they persecuted me, they will also persecute you (John 15:20). For this reason, when Pope Leo XIII was asked about the marks of the Catholic Church, he responded: You know the four marks of the Church: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. I would add another: persecuted. It should be remembered that Leo XIII was a very intelligent man who set forth many principles of the Church’s social doctrine. The Church cannot live and fulfill its obligations without being persecuted. The Church preaches the truth in the same way that God commanded the prophets: to proclaim the truth in the face of the lies, injustices and abuses of the time. The prophets had to pay a costly price for this mission! They wanted to flee from God because they knew that speaking the truth was a death sentence. (Pentecost Sunday May 29, 1977)
Almost three years after this homily, Romero was on a very public path of struggle to be faithful to the light, life, and love of God. Consider the conclusion of his last sermon:
I would like to make a special appeal to the men of the army, and specifically to the ranks of the National Guard, the police and the military. Brothers, you come from our own people. You are killing your own brother peasants when any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God which says, “Thou shalt not kill.” No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you recovered your consciences and obeyed your consciences rather than a sinful order. The church, the defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of human dignity, of the person, cannot remain silent before such an abomination. We want the government to face the fact that reforms are valueless if they are to be carried out at the cost of so much blood. In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression.
The church preaches your liberation just as we have studied it in the holy Bible today. It is a liberation that has, above all else, respect for the dignity of the person, hope for humanity’s common good, and the transcendence that looks before all to God and only from God derives its hope and its strength. (March 23, 1980.)
The next day Romero was executed in the altar while offering the body and blood of Jesus to the people. He lived publicly with his people. He died publicly for this people. More than a 100,000 people went to his funeral.
Bishop Romero’s smile and time walking with the victims projected an unceasing hope for another world. His denunciations against the injustices in El Salvador (under the auspices of the government and approving hand of the empire) echoed a most literal confrontation with the principalities and powers. As Romero declared: “As a Christian, I don’t believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I will resurrect in the Salvadorian people.”
We often think of martyrs as sacred lives that refuse to deny the God of life in Christ. But martyrs are also those who sacrificially insist in publicizing the God of life in Christ in the face of death.
¡Viva San Romero!
