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VATICAN-SALVADOR-POPE-SAINT-ROMERO
Sainthood for slain Romero, ‘voice of the voiceless’
SAN SALVADOR, Oct 12, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Oscar Romero, the murdered
Salvadoran cleric who will be canonized Sunday by Pope Francis, was a
powerful orator who used his pulpit to denounce rampant military repression
and social injustice.
As archbishop of San Salvador, Romero emerged as a “voice of the voiceless”
during intense social and political conflict in El Salvador.
He was an outspoken advocate for the poor and victims of government
repression, denouncing scores of killings by right wing death squads in a
Central American country roiled by protests over electoral fraud.
Romero, 62, was shot through the heart by a marksman on March 24, 1980
while he celebrated evening mass in the chapel of the cancer hospital where
he lived.
His death sent shockwaves around the world and escalated violence in El
Salvador that would become a 12-year civil war between a series of US-backed
governments and leftist rebels.
The conflict claimed 75,000 lives before it ended with a peace agreement in
1992.
“He was courageous and humble, and he remained so in the midst of
persecution and threats from the powerful and even from some clerics in the
country — and even from the Vatican,” said Jesuit theologian Jon Sobrino.
Sobrino, known for his contribution to liberation theology — which
combines Christian theology with elements of Marxism emphasizing political
liberation for oppressed peoples — said the cleric was never a part of that
controversial movement.
Romero was a tireless agitator for the poor however, which brought him into
regular conflict with the right-wing government, and the Catholic hierarchy,
which deemed him too political.
– Outreach to the poor –
“The church of ‘outreach’ that the pope talks about was a very real thing
here in El Salvador in the 70s and 80s and some priests were killed — killed
by people who went to mass,” said Sobrino.
Critics of Romero charged him with supporting violence, communism and
heresy. He was lauded by others for the same reasons.
The movement to make Romero a saint was long resisted by conservative
Catholics and the Salvadoran right, who saw veiled Marxism in his sermons
eulogizing the poor and radio broadcasts condemning government repression.
The petition languished for years at the Vatican’s Congregation for the
Causes of Saints, finally moving forward under retired pope Benedict XVI and
Pope Francis, who named Romero a martyr for the Church, one of the paths to
sainthood.
When he was beatified in 2015, a step toward canonization, Romero was
described by then-US President Barack Obama as an inspiration and a
“courageous man who persevered in the face of opposition from extremes on
both sides.”
In his vociferous defense of the poor and the persecuted, Romero “remained
alone,” said his younger brother Gaspar Romero. He recalled that other
government-backed bishops went to Rome to ask that he be removed as
archbishop.
Two weeks before his assassination, Romero found a briefcase bomb in the
basilica where he said mass and had it defused.
The day before his assassination, he made a dramatic appeal to soldiers in
the army, many of them peasants, to disobey orders to shoot at people. “I beg
you, I beg you. I order you in the name of God, stop the repression.”
– Fight against injustice –
Romero was born August 15, 1917 in Ciudad Barrios, a coffee-growing town
100 miles (160 kilometers) northeast of San Salvador.
In 1931 he entered a junior seminary in the town of San Miguel, and in the
late 1930s he headed to Rome to study theology. He was ordained a priest in
1942.
He moved around and rose through the ranks, from auxiliary bishop to
bishop, before eventually becoming archbishop of San Salvador by 1977.
At 59, he had been known for his conservatism and had the support of the
authorities — but did not have the confidence of progressive clergy.
Those who knew him say he was profoundly changed by the murder a Jesuit
priest, Rutilio Grande, together with two peasants, in March of that year.
He began to use his new-found power as archbishop to rail against
injustice, and became “the voice of the voiceless.”
Moved forward under Francis, Romero’s cause for sainthood was boosted when
the church approved as valid the “miracle” healing of Salvadoran woman
Cecilia Maribel Flores de Rivas, whose husband had prayed to the archbishop
as she lay dying, all medical options exhausted.
She will be at the Vatican on Sunday when Romero is finally made a saint.
No one was ever convicted of Romero’s killing, but a UN-sponsored truth
commission concluded it was carried out by a right-wing death squad under the
orders of Roberto D’Aubuisson, a former army officer who died the year the
war ended.
The actual murderers were never brought to justice.
BSS/AFP/MRI/0856 HRS