Oscar Romero became the Arch Bishop of San Salvador in 1977, at the age of sixty.
He was assassinated
three years later.
He was murdered
because her refused to give up his ministerial work on behalf of the poor and
disenfranchised people of his country, killed for speaking out against the
abuses they suffered at the hands of the ruling class, conditions of systemic
poverty and virtual slavery with no recourse to the law or justice of any kind;
they endured forced internment, torture and the imposition of the State in their
religious life, including denying them the right to worship and receive the
sacraments. Oscar Romero stood against these abuses and for that he was martyred.
Saint Romero was
considered to be a scholarly and aesthetic man whose appointment to the Arch
Bishopric was intended to be un-controversial and un-threatening to the
political regime of El Salvador.
They were wrong.
Once he was elevated
to that position of trust and authority he began to speak out against the abuses
of power he witnessed the people enduring every single day.
In his sermons, his
writings and his radio program he spoke out against them:
“In less than three
years, more than fifty priests have been attacked, threatened, calumniated. Six
are already martyrs--they were murdered. Some have been tortured and others
expelled [from the country]. Nuns have also been persecuted. The archdiocesan
radio station and educational institutions that are Catholic or of a Christian
inspiration have been attacked, threatened, intimidated, even bombed. Several
parish communities have been raided. If all this has happened to persons who
are the most evident representatives of the Church, you can guess what has
happened to ordinary Christians, to the campesinos, catechists, lay ministers,
and to the ecclesial base communities. There have been threats, arrests,
tortures, murders, numbering in the hundreds and thousands.... But it is
important to note why [the Church] has been persecuted. Not any and every
priest has been persecuted, not any and every institution has been attacked.
That part of the church has been attacked and persecuted that put itself on the
side of the people and went to the people's defense. Here again we find the
same key to understanding the persecution of the church: the poor.”
Saint Romero bore
witness to these atrocities while they were happening and because of it he was
murdered.
Soon we may be called
to stand-up and bear witness to the abuses of our own government, against the
dismantling of our democracy, the abandonment of constitutional government and
human rights abuses not seen in this country in generations.
Are you ready?
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