Pope Declares Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero A Martyr
Óscar Arnulfo Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador in El Salvador, was an outspoken voice for justice during the civil war that tore that country apart between 1980 and 1992. In the end, he paid with his life: On March 24, 1980, he was shot while giving mass.
Romero spoke out against the Salvadorean army's brutal repression. In February 1980, he wrote an open letter to President Jimmy Carter, pleading that the U.S. discontinue aid to the regime.
He was assassinated the day after he called upon Salvadoran soldiers and security force members to not follow their orders to kill Salvadoran civilians. He said in a public sermon:
"I want to make a special appeal to soldiers, national guardsmen, and policemen: each of you is one of us. The peasants you kill are your own brothers and sisters. When you hear a man telling you to kill, remember God's words, 'thou shalt not kill.' No soldier is obliged to obey a law contrary to the law of God. In the name of God, in the name of our tormented people, I beseech you, I implore you; in the name of God I command you to stop the repression."
Romero delivered this homily the day before he was assassinated.
YouTubeLast month a commission of Vatican theologians formally declared Romero a martyr, saying he was killed in odium fidei — "in hatred of the faith." Tuesday Pope Francis made the formal declaration. Beatification is the step before sainthood in the Catholic Church.
For years there's been speculation that Romero's beatification was on hold because of his association with liberation theology, an interpretation of Christianity that seeks liberation not just from sin, but from social and political oppression as well.
"The Vatican is doing what other institutions, and even society has already done" says Roberto Valencia, journalist for the Salvadoran newspaper El Faro, and author of Hablan de Monseñor Romero, a biography of the archbishop. "For years he's been seen as Saint Romero of the Americas. The house in which he lived the last year of his life, since the '80s, it started filling up with little plates thanking him — as if he were a saint — for miracles."
The pope approved three other priests to become martyrs: Polish priests Miguel Tomaszek and Sbignei Strzalkowski, as well as Italian priest Alessandro Dordi. They where murdered in Peru in 1991 by the leftist guerrilla group, the Shining Path.
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Transcript
ARUN RATH, HOST:
This week, Pope Francis declared Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero a martyr, a decision that brings Romero closer to eventually becoming a saint. Romero was assassinated in 1980 at the dawn of El Salvador's brutal civil war. An estimated 2 million Hispanics of Salvadoran ancestry now live in the U.S., many of whom fled the same violence that killed Romero. For them, Romero's recognition is a vindication. For NPR's Code Switch team, Jasmine Garsd reports.
JASMINE GARSD, BYLINE: What you are doing right now, listening to the radio, was dangerous in El Salvador in the late '70s. The right-wing government considered certain broadcasters to be treasonous, especially this one.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
OSCAR ROMERO: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: That's Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador, whose homilies were broadcast nationwide. In this sermon, he's demanding in God's name that the Salvadoran military and government stop killing civilians. The next day in a church service...
(SOUNDBITE OF GUNSHOT)
GARSD: He was shot dead. It was May of 1980. A right-wing death squad was blamed, but never brought to justice. It was a violent time in El Salvador. The bloody civil war that would eventually claim tens of thousands of lives was just beginning. The government and communist guerrillas fought throughout the country, and civilians were often targeted and killed in the process. Father Vidal Rivas, now an Episcopal priest in Maryland, lived through the entire conflict.
VIDAL RIVAS: (Through interpreter) Every day in my city we'd wake up to three to five dead bodies, girls like you, mutilated. After they'd rape them, they'd go to their family's house and machine-gun it down.
GARSD: Despite the dangers, Rivas listened intently to Romero's sermons.
RIVAS: (Through interpreter) I remember my dad had an old yellow radio and some of our neighbors would come over and listen.
GARSD: Romero was a proponent of liberation theology, a doctrine that says the church should fight for social and economic justice. Critics accused him of being a communist, especially after he publicly asked President Jimmy Carter to end support of the Salvadoran military. And lingering questions about Romero's politics may have delayed Vatican action.
CARLOS DADA: Archbishop Romero was a very uncomfortable character for the most conservative part of the Catholic Church.
GARSD: Carlos Dada is the founder of El Faro, a digital newspaper in El Salvador. He's working on a book about Romero's assassination, and he thinks it took a Latin-American pope to do this.
CARLOS DADA: I think that Pope Francis understood much better than - that in Latin America during those years, it was the Catholic Church - a part of the Catholic Church - that was resisting repressive regimes and military dictatorships in Latin America.
GARSD: But for many Salvadorans and other Latin-Americans, Romero has long been considered a saint. At Haydee's, a dimly lit restaurant in a predominantly Salvadoran neighborhood in Washington, D.C., a large picture of Romero gazes over the patrons.
HAYDEE VANEGAS: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: Haydee Vanegas, the owner, says she remembers being a child in El Salvador and seeing her grandmother crying over the news of Romero's murder. She says his canonization would be a blessing for the world.
VANEGAS: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: The more martyrs and saints we have, the better. Martyrs do not die. They live among us. Jasmine Garsd, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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