May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, oh Lord.
He was born in a dusty backwater town of no importance to an older father and younger mother. At the time of his birth, his country was under occupation by a strong military force, which had no problem killing anyone who dared criticize or challenge them. His father was a carpenter. He learned that craft well, but was a child who was smart and craved a formal education, so he found a way to study with the religious teachers. He was very observant in his religious practices, even at an early age. When he grew up, he talked to everyone who would listen about the plight of the poor and marginalized. He preached in the countryside about how God was on the side of those who had little, and that one day, God’s Kingdom of love and equality would push out the brutally cold military rulers. He came to the attention of the political forces in charge and was warned to toe the line or else. He decided God’s word was more important than the threats from these empty, angry men, and so continued speaking out for the oppressed. He saw many others killed for doing less, but accepted a possible death as the cost of spreading the message of hope. In the end, he spoke once too often against the bullies in charge, and so, was executed as a trouble-maker and threat to the established order.
You think I’m talking about Jesus don’t you? Well, all this is true about him, yes, but this is also true about Archbishop Oscar Romero, whose martyrdom we remember today.
Oscar Romero was ordained on 4 April 1942 in Rome. Two years later, he returned to El Salvador to begin his ministry as a parish priest. He grew his remote parishes, started AA groups, helped plan a cathedral building project, and was rewarded by an appointment to the inter-diocese seminary in San Salvador. He was considered quite conservative when he ran the archdiocese newspaper, defending both the work the Opus Dei and the traditional Roman Church.
In 1970 he became an auxiliary bishop in San Salvador, and in 1974 became bishop in his own right in a poor and rural diocese. On 23 February 1977, he was appointed Archbishop of El Salvador. There were groans and dismay from those who hoped to be led by a bishop who believed in the new liberation theology. The ultra right government welcomed what they thought would be an easy pawn.
Not even a month later, Rutilio Grande, a progressive Jesuit and good friend of Romero’s was assassinated. He had been organizing the campesinos into self-reliance groups. This was Romero’s ‘Road to Damascus’ moment. He said, “When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead I thought, ‘If they have killed him for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path.’ Romero suspended masses in the cathedral and demanded the government and the press investigate this assassination. Both remained mute and nothing was done, and both knew they had a new adversary!
Remember, it was traditional for the church in El Salvador to go along 100% with the repressive government and oligarchy, and to never question the abuses that the few powerful landowners used to keep the poor majority in line.
Last weekend I went on a hike with a man from Hong Kong. I asked him what faith he claimed? He said “I believe in myself. If there is goodness in me, and I do the right things, then I am fine.” I told him I was Episcopalian. He said, “I do not much like Christians. They say they love Jesus, but they do not want to do the hard things he said to do.”
Oscar Romero decided it was now time for him to do the hard things! Over 40% of the country was owned by only 13 families who worked the illiterate campesinos brutally. Romero began to criticize the forced poverty, social injustices, and mass torture and assassinations. He used his homilies and a weekly radio broadcast to chastise the powerful and let them know their sins did not go unnoticed. He began to gather more enemies!
In 1979, a revolutionary junta came to power in El Salvador, and the human rights abuses escalated as the right and left fought each other, slaughtering many innocent and poor people who were caught in the crosshairs. Archbishop Romero wrote to President Carter in 1980 to warn that increased military aid from the USA would “undoubtedly sharpen the injustice and the political repression inflicted on the organized people, whose struggle has often been for their most basic human rights.”
President Carter was concerned that El Salvador would become another Nicaragua (meaning a too close Communist threat), and so he ignored Romero’s plea. In one of Carter’s most serious missteps, the USA continued to supply arms and death squad training, abetting a civil war that in the end claimed over 76,000 lives.
Romero was now noticed internationally for his human rights efforts, and on a visit with Pope Paul II in Italy, he told the Pope that it was no longer possible for him to even marginally support the Salvadoran government because it legitimized terror and assassinations.
Upon return, Romero denounced the persecution of the members of the church who were working with the poor. Just since Romero became bishop, more than 50 priests had been attacked or threatened. Six were martyred. Others were tortured and expelled from El Salvador. Nuns suffered the same fate if they dared to speak out. The Catholic radio station Romero used to broadcast his messages of hope was bombed. The diocesan newspaper office was ransacked. Parishes and churches were raided and threatened not to interfere with the government.
At a speech accepting an honorary degree from the Catholic University at Louvain, Belgium, Archbishop Romero said,
“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 that has been attacked and persecuted 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.”
Indeed, the poor were eager to hear what Archbishop Romero had to say. They packed the cathedral on Sundays, and those in the countryside listened to him speak by radio on Mondays. He began to list the disappearances, tortures and murders that happened weekly. The deaths and actions the government would not acknowledge. The diocesan newspaper carried the same lists of atrocities. The people felt someone in authority was finally on their side! With the newspapers and media heavily censored, the Monday broadcast was the main source of news about what was really happening in El Salvador.
In his last sermon, 24 March 1980, Archbishop Romero called on the Salvadoran soldiers as Christians, to obey God’s higher order and to stop carrying out the government’s repression and violation of basic human rights; to stop killing their fellow citizens. Moments later, as he was at the altar in the small chapel at the cancer hospital where he lived, he was shot by at least one gunman as he elevated the chalice during the Eucharist.
At his funeral in the Metropolitan Cathedral in San Salvador on 30 March 1980, thousands of mourners came to pay their respects to a man who spoke out against the abuses of those in power, both economically and militarily. The civil war was still raging, and as canisters of tear gas and smoke bombs were lobbed into the crowd, snipers began firing from the rooftops. The crowd stampeded and somewhere between 30-50 people died in the melee. Yet the people returned to file by Romero’s coffin to pay their respects day and night.
The words in the Psalm today say: “Blessed be the Lord! for he has shown me the wonders of his love in a besieged city. Be strong and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord.” How difficult that was for those in attendance, when their hope had been assassinated and when the snipers started to shoot. How hard it is indeed to do the things Jesus asks of us. And how harsh that some even have to die from following those commandments!
Just nine months later, following Jesus would result in the same sacrifice for four Maryknoll Sisters who were working in El Salvador feeding the hungry, burying the dead left behind by the death squads, and providing shelter for the refugees in the midst of the civil war. They were all fans of what Archbishop Romero was saying about the church needing to speak out and uphold the least among them, and they went to the cathedral to hear him preach several times. On the night of 2 December 1980, Sisters Jean Donovan , Dorothy Kazel , Maura Clark and Ita Ford were ambushed in their car, shot to death by plain clothes militia, and then buried in the woods. But, someone leaked to the US ambassador what had happened, and the investigation of this slaughter finally tipped the scales against our formal involvement in arming Salvadoran soldiers.
Officially, the El Salvador Civil War is over, yet the killings there still continue on a horrific scale. Newly elected President Sanchez Ceren has to deal with one of the highest murder rates in the world. A 2012 gang truce seemed to cut the country's daily average of 14 dead by half, but the drop appears to have been short-lived. Police statistics show 501 murders the first two months of this year, an increase of more than 25 percent over the same period of 2013. It is a legacy of brutality carried over from decades of slaughter for power.
In his book, The Violence of Love, Oscar Romero said, “When we struggle for human rights, for freedom, for dignity, when we feel that it is a ministry of the church to concern itself for those who are hungry, for those who have no schools, for those who are deprived, we are not departing from God’s promise. He comes to free us from sin, and the church knows that sin’s consequences are all such injustices and abuses. The church knows it is saving the world when it undertakes to speak also of such things.”
Who will speak of such things now, and who will do the hard work to wage peace on the streets of El Salvador now? Who will do the same hard work against violence on the streets of San Francisco? Who will give, that the poorest in Nicaragua have the water and sanitation we take for granted? Who will speak out against the rending of families by unjust immigration laws? Who will work to keep seniors in decent housing with the social services they need? Who will monitor the violence against GLBT people and work for justice and equality for them? Who will speak out against the endless wars waged by our government?
If Archbishop Oscar Romero were with us, would he ask us to show up on the Night Walks against violence, to show plainly and publicly where the church stands? Would he ask us to give to El Porvenir? Would he ask us to support SFOP? Would he ask us to stand in front of the Federal Building every Thursday in solidarity with those demanding peace? And if Oscar Romero and Jesus ask this of us, would you come do this hard work?
AMEN
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