“Shortly after Romero became Archbishop of San Salvador, a priest friend of his, Fr Rutilio Grande, who supported the poor, was killed. It proved the catalyst that changed him from being a staid conservative to a social revolutionary”
Fr Kevin Hegarty In John McGahern’s lyrical evocation of Irish rural life, ‘That They May Face the Rising Sun’, there in an encounter where Jamesie, one of the leading characters in the novel, says to the narrator: “You’d be like everybody else round here by now if you went to Mass.”
“I’d like to attend Mass. I miss going.”
“What’s keeping you then?”
“I don’t believe”.
“I don’t believe,” he mimicked. “None of us believes and we go. That’s no bar.”
We can reduce Christianity to a religion of ritual. However, at its core, it challenges its adherents to live the ideal of justice, love and peace. A commitment to these values may demand the sacrifice of one’s life. Martyrdom is not just an historical fact, associated mainly with the early Church. There are modern martyrs.
In a powerful poem, Desmond Egan tells the story of Father Romano who bravely sought to organise his poverty-stricken congregation in the Philippines into demanding fair wages. He ‘disappeared’ in 1985 during the last months of the Marcos regime:
“In you Romano I salute the few
who hand out like bread to others
their ordinary life
and build up block by block
anonymous in the loneliest villages
their chapel to the spirit.
Who bear witness in remote marketplaces
wearing white against the sun
who make their flesh and blood an angelus
pealing across huts and plots
deeper than bull horn or gunfire
than any saluting officers who imagine they
can bundle truth into a jeep
and stub out freedom with cigarette butts
and build walls higher than the sky
and riddle with foreign rifles
the soul they think they have blindfolded.”
Desmond Egan calls Fr Romano a ‘Missionary of Hope’. Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador was another one. He was an unlikely revolutionary. He was born in 1917 in the small town of Ciudad Barrios. His father was a postman and grew coffee to supplement the family income. At the age of 13 he was apprenticed to a local carpenter. Through a meeting with the Vicar General of his diocese he achieved later his ambition of studying for the priesthood.
Ordained in Rome in 1942, he rose stolidly through the ranks of the Church’s hierarchy. After spells as a parish priest and school chaplain, he became Secretary General of the national Bishop’s Conference in 1967. Three years later he was chosen to be an auxiliary bishop. By 1977 he was Archbishop of San Salvador.
Up to this elevation Romero was perceived to be a rigid Church man with conservative political views. He was suspicious of the radical social teaching that emerged at the Medellin Conference of South American bishops in 1968. He acquiesced in the military dictatorship that controlled El Salvador. Its leaders welcomed his appointment as the senior bishop in the country. They saw him as a safe man who would give them no grief.
El Salvador is the smallest country in South America. The coffee crop is its main source of wealth. Introduced by Spanish colonists in the 19th century, its production required the placing of vast tracts of land under private control. The Indians who owned the land were ruthlessly dispossessed and forced to live in poverty.
An American observer described El Salvador society in 1930: “One of the first things one notices is the abundance of luxury motor cars driving through the streets. Nothing seems to exist between the dearest cars and the oxen cart driven by a boy in bare feet. Practically no middle class exists between the enormously wealthy and the very poor.”
Forty families controlled the economy. The country was ruled by a series of military juntas who fixed elections, protected the wealthy and savagely policed the poor.
Throughout the 20th century there were sporadic revolts against the military dictatorship. By the 1970s the country was in a state of virtual civil war. Left-wing opponents of the regime believed that violent protest was the only viable political tactic. Hundreds were killed, many people simply ‘disappeared’ and known dissidents were exiled.
Shortly after Romero became Archbishop of San Salvador, a priest friend of his, Fr Rutilio Grande, who supported the poor, was killed. It proved the catalyst that changed him from being a staid conservative to a social revolutionary. In the words of the liberation theologian, Jon Sobrino, he became an ‘impassioned teller of the truth’. He restored ‘value to the silenced, manipulated, distorted word’, and he made the word what it ought to be – the expression of reality.
Romero’s passionate speeches about the social inequities of El Salvador won international attention and support. By 1980 he was the most vocal opponent of the military regime and the biggest threat to its survival. He knew he had placed his life in danger. In his final months the shadows of death surrounded him. The end came on March 24, 1980, when he was assassinated while saying Mass in his Cathedral.
This week, as we recall the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, it is challenging for us to reflect on Fr Romano and Archbishop Romero who also paid the ultimate price.
Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador was an unlikely revolutionary.
