“Brothers, you are all killing your fellow countrymen. No soldier has to obey an order to kill. It is time to regain your conscience. In the name of God and in the name of the suffering people I implore you, I beg you, I order you, stop the repression.”
Those were the words of Saint Oscar Romero, the then Archbishop of El Salvador on the day before he was assassinated by gunmen while celebrating Holy mass in a hospital chapel. The now famous words he uttered minutes before his death, continued as follows.
“Those who surrender to the service of the poor through love of Christ will live like the grain of wheat that dies. It only apparently dies. If it were not to die, it would remain a solitary grain. The harvest comes because of the grain that dies. ... We know that every effort to improve society, above all when society is so full of injustice and sin, is an effort that God blesses; that God wants; that God demands of us.”
38 years after he was gunned down by a Right Wing death squad, for allegedly siding with people and organizing peaceful protests against atrocities committed against the people by the Military Junta that ruled El Salvador, which the rulers took for siding with the Leftist militants fighting the Junta, Blessed Oscar Romero was declared a Saint by Pope Francis at the St. Peter’s Basilica last Sunday, cheered on by hundreds of thousands of devotees including former rebels of the Salvadoran Left wing.
A legacy so divisive
Ever since the death of Archbishop Oscar Romero on March 24, 1980, his name has been a rallying point for organizations fighting the right wing military Junta that governed El Salvador till elections in 1982.
Yet, it was only in the year 2010, when the country could have their first progressive President. Yet, the call for canonization of this remarkable servant of God and torch bearer of the Church among the poor and the oppressed in El Salvador, a Latin American country with 90% Catholic population, remained highly debatable and divisive a topic even among the upper echelons of the Vatican.
Despite objections, he was beatified in 2015 raising the hopes of faithful around the world. Yet, the prospect of canonizing him, which the devotees awaited , was stalled due to objections of the conservative officials at Vatican questioning the validity of considering his death as falling under the definition of martyrdom. They attributed politics more than faith for his assassination , in a context where he sided with the poor peasants of El Salvador as leftist militants were staging a struggle against US backed military Junta.
Redemption at the societal level
Yet the official announcement by Pope Francis naming him a martyr (a person dying for Faith) in 2015, surely redefines how a modern day martyr is to be recognized;, although not subscribing to what is known as Liberation Theology, he championed the cause for the poor and the marginalized, translating the redemptive work of Lord Jesus Christ to positive actions of mercy and compassion seeking social justice in the earthly sphere as well.
Romero, initially a conservative priest, was not opposed by the military rulers at his appointment as Archbishop of El Salvador. Yet the assassination of Rev. Rutillo Grande, a Jesuit priest working among peasants and a friend of Romero, in 1977, as well as time serving in the rural and poor region of Santiago de María, led to “experience a transformation of sorts,” prompting him to publicly denounce the violence unleashed by the military government, just as he had earlier denounced violent reprisals by the leftist guerrillas. His moving homilies delivered nationwide through radio was the only source of information on the atrocities of the military including abduction, murder, torture against peasants as media freedom was non- existent. Archbishop Romero went to the extent of writing the now world famous letter to the then US President Jimmy Carter, pleading to stop aiding the military rule that was causing immense suffering in El Salvador, Challenging the Americans on their professed Christian identity while funding a repressive regime.
Odium Fidei
The miracle necessary for the canonization under the Catholic tradition came in the form of the miraculous healing of an Salvadoran woman,Cecilia, who continuously had complications during her pregnancy and after delivery diagnosed with a condition which doctors called hopeless. Her husband, though resentful of the practice of the grandmother of his wife praying to the slain Prelate, accidentally came across a picture card carrying his photo kept inside the home Bible and pleaded for intercession on behalf of his wife. The cure was nothing short of the miraculous! Promptly recognized and authenticated by the Vatican, it provided the required miracle initiating the process for sainthood.
Although Romero had been proposed twice previously for canonization, it has been met with objection. Quite fittingly, it was left for the first ever Pope from the Latin American continent to recognize the merit of his life and sacrificial death , thus paving the way for Sainthood. The Holy Father declared that Romero was “killed in hatred of the faith” or “Odium Fidei”.
The violent and turbulent political climate, in which Saint Romero figures as the Archbishop, has lead skeptics to apportion too much a significance to the political aspect of his involvement for the betterment of the peasant population of El Salvador, as opposed to his spiritual legacy. Yet for the poor he was a true disciple of Jesus Christ ready to die for the heavy laden and the weary, exemplifying Jesus’s call for readiness to die as a seed to bring forth new birth.
Traditional in a good sense
Contrary to popular perception, Saint Romero was never a communist or even a liberation theologian; neither did he belong to any particular group within or outside the church. In the opinion of the Peruvian Theologian Priest, Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez, Romero was not “cloistered or encapsulated in only one current.” If anything, the slain Prelate was a traditional person, “but in the good sense: Not exactly conservative, but a very pious person.”
His assassins were never brought to book and the hatred they had towards this Christ-like champion of the poor was manifest in the shooting massacre, slaughtering over 30 people and injuring scores , at his funeral attended by over 250,000 mourners. Yet neither violence nor intimidation could undermine the veneration not only the universal faithful but all free thinking and progressive masses had towards this pious man.
During the Assembly of the Conference of Latin American Bishops in Aparecida, Brazil in the year 2007, when Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was asked about the late Prelate Romero this was the answer: “to me [Romero] is a saint and a martyr … If I were Pope, I would have already canonized him.”
Cardinal Bergoglio, did in fact, become Pope Francis and promptly raised Blessed Oscar Romero, the martyr, to sainthood three days ago on October 14 in Rome.
Saint Oscar Romero shines as a bright light in a dark world where spirituality is in retreat and where those who hold high position , including the clergy, use it for personal aggrandizement and self benefit; sacrificing himself for the cause of the poor and the exploited people who looked up to him as their spiritual leader.
As Sri Lankans belonging to any religion, we can only look on enviously and wish that we had religious leaders of that calibre. But we all know that we do not.
