Home Dispatches The Other Americans: Father Oscar Romero's Official Sainthood Was a Long Time Coming
The Other Americans: Father Oscar Romero's Official Sainthood Was a Long Time Coming
The Catholic Church resisted, stating that Romero was far too political.
by Jeff Abbott
Jeff Abbott
Salvadorans celebrate the announcement of the canonization of Saint Romero by Pope Francis in the early morning hours of October 14.
It has been a long road to the canonization of Father Oscar Romero. The former archbishop of San Salvador, El Salvador, was already a saint to the poor of that country when he was assassinated by death squads as he performed mass on March 23, 1980. But it took almost another forty years before Pope Francis officially declared Romero a saint in a ceremony on October 14 in Rome, Italy.
Thousands of people gathered in the early morning hours in the San Salvador National Cathedral to watch a livestream of the Pope's declaration. People cried and cheered upon Pope Francis's announcement. Romero is the first person to be born in Latin America to be declared a saint.
But the canonization was a long time coming. The Catholic Church had long resisted, stating that Romero was far too political.
The door to Romero's canonization was opened by the ascension of Pope Francis, the first Pope from Latin America, and one who has regularly expressed concern for human rights and social justice.
"Romero struggled for the people and the poor," said Mario Lengus, a sixty-seven-year-old from San Salvador. "We are thankful to Pope Francis because he is the only Pope who has raised up Romero to be a saint, which the people already knew he was."
During his tenure, Romero maintained close ties to the economic elite of El Salvador, especially coffee plantation owners in the department of San Miguel. That's where he served as a bishop for nearly twenty years, consistently advocating on behalf of the country's poor.
"He loved the people," Fray Domingo Solis, a Franciscan priest in El Salvador, told me. "He was concerned with the suffering, the inequalities, and the abandonment of the people by authorities."
Romero was known for rejecting gifts and services that would be perceived as elevating him above the poor. In her book, Monseñor Romero, Piezas para un Retrato, María López Vigil recounts how, upon finding a gift of a new set of bedroom furniture in his home in San Miguel, Romero grew angry and demanded the return of his simple bed and chair.
A woman weeps at the ceremony to declare Romero a Saint in the early morning hours of October 14.
In 1977, the Catholic Church appointed Romero Archbishop of San Salvador, expecting him to limit the expansion of liberation theology in the country. Liberation theology had grown throughout Latin America proclaiming God's concern for the poor.
The theology criticized systemic inequalities and sought to address these inequalities by providing a preferential option for the poor. As a result of the systemic criticism, many liberation theologians were accused of having Marxist leanings.
Romero was never a Marxist. But El Salvador's inequalities were never far from his mind.
As El Salvador neared the outbreak of war in the late 1970s, he continued to raise his voice against the Salvadoran military dictatorship, inequality, and repression, continuing to anger the ruling elite.
"The government offered him security and money to stop him from publicly denouncing the injustices," Lengus told me. "But he did not accept any of this."
Threats against Archbishop Romero's life began in the late 1970s, as he condemned state violence against civilians. But Romero viewed pending martyrdom as a means of liberation for the Salvadoran people.
"If they kill me, I will be resurrected in the Salvadoran people," he said in an interview with the Mexican magazine Excelsior, only two weeks before his assassination. "But if God accepts the sacrifice of my life, may my blood be the seed of freedom and the sign that hope will soon be a reality. My death, if accepted by God, is for the liberation of my people as a testimony of hope in the future."
He added, "If they were to kill me, I forgive and bless those who do."
"If they were to kill me, I forgive and bless those who do."
Romero continued to denounce the violence of El Salvador's twelve-year-long civil war, which led to the deaths of more than 75,000 people and the disappearance of thousands more. On March 23, 1980, he delivered a sermon in the National Cathedral stating, "In the name of God … I beg you, I beseech you, I order you to stop the repression."
The following day, as he performed mass in the Church of the Divine Providence in San Salvador, Romero was assassinated by a sniper just a few hundred feet from his humble home.
The assassination of Romero marked the official beginning of the civil war.
Even after his assassination, Romero remained a polarizing figure. He became a symbol for justice for El Salvador's poor, but the military and the elite, who Romero so frequently spoke out against, reviled him.
Over forty mourners were murdered by the army during the Romero's funeral. Lengus was there that day, along with his father and his young son.
"It was a tremendous massacre, horrible," Lengus told me. "It was truly a miracle that we survived."
In November, 1989, Salvadoran soldiers entered the José Simeón Cañas Central American University in San Salvador and killed six priests and two civilians, accusing them of supporting the guerrillas of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). The priests had been actively supporting the peace process between the guerrillas of the FMLN and the government. Yet the vice-minister of defense, Colonel Juan Orlando Zepeda, accused the university of providing sanctuary for "FMLN terrorists."
After killing the priests, the soldiers set fire to their belongings, including a framed photo of Romero. The fire was so intense that the glass of the picture frame melted, leaving a haunting image of Romero's face. Another poster bearing the image of Romero was shot in the heart, the same place where the sniper's bullet landed nine years prior.
The image of Saint Romero burned by the army in November 1989 during a massacre of Jesuit priests.
Saint Romero remained alive in the hearts of the Salvadoran people who continued to fight for justice in their country. For decades after his assassination, nearly every protest and every march displayed his image at the front of the line.
"Romero struggled for the people," Lengus said. "He was the voice for those who did not have a voice. Us, the poor, could not talk. But Romero denounced everything that occurred against the poor."
Poverty War And Peace Latin America Religion Dispatches
Jeff Abbott is an independent journalist currently based out of Guatemala. "The Other Americans" is a column created by Abbott for The Progressive on human migration in North and Central America.
Read more by Jeff Abbott