Pope Francis

[Danny Jarman]

Here is the story of how a truly brave priest, who cared for his flock, for the poor, lived the last years of his life.

On March 23rd, 1980, one day before his murder, he (Romero) called for revolutionary defeatism among the Salvadorian military, asking soldiers in the National Guard, the police and the military to refuse to obey orders. "Brothers, you are from the same people; you kill your fellow peasant . . . No soldier is obliged to obey an order that is contrary to the will of God…In the name of God then, in the name of this suffering people I ask you, I beg you, I command you in the name of God: stop the repression!"

Romero was murdered for daring to care and to speak.

If the Vatican and MSM want to claim that Pope Bergoglio is a priest of the poor, let's compare his actions to those of Archbishop Oscar Romero.

The Assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero

"When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises." Oscar Romero

"A church that suffers no persecution but enjoys the privileges and support of the things of the earth beware! is not the true church of Jesus Christ. A preaching that does not point out sin is not the preaching of the gospel. A preaching that makes sinners feel good, so that they are secured in their sinful state, betrays the gospel's call." Oscar Romero

"The church would betray its own love for God and its fidelity to the gospel if it stopped being . . . a defender of the rights of the poor . . . a humanizer of every legitimate struggle to achieve a more just society . . . that prepares the way for the true reign of God in history." Oscar Romero

One of the catalysts for escalation of the war was the famous assassination of Óscar Arnulfo Romero, two weeks after José Napoleón Duarte became the leader of junta. The fourth Archbishop of San Salvador, Romero was initially appointed as Archbishop on February 23, 1977. He was a predictable and orthodox bookworm, elected as a compromise candidate by conservative fellow bishops. He had a reputation for a pious and timid approach, which caused some dissent among priests espousing liberation theology, who felt his appointment would undermine the Catholic clergy's commitment to the poor. The people of El Salvador never expected him to come out on their side. The Salvadorian Civil War would soon have a deep impact on Romero, however.

On March 12th, 1977, Rutilio Grande García, a Jesuit priest and a very close friend of Romero's, was assassinated along with Manuel Solorzano, 72, and Nelson Rutilio Lemus, 16, by machine gun fire. It was well-known that landowners saw Grande's work among the peasants as a threat to their power, as he was a leading champion of the poor, a promoter of liberation theology and had been deeply involved in creating groups among the campesinos. He had been targeted for stating that the big landowners' dogs ate better the campesino children whose fathers worked in their fields.

After the killing of Father Grande, Romero went to the church to view the three bodies and spent many hours praying and hearing the stories of the suffering farmers. Romero stated, "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.'"

The next morning, Romero announced that he had changed his stance toward the government as Archbishop he would no longer attend any state functions or meet with the president. The murder of Grande would never be investigated by the government, despite Romero's repeated pleas to do so. From that time on, Romero's rhetoric became more revolutionary, speaking out against poverty, social injustice, assassinations and torture by government forces. "Those who work on the side of the poor suffer the same fate as the poor," he said. He stopped the building of a cathedral, and said it would not resume until the war was over and the hungry were fed. He met Pope John Paul II and criticized his support of the military government despite its wholesale massacres and violations of human rights.

On March 14, 1977, Romero publically stated in two newspapers that his view of the murders was that Father Rutilio Grande was killed for political reasons, for raising the spirit of the people. The following Sunday, Romero canceled Masses throughout the archdiocese in protest. He instead held Mass in one small cathedral in San Salvador, where he was joined by 150 priests and over 100,000 people, who listened eagerly to Romero's calls to end the violence. Romero soon earned a reputation as the "bishop of the poor."

"In 1980 the war claimed the lives of 3,000 per month, with cadavers clogging the streams, and tortured bodies thrown in garbage dumps and the streets of the capitol weekly. With one exception, all the Salvadoran bishops turned their backs on him, going so far as to send a secret document to Rome reporting him, accusing him of being politicized' and of seeking popularity." (10)

In an attempt to defend the Salvadorian people, he called for international intervention to prevent murders by security forces. Romero also criticized the United States for sending the junta aid, and wrote to Jimmy Carter in February of 1980, saying that further aid would "undoubtedly sharpen the injustice and the repression inflicted on the organized people, whose struggle has often been for their most basic human rights." He added, ""You say that you are Christian. If you are really Christian, please stop sending military aid to the military here, because they use it only to kill my people." The President ignored his plea and continued to pour 1.5 million dollars of aid a day into El Salvador for years, as did his successors. His letter never received a response.

"I have often been threatened with death," he had told a Guatemalan reporter two weeks before his assassination. "If they kill me, I shall arise in the Salvadoran people. If the threats come to be fulfilled, from this moment I offer my blood to God for the redemption and resurrection of El Salvador. Let my blood be a seed of freedom and the sign that hope will soon be reality."

"Romero had the only uncensored voice in San Salvador, a small radio station. It broadcast the names of people who were missing. It would happen that a man would be taken off and never heard from again, and his family would ask a priest for help in tracing him. These things soon wound up in the archbishop's lap. He wanted answers, why people were arrested and what was happening to them." (8).

Romero associated daily with hundreds of the poor, traveled the countryside and assisted the suffering. Many times he drove out to a garbage dump where bodies were often taken by government death squads after torture and execution. He would dig through the garbage to find the bodies, often accompanied by friends or family members. "These days I walk the roads gathering up dead friends, listening to widows and orphans, and trying to spread hope," he said.

Weeks after writing the letter to Jimmy Carter, Romero leaped headfirst into the fire on March 23rd, 1980, one day before his murder, he called for revolutionary defeatism among the Salvadorian military, asking soldiers in the National Guard, the police and the military to refuse to obey orders. "Brothers, you are from the same people; you kill your fellow peasant . . . No soldier is obliged to obey an order that is contrary to the will of God…In the name of God then, in the name of this suffering people I ask you, I beg you, I command you in the name of God: stop the repression!"

Photo appeared in El País on 7 November 2009 with the information that the state of El Salvador recognized its responsibility in the crime.

On March 24th, 1980, one day after his sermon calling on the soldiers to not obey the military, Romero was giving Mass in a small chapel located in a hospital called "La Divina Providencia" for a funeral of someone who been murdered a week before. The chapel was full as always because of his newfound popularity. While raising the chalice at the end of the Eucharistic rite, a gunman shot him through the heart with a sniper rifle. His blood covered the altar and he fell, gasping for breath in front of the terrified crowd. He was dead within minutes.

According to sources, just before the bullets fell Romero, he uttered the words, "One must not love oneself so much, as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us, and those that fend off danger will lose their lives."

Days before his murder Archbishop Romero told a reporter, "You can tell the people that if they succeed in killing me, that I forgive and bless those who do it. Hopefully, they will realize they are wasting their time. A bishop will die, but the church of God, which is the people, will never perish." He added, "I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I will be resurrected in the Salvadoran people."

It is widely believed that the killers were members of a death squad trained by the United States. In an official report by the United Nations in 1993, it was announced that an army Major by the name of Roberto D'Aubuisson, a School of the Americas graduate with counterinsurgency intelligence experience, had ordered the killing of Romero. Captain Álvaro Rafael Saravia, who participated in the assassination, said the effort was led by D'Aubuisson. D'Aubuisson had publically spoken of the need to "take care" of the Archbishop, a statement which he made in the context of publically speaking of the need to kill 200,000 or 300,000 to restore order to El Salvador.

Years later, in the National Security Archive, scholars obtained a declassified document about a conversation with Roberto D'Aubuisson in which he bragged about planning the killing of Archbishop Romero, and in which he mentions a lottery between the members of his death squads in which the "winners" would be the ones to kill Romero. D'Aubuisson would found his own far-right party, the Nationalist Republic Alliance or ARENA, not long after the murder of Romero. ARENA would dominate the political scene in El Salvador until 1989.

Romero's funeral was attended by 250,000 mourners, and was called the largest demonstration in El Salvador's history. It was fired upon by army forces. Some who attended were shot down in front of the cathedral by snipers from the rooftops. Romero is considered the unofficial patron saint of the Americas and El Salvador. He is often referred to as "San Romero" or "Saint Romero" in El Salvador and throughout the world.

Despite this title, the Catholic Church has been reluctant to recognize the murdered priest, although they have beatified many less-deserving figures, as an essay by Dr. Michael Parenti points out:

"John Paul also beatified Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac, the leading Croatian cleric who welcomed the Nazi and fascist Ustashi takeover of Croatia during World War II. Stepinac sat in the Ustashi parliament, appeared at numerous public events with top ranking Nazis and Ustashi, and openly supported the Croatian fascist regime that exterminated hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and Roma ("gypsies").

In John Paul's celestial pantheon, reactionaries had a better chance at canonization than reformers. Consider his treatment of Archbishop Oscar Romero who spoke against the injustices and oppressions suffered by the impoverished populace of El Salvador and for this was assassinated by a right-wing death squad. John Paul never denounced the killing or its perpetrators, calling it only tragic.' In fact, just weeks before Romero was murdered, high-ranking officials of the Arena party, the legal arm of the death squads, sent a well-received delegation to the Vatican to complain of Romero's public statements on behalf of the poor.

Romero was thought by many poor Salvadorans to be something of a saint, but John Paul attempted to ban any discussion of his beatification for fifty years. Popular pressure from El Salvador caused the Vatican to cut the delay to twenty-five years. […] In either case, Romero was consigned to the slow track." (9)

Thanks for this! I never knew about Romero.