Oscar Romero

Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez was born in 1917 in Ciudad Barrios, a small town in the mountains of eastern El Salvador, into a poor family — the second of seven children. He showed early aptitude for religious life; he entered the minor seminary at thirteen, the major seminary at twenty, and was sent to Rome to complete his theological studies. He was ordained a priest in Rome in 1942, in the middle of the war.

For the next thirty-five years he was a thoroughly conventional priest. He worked first as a parish priest in San Miguel (Eastern El Salvador), then as secretary of the diocese, then as rector of the inter-diocesan seminary in San Salvador, then as auxiliary bishop. He was theologically traditional, suspicious of the changes coming out of the Second Vatican Council and the Medellín Conference, often at odds with more progressive priests and bishops in his country. He was personally austere — he kept few possessions, rose early, prayed long, and lived simply — but his political-theological positions were squarely with the established order.

The transformation

In February 1977, the Vatican appointed Romero archbishop of San Salvador. The appointment was made specifically because he was viewed as theologically safe and politically conservative; the Salvadoran oligarchy and military expected him to keep the church out of the country’s increasingly tense political situation. The appointment was widely seen at the time as a defeat for the Salvadoran progressive Catholic clergy who had hoped for one of their own.

Three weeks later, on March 12, 1977, Rutilio Grande — a Jesuit priest, a close personal friend of Romero’s, who had been working with peasant communities in the rural village of Aguilares — was shot to death along with two parishioners on a road outside Aguilares by a Salvadoran death squad. The murder was almost certainly carried out by paramilitaries connected to the Salvadoran military or oligarchy.

Romero went to Aguilares the day of the murder. He stayed up that night with the bodies. The transformation was substantial and (by the testimony of those close to him) decisive. From that week forward, Romero was a different archbishop.

The three years

Across the next three years (1977–80), Romero:

• Cancelled the diplomatic reception the Salvadoran government had planned in his honor following the Grande murder, refusing to attend any state function until the investigation was completed (it was not).
• Spoke publicly each Sunday from the cathedral pulpit in San Salvador, broadcast nationally on radio. The Sunday homilies became the principal — for many listeners the only — independent source of news in El Salvador about the violence the government and paramilitaries were inflicting on the population. Romero read aloud the names of those killed and disappeared in the previous week.
• Catalogued the violence through the church’s Tutela Legal office (the legal-aid office of the archdiocese), which documented thousands of cases of disappearance, torture, and murder.
• Met with President Carter in Washington in 1979 to argue against U.S. military aid to the Salvadoran government. The meeting did not produce the desired result; U.S. aid continued and substantially increased after Reagan’s election.
• Was repeatedly threatened. By 1980 the threats were public and credible.

In his Sunday homily on March 23, 1980 — broadcast nationally, as always — Romero addressed Salvadoran soldiers directly:

I would like to make a special appeal to the men of the army, and specifically to the ranks of the National Guard, the police and the military. Brothers, you come from our own people. You are killing your own brothers and sisters. No soldier is obliged to obey an order that is contrary to the will of God. No one has to obey an immoral law… In the name of God, then, and in the name of this suffering people whose laments rise to heaven each day more tumultuous, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression!

The next day, March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass at the chapel of the Hospital de la Divina Providencia (the cancer hospital where he was a regular celebrant), Romero was shot through the heart by a single bullet from a sniper. He died moments later. The bullet was almost certainly fired by a member of the death squad organized by Roberto D’Aubuisson, a Salvadoran military officer and founder of the right-wing ARENA party. D’Aubuisson was never prosecuted for the murder; he died in 1992.

The aftermath

Romero’s funeral on March 30, 1980, was attended by approximately 250,000 mourners in Plaza Gerardo Barrios in San Salvador. During the service, gunfire and an explosion (origin disputed) caused panic; between thirty and fifty people died in the resulting stampede or were shot.

The Salvadoran civil war (1979–92) followed, killing approximately 75,000 people. The U.S. supplied substantial military aid throughout. The Salvadoran Truth Commission’s 1993 report substantially documented the responsibility of the Salvadoran military and paramilitaries for the bulk of the killings, including Romero’s.

Canonization

The cause for Romero’s canonization began in 1993 but moved slowly through the Vatican of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who were substantially cautious about [[liberation-theology|liberation theology]] generally. Pope Francis substantially accelerated the process: declaring Romero a martyr in 2015, beatifying him in San Salvador in May 2015, and canonizing him in St. Peter’s Square on October 14, 2018 — alongside Paul VI and others. Romero’s canonization is widely viewed as the Catholic Church’s substantial vindication of the liberation-theology moment.

What this gives the platform

Three contributions:

1. An exemplary integration of contemplative life and public courage. Romero’s life — austere personal religious practice integrated with relentless public witness against violence — is a model [[0mn1one|the platform]] takes seriously.
2. A test case for the cost of the work. Romero’s murder is the cost of the kind of public religious witness [[liberation-theology|liberation theology]] asks for. [[0mn1one|The platform]] engages this honestly: the work is sometimes life-and-death, and many of the figures the platform engages have paid serious costs.
3. A continuing teaching. Romero’s homilies (preserved in transcription and now widely available) are themselves continuing teaching about how Christian witness is conducted under conditions of state violence. [[0mn1one|The platform]] takes them as continuing instruction.

See also

Auto-generated from this entry’s typed relations: frontmatter, grouped by relation type so the editorial signal isn’t flattened.

• Subset of: [[liberation-theology]]
• Member of: [[person]]

Sources

1. Óscar Romero. Voice of the Voiceless: The Four Pastoral Letters and Other Statements. Orbis, 1985. Source class: book / primary.
2. Óscar Romero. The Violence of Love. Trans. James R. Brockman. Plough, 1988 (rev. 2004). Source class: book / homiletic anthology.
3. James R. Brockman. Romero: A Life. Orbis, 1989. Source class: book / definitive biography.
4. Jesús Delgado. Óscar Arnulfo Romero: Biografía. San Salvador, 1986. Source class: book / Salvadoran biography.
5. Romero (1989, dir. John Duigan, screenplay by John Sacret Young). Source class: film.
6. The Salvadoran Truth Commission. From Madness to Hope: The 12-Year War in El Salvador. United Nations, 1993. Source class: institutional report.

Lenses still to grow

• Rutilio Grande as a figure in his own right.
• The Salvadoran civil war in detail.
• The U.S. role in funding the Salvadoran military government across the 1980s.
• Romero’s homilies as a continuing body of work.
• The 1989 Jesuit murders at the Central American University as continuation of the same violence.
• El Mozote (1981) and the broader pattern of military massacres.