It has been confirmed by the Foreign Minister for El Salvador, Hugo Martinez, that US President Barack Obama will visit the tomb of assassinated Archbishop Oscar Romero next Wednesday, 23 March (see EPA, here). The Salvadorian prelate was murdered on 24 March 1980, after leading protests against his country's government - the brutal Revolutionary Junta. Since then, Mgsr Romero's supporters have been campaigning for his canonisation as a martyr to the faith.Obama is also expected to attend Mass during his visit to Romero's tomb, which is located in a crypt beneath the Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador. In fact, the US President will be at San Salvador's Cathedral in time to commemorate the eve of the anniversary of Romero's murder - he was shot whilst celebrating Mass in the chapel at the Divine Providence Hospital. The current Archbishop of San Salvador, Msgr Jose Luis Escobar, will accompany Barck Obama during his pilgrimage to Romero's bronze mausoleum.
The US Secretary of State for Latin America, Arturo Valenzuela, said that Obama's visit to El Salvador is designed to recognise the "contribution of all Salvadorans" to building "a democratic country with strong institutions." The US President will arrive in the small Central American country on 22 March, leaving late on 23 March. The visit will form part of a wider tour of Latin America by Barack Obama.
Less than a month before he was shot, Mgsr Oscar Romero wrote to President Jimmy Carter, asking him to stop supplying arms to the Salvadoran regime. It was a plea that fell on deaf ears. The current US president, though, now wishes to honour the former Archbishop of San Salvador as "a universal figure, a representative figure of the faith," according to Hugo Martinez.
Of course, Romero is often venerated as the patron saint of progressives and dissidents, or those on the left - which is probably why the pro-abortion and pro-homosexual Obama is a fan of his. Having said that, it is very unfair to categorise Romero as a liberal martyr, as it is an assumption that arises from the fact that most of his supporters tend to be fans of the hermeneutic of discontinuity. Of course, it is also well known that Pope John Paul II had real concerns about the way Archbishop Romero handled the Church's relationship with the Salvadoran regime. And many in Rome were not amused when Msgr Oscar Romero suspended the celebration of Mass throughout El Salvador - as an act of protest at the death of his friend, Fr Rutilio Grande SJ.
Sadly, Romero's reputation, tarnished by association, hasn't been helped by the fact that many of those involved in liberation theology, as well as campaigners for the ordination of women priests and homosexual rights within the Church, are sometimes quite vocal in backing the Cause for his Canonisation. The Oscar Romero Trust, which campaigns for his Cause in the UK, seems only able to attract Protestants or liberal members of the Catholic Church - some of whom even seem to have links with the Soho Masses (see "News & Notes" here). Romero's typical fan-base, then, tends to be made up of a dying breed, which many affectionately call "the Tabletista."
Until Romero begins to appeal to a more traditional Catholic following, many believe that his road to sainthood will be a bumpy one - even if Pope Benedict XVI has said of him:
"I have no doubt he will be beatified...He was certainly a great witness for the faith, a man of great Christian virtue who was committed to peace and against dictatorship."
[Picture note: A statue of Archbishop Oscar Romero in the city of Santa Ana, El Salvador; the author of this work, Juan Miguel, has released this image into the public domain; source: Wikimedia Commons (here). NB - this picture is a detail from the original work]
10 comments:
"the Tabletista." Oh RS. You never fail to delight! ;-)
I think this post on the Romero Trust, made a while back, says it all:- http://catholicactionuk.blogspot.com/2008/11/dossier-archbishop-romero-trust.html
Just found this, which might ruffle a few feathers among the Romero supporters:- A quote from Romero about St Josemaria Escriva:- " In this stormy world overrun by insecurity and doubt, the superb doctrinal fidelity that characterizes Opus Dei is a sign of special grace from God . . ." http://experienceswithopusdei.blogspot.com/2010/03/oscar-romero-and-st-josemaria.html
@ Webmaster Gareth
Thank you ;-)
@ Kevin
Thank you for the very useful links
There are several statements in this account of Monseñor Romero which, I believe, could lead to a misunderstanding of his life and his faith.
Monseñor Romeor did not lead protests. He spoke out strongly on the radio, in the press, and in his homilies against human rights violations not just by the Revolutionary Junta but against the atrocities committed by the government and death squads, starting in the first month as archbishop.
His denunciations were rooted in his deep faith in Jesus as a God of Life - you can read his statements against torture and abortion in his sermons.
He was a man of deep faith which you can discern reading his homilies, his journals and his pastoral letters, as well as in several definitive biographies.
Also, I think it is misleading to say that he suspended Masses after the killing of Father Rutilio Grande. He decreed that there would be one Mass in the archdiocese at the cathedral.
Romero deserves to be beatified as a martyr and canonized as a saint. He was a man with a deep piety, a firm commitment to the church, and a faith in Jesus. His denunciations were rooted in moral theology and the social doctrine of the church, not in ideologies. He combined a life of prayer with a sense of justice for the poor.
Would that we had more people in the Church you are people of faith with a commitment to the poor.
@ John (Juan) Donaghy
Thank you for your comment, and for clarifying some points.
You said that Romero "...decreed that there would be one Mass in the archdiocese at the cathedral" when he suspended Masses in El Salvador. Surely, though, most of the poor who lived in that country at the time couldn't have hoped to make it to the capital for Mass? At such a difficult time in their lives, surely these people needed every grace that Jesus had to offer them? Surely, the Archbishop could have excommunicated members of the government instead - which would have been more just?
It is for this reason that many Churchmen suspected that Romero could be prone to egoism, and sometimes caused conflicts that needn't have been. I must say, as much as I respect Oscar Romero, I have always thought that his suspension of Masses was a very strange thing to have done. It was for this reason that the Papacy thought him too much a maverick.
Of course, there have been egoists that have become saints - and no-one is perfect. The question the Church has to determine, though, is whether Romero was a martyr to the faith or a martyr to justice and peace. Only the former, as far as I understand, guarantees a place in heaven, even if the latter is a very worthy way to die. Many men and women die for the sake of justice and what is right - but that doesn't mean they're dying for their faith in Jesus Christ, even if that faith was a motivating factor in their decision to put their lives at risk.
The poor in remote villages often did not have access to Mass even in their parishes. But many of them listened attentively to Romero's Masses broadcast on the archdiocesan radio station when it was functioning. It was bombed by government and rightist forces several times. Also, many of them, because of their reverence and respect for Padre Rutilio Grande, who was not a radical, may have made the effort to come to the Mass.
I am not sure one could call Romero an egoist or a maverick. From people I know he was a very humble person and at times asked forgiveness from those he offended, even unwittingly.
I urge you to read his homilies, his diaries, and his pastoral letters.
In addition, the situation of having only one Mass came in a very critical time in El Salvador. Not only had Father Grande and two others been killed in cold blood, but a protest in Plaza Libertad against a stolen presidential election had ended in bloodshed of innocents. His installation as archbishop was done quickly because of the critical state of the country and the increasing repression and violence.
Finally, I am not sure that we can always state that a martyr for justice and peace is not a martyr for the faith. (I realize that this is probably not what you are saying but I'd like to make my position clearer.) Reading the papal encyclicals and Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes lead me to see that faith and justice are intimately related - neither is dispensable in seeking to live as a disciple of Christ. And for me and many others Romero is a disciple who prayed deeply, believed firmly, and was a true voice for justice who was not afraid to speak out, even if it meant being killed.
Famous and heroic people have always been hijacked by political groups in support of their own causes through careful picking and choosing of only those aspects of their lives that appear to support the favored cause. They have always be simplified by popular media into cardboard figures that match the fashions of the day. And when they're dead and can't speak for themselves, it's all that much easier to do.
Thus has Romero has become a cardboard saint for leftists. In fact, he was a much more complex figure. He wrote to the Vatican in support of beatification of Josemaria Escriva (another complex figure, but hijacked by the right instead of the left), and turned to Opus Dei priests for spiritual direction for many years. Nearly all his life Romero ran as far as possible from politics. Far from being left-leaning, he was selected as archbishop of San Salvador because he was believed to be someone politically neutral interested only in the spiritual who could be counted on not to make waves.
Clear your mind of the claptrap and tune out political supporters and read Romero's own writings, listen to his homilies for yourself. Ignore all those that use and misuse his words and actions. Romero all his life tried to be faithful to Christ's teachings and the Church's teachings, which are eternal, neither right nor left.
It is true that in the last years of his life Romero focused more on the social justice teachings of the Church and on the dignity of all persons. But these are authentic Church teachings, with strong basis in the Gospel, not political stances, as some like to portray them.
Consider the man himself, not the myth, and I think you may come to join me in considering him a martyr and a saint, as complex and imperfect as most of his fellow saints.
I'll only bring all of your attention to part of a letter Romero wrote to Carter in 1980, just months before he was killed:
"In these moments, we are living through a grave economic and political crisis in our country, but it is certain that increasingly the people are awakening and organizing and have begun to prepare themselves to manage and be responsible for the future of El Salvador, as the only ones capable of surmounting the crisis.
"It would be unjust and deplorable for foreign powers to intervene and frustrate the Salvadoran people, to repress them and keep them from deciding autonomously the economic and political course that our nation should follow. It would be to violate a right that the Latin American bishops, meeting at Puebla, recognized publicly when we spoke of “the legitimate self-determination of our peoples, which allows them to organize according to their own spirit and the course of their history and to cooperate in a new international order” (Puebla, 505).
"Awakening". "Organizing". These are veiled references to the leftist/communist movements expressing themselves through the FMLN, a group that the US was extremely worried about in 1980, when this letter was written. These were democratic movements to create a society oriented toward the left, and if not strictly communist, strongly influenced by communist ideals. Romero is saying that the US shouldn't get in the way of this democratic movement toward a leftist government.
Romero may not be 'of the left' in the sense that he wasn't pro-choice or pro-homosexual, and may not have been stridently pro-liberation theology, but he was 'of the left' in the sense that he felt the people of El Salvador had the right to be governed by a communist government if they so chose.
And that's the reality that those on the right and traditionalist Catholics need to come to terms with... those whom priests like Romero served were poor and wanted a more 'just' - in their mind - allocation of resources, especially in the case of land. What were these priests supposed to say? 'Sorry, but really capitalism is the best game in town, keep with it and you'll get there some day'? Letting the oligarchy continue to dictate the rules in service of the status quo was not an option, and communism (or some kind of communist-light system) - attained by democratic means - was the most attractive to these parishioners, and their priests were sympathetic.
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