The Scandal of Redemption. Oscar Romero

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      The teaching discussed in these base communities often focused on the church’s social doctrine, and peasants began to talk boldly about the injustice they saw in their society. Many landowners feared these new groups, denouncing them as communist. Tensions grew as the priests carried out the recommendations of Vatican II and Medellín, giving the government excuse to expel foreign priests, who they claimed were stirring up trouble.

      THROUGHOUT THIS STORMY HISTORY, Oscar Romero had been at work. During his time as pastor of San Miguel, his parishioners had appreciated his lively preaching and the many parish activities he organized. When, in 1966, he took over as editor of the archdiocesan newspaper, they read what he had to say. But he was by no means one of the radical priests who were making so much trouble. Ordained a bishop in 1970, he was assigned to San Salvador, the capital city. Many churchmen there, including the elderly Archbishop Luis Chávez y González, had embraced the radical message of the Medellín meeting. Bishop Romero was not part of this contingent. Though increasingly troubled by what he saw, he was still attempting to walk a line. When the police massacred five peasants in his district, he protested strongly in a letter to the president but kept his public comments to a minimum.

      When the time came for a new archbishop to be appointed, those who backed Romero were the elites of San Salvador. They considered him “safe.” With their support, in 1977 Romero was appointed by the Vatican to be Archbishop of San Salvador – effectively responsible for shepherding the Catholic Church in all of El Salvador.

      The installation of the new archbishop was not the only change in leadership going on in El Salvador that February. A presidential election had been held two days before Romero took up his new role. Thanks to massive voter fraud, including assaults and intimidation at the polls, the government party candidate, a darling of the oligarchs, was named the winner. A massive crowd, as many as sixty thousand people, flocked to the city’s central square – to celebrate Mass, and to protest the election results: one purpose bled into the other. After the Mass, the police called for the gathered people to disperse. Most did – but the police opened fire on the two thousand or so who remained. The protesters ran to seek sanctuary in San Rosario, the church that bordered the square, and were besieged until the former archbishop, Chávez y González, arranged a truce.

      Protests continued and two days later troops once again fired on the crowd in the square. Somewhere between forty and three hundred people were killed. The violence was not confined to the city: the National Guard had arrested and tortured a parish priest in a rural district who was considered one of the troublemakers; other priests were being expelled.

      THEN, THREE WEEKS after Romero’s appointment, one of those troublesome priests, Rutilio Grande, was shot down by gunmen. Everyone suspected that the government and the clique of oligarchs were responsible: Father Grande had been one of the most outspoken of those who were critical of the regime, defending the peasants, and had been active in helping to organize base communities. He had also been Archbishop Romero’s dear friend.

      Romero traveled to the rural church where Grande’s body had been taken, and spent that day praying and listening to stories of violence and exploitation from the peasants whom Grande had served, and stories of his care for them. At the homily for the funeral Mass, Romero called Grande’s death what it was: an assassination. He said what everyone knew: Father Grande had been killed precisely for speaking up on behalf of the peasants.

      “We have asked the legal authorities to shed light on this criminal act,” Romero said, “for they have in their hands the instruments of this nation’s justice and they must clarify this situation. We are not accusing anyone nor are we making judgments before we have all the facts. We hope to hear the voice of an impartial justice since the cause of love cannot be separated from justice. There can be no true peace or love that is based on injustice or violence or intrigue.”

      His meaning was unmistakable. It was the violence and intrigue in the government-supported military itself that he had in his sights. But even in this, he refused to compromise the gospel:

      Who knows if those responsible for this criminal act and who have been excommunicated are listening to the radio in their hideout and hearing these words? My dear criminals, we want to tell you that we love you and we ask God to pour forth repentance into your hearts.

      Romero returned to San Salvador, where he met with the bishops and priests who served under him. And then he acted. He closed all the country’s Catholic schools for three days of mourning. The following Sunday, he had every priest in El Salvador refrain from saying Mass. Instead, he held a single Mass outside San Salvador Cathedral. The crowds were larger even than those at the Mass and protest two weeks earlier. Romero showed his people that he would not be distancing himself from the kind of work that Grande had been doing. Grande had, he said, given his life in the proclamation of the gospel, and Romero publicly thanked the other priests who were doing the same kind of work. After the homily, he demanded that the government investigate the events surrounding the assassination of Grande, saying that he would not participate in any formal governmental event until the assassins had been brought to justice.

      ROMERO HAD DECLARED HIMSELF. And from that moment, he would not back down, and he would not be quiet. For the following three years, in his homilies – which were broadcast over the radio – and in the archdiocesan newspaper, Archbishop Romero spoke to the people, to the oligarchs, and to the government, and he spoke truth.

      His homilies called his listeners to Christ’s message of love and radical forgiveness, and to the need for justice. He called those in power to take care lest they violate that justice. He called all to Christ, teaching the message of the gospel and the hope of eternal life in Christ’s kingdom even as he also taught the campesinos who listened to him that the love and justice of this kingdom was something that they could and should hope for, pray for, and work for now, in El Salvador, in their lives. He warned them away from the guerrilla warfare to which some, in desperation, were turning; the way of Christ pointed to a better response. But this response was not passivity or acquiescence:

      We have never preached violence, except the violence of the love that led Christ to be nailed to a cross. We preach only the violence that we must each do to ourselves to overcome selfishness and to eliminate the cruel inequalities among us. This is not the violence of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence of love and fraternity, the violence that chooses to beat weapons into sickles for work.

      All conversion, all change, began with the heart; with God drawing people to him to shape them into a community of love. And this community could and must include those who had formerly been enemies; Romero extended Christ’s forgiveness to the government’s killers as well.

      There is no justice without truth. Murders of peasants and attacks on priests were common in El Salvador, and would become more so in the years to follow. But they were under-reported, the news often distorted. The press was in the pocket of the wealthy. The Jesuit seminary had been bombed six times the previous year, and opposition leaders and those who spoke up were regularly “disappeared,” but El Salvador’s newspapers were reluctant to investigate these government crimes.

      Each of Archbishop Romero’s homilies included a summary of the events of the week: he gathered reports of as many of the disappearances, murders, and attacks as he could, quoting eyewitness testimony and pointing out the frequent falsity of the official version of events as reported by the compromised news media. He was not reckless in accusation, but he also did not hesitate to use his homilies to present evidence showing the complicity of the national security forces in various assassinations. He spoke these homilies to an audience that eventually included half of El Salvador’s city-dwellers and three quarters of the campesinos – except when the Salvadoran military succeeded in jamming the signal that came out of the cathedral in downtown San Salvador. Twice, the radio station was damaged by bombs; twice, Romero rebuilt it. His listeners included peasants in distant villages and СКАЧАТЬ