His father and brother died while he was in Rome. In , Romero was ordained a priest and returned to El Salvador. He became famous for his sermons.
He also did a lot of parish work like visiting prisons, organising catechism classes and working with others in the Church to provide help and food for the poor. Violence increased in El Salvador by the mid s, as the government and army began killing poor people who stood up for their rights. Some rich people were happy because they thought he would stop priests from helping the poor to stand up for their basic rights.
But a few weeks later, his friend Fr Rutilio Grande was shot and killed, along with two companions. Does reading about faith inspire you? Do you have a story or information about your faith you want to share? Tell us more! Discover More:. Fasting may have become a health fad, but religious communities have been doing it for millennia. CAFOD celebrates the life of its former partner, Saint Oscar Romero, who continues to inspire our work over 40 years on from his death.
Find prayers and reflections inspired by Oscar Romero. Oscar Romero was the Archbishop of San Salvador from until he was assassinated in He was initially regarded as a conservative choice as archbishop, but he became increasingly outspoken about human rights violations in El Salvador — particularly after the murder of his close friend Father Rutilio Grande in March During his three years as archbishop, Romero repeatedly denounced violence and spoke out on behalf of the victims of the civil war.
In a time of heavy press censorship, his weekly radio broadcasts were often the only way people could find out the truth about the atrocities that were happening in their country. He defended the right of the poor to demand political change, a stance which made him a troublesome adversary for the country's rulers.
A month before he was assassinated, Romero wrote to President Jimmy Carter urging the US to stop backing the Salvadoran government and supplying it with arms and military advisers.
And on the day before his assassination, he urged soldiers and police not to follow orders to kill civilians, and stop the repression:.
In the name of God, and in the name of this suffering people, whose laments rise to heaven each day more tumultuous, I beg you, I beseech you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression! He wrote in his diary:. Similarly, in a pastoral letter released in November , he reflected on the plight of the thousands of coffee plantation workers in his diocese:.
Conversely, progressive pastoral leaders were hoping the Vatican would choose Bishop Arturo Rivera Damas instead of Romero, whom they remembered as a harsh critic of their liberation theology initiative. The murder of campesinos was so common that it scarcely attracted attention from anyone except their families.
General Carlos Humberto Romero no relation proclaimed himself President of El Salvador following a blatantly fraudulent election. Eight days later, scores of people were killed when the police opened fire on thousands of demonstrators protesting election corruption.
That same month, three foreign priests were beaten and expelled from the country, and a Salvadoran priest was abducted, beaten nearly to death, and thrown through the doors of the chancery. On March 12, a death squad ambushed Fr.
Grande a ride to the rural church where he planned to celebrate mass. Soon after, death squads killed another archdiocesan priest, Fr. Alfonso Navarro. Romero rushed to El Paisnal and offered mass in the house where Rutilio and the two campesinos had been carried. Romero twice demanded that the President of El Salvador thoroughly investigate the murders. Realizing that his traditional reluctance to speak out on political matters had been a passive endorsement of repression and corruption.
He notified the president that representatives of the archdiocese would no longer appear with government leaders at public ceremonies. He also made the controversial decision to cancel masses throughout the entire country the following Sunday, except for the one on the steps of the cathedral, to which the faithful of all parishes were invited. More than , people attended. When he visited the Vatican in , Archbishop Romero presented the Pope with seven detailed reports of institutionalized murder, torture, and kidnapping throughout El Salvador.
He also wrote to President Jimmy Carter, appealing to him as a fellow Christian, to stop sending military aid to the Salvadoran government. His letter went unheeded. President Carter suspended aid in , after the murders of four churchwomen, but President Reagan resumed and greatly increased aid to the Salvadoran government. To his dismay, so were his calls for solidarity with his fellow bishops, all but one of whom turned their backs on him.
Four more priests were assassinated in , along with many hundreds of catechists and delegates of the Word. The peasant death toll exceeded 3, per month. In all, at least 75, - 80, Salvadorans would be slaughtered; , would disappear and never be seen again; a million would flee their homeland; and an additional million would become homeless fugitives, constantly fleeing the military and police.
All of this occurred in a nation of only 5. Romero had nothing left to offer his people except faith and hope. The following evening, while performing a funeral mass in the Chapel of Divine Providence Hospital, Archbishop Oscar Romero was shot to death by a paid assassin.
Only moments before his death, he had reminded the mourners of the parable of wheat. His prophetic words:. More than 50, people gathered in the square outside San Salvador Cathedral to pay their last respects to Archbishop Romero on March 30, The blasts were followed by rapid volleys of gunfire that seemed to come from all four sides.
Many witnesses saw army sharpshooters, dressed in civilian clothing, firing from the roof and balcony of the National Palace. An estimated 7, people took sanctuary inside the cathedral, which normally holds no more than 3, Many others were crushed against the security fence and closed gates that were intended to provide security for the funeral mass. The service was immediately postponed as clerics tried in vain to calm the panicked crowd.
The attack left 40 mourners dead and hundreds seriously wounded. In an eyewitness account published in the March 31, Washington Post, Christopher Dickey wrote, prophetically:. Although El Salvador declared independence from Spain in , the legacy of colonialism continued throughout the twentieth century.
Near-absolute power merely shifted from the Spaniards to the Salvadorans of European ancestry. Mestizos and indigenous peoples—some 95 percent of the total population were virtually serfs. From - , all but one president was a military dictator. Their regimes staged fraudulent elections periodically, to maintain the external pretense of democracy, but their regimes were based on repression blended with occasional reforms intended to defuse potential revolutions.
This system began to unravel in the s, when previously splintered opponents of military rule united behind Jose Napoleon Duarte, leader of the Christian Democratic Party. Duarte and his broad-based reform platform were defeated in one of the most fraudulent elections in recorded history.
Subsequent protests were crushed, and Duarte was exiled. These events convinced many—peasants and middle class alike—that reforms could not be achieved democratically when democracy itself was corrupt, and revolutionary groups grew rapidly. In there was. The fragmentation of any opposition or dissident movement by means of arbitrary arrests, murders, and selective and indiscriminate disappearances of leaders became common practice.
Civilian and military groups engaged in a systematic murder campaign with total impunity, while state institutions turned a blind eye…This period saw the greatest number of deaths and human rights violations. Carlos Humberto Romero is overthrown by a coalition of moderate military officers and civilian leaders.
Adolfo Majano, pledge to end repression and corruption; to protect human rights, and to distribute national wealth more equitably. Nov: The JRG announces free elections will be held in ; it restricts landholdings to hectares per owner; nationalizes banks, and recognizes all political parties.
Jan 3: Facing death threats from the far right, all three civilian members of the Junta resign, as do 10 of the 11 cabinet ministers. The Revolutionary Government Junta is virtually paralyzed and unable to carry out many of its intended reforms. They stage protest marches, sit-ins at government offices, and labor strikes to reinforce their demands for the release of political prisoners and medical care for the poor.
They kill somewhere between 22 - 50 people and wound - others. He warns that the extreme right is arming itself and preparing for massive confrontations in which they clearly intend to ally with the military against both the government and the citizenry. This seeming capitulation to rightists contributes to the political polarization that is spawning unprecedented increases both in death squad activities and in the numbers of previously apolitical peasants who join guerilla groups.
March Archbishop Oscar A. Romero is assassinated. The crime further polarizes Salvadoran society and presages the all-out war that will soon come. It also convinces many peasants that the Church cannot save them and that their only hope is armed revolution.
Forty-Two are killed and more than are wounded.
0コメント