Oscar Romero: utterly radical and utterly orthodox
Oscar Romero was assassinated on Monday 24 March, 1980, as he was celebrating Mass in the chapel of the Divine Providence cancer hospital where he lived. He was Archbishop of San Salvador in Central America. Thirty-five years later he was declared a martyr, and canonised as a saint of the Church by Pope Francis on 14 October, 2018.
Words: Julian Filochowski
Photo: © Alamy
It is the greatest grace and privilege of my life to have known and worked with Oscar Romero between 1977 and 1980 and to have enjoyed his friendship. There are times in our lives when we catch a flash, a fleeting glimpse, of God at work in our world and Christ’s presence amongst us. Archbishop Romero provided just such a glimpse for me.
He was far from the prince of the Church, with a built-in superiority complex lording it over others, that I had foolishly imagined. I discovered a humble man, who actually listened attentively (we might say in a ‘synodal’ manner!) sincerely looking as to how he should best serve his people – his exploited poor people, in the midst of repression and killings under military rule. And Romero was close to the people. In them, he saw Jesus Christ in disguise. Full of compassion, he immersed himself in their daily struggles – and the people loved him.
Born on August 15th, 1917, Oscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdamez was sent to study for the priesthood in Rome and was ordained there in April 1942. He embraced a simple frugal lifestyle; he was a popular preacher who responded with genuine concern to the plight of the poor. He was an energetic traditional priest – but not particularly conservative in his outlook. He gave dedicated pastoral service to the diocese of San Miguel for 25 years – a greatly-admired workaholic in a cassock!
There followed seven years of pastoral famine in the capital city as an ecclesiastical bureaucrat and auxiliary bishop. He faced a mid-life crisis and, suffering from ‘scrupulosity’ and an obsessive-compulsive cycle of behaviour (OCD), he gained a reputation as a stubborn and reactionary prelate. Seemingly unsympathetic to the new social justice thrust of the Latin American Church, he became suspicious of the clergy and the Base Christian Communities [small groups of Christians gathering to study the Bible and work social justice] that were seeking political change and promoting land reform.
A brief spell back in the countryside as Bishop of Santiago de Maria opened Romero’s eyes as he reconnected to the semi-feudal misery and hardship of the campesinos and witnessed the murderous repression being suffered at the hands of the security forces. And Romero gradually changed. With counselling and cognitive therapy, he overcame the OCD. His spirituality evolved away from one which saw holiness equated with perfection and rigid observance of spiritual and ascetic practices – to a dynamic, faithful and prayerful searching for what God was really asking of him; and he began to identify the God of Jesus who lived in the suffering people of El Salvador. In February 1977 he was the surprising choice to be the new Archbishop of San Salvador.
Photo: © Alamy
Over the next three years the social and political conflict in El Salvador intensified – with electoral fraud blocking change, and peaceful protest being met with massacres and death squad killings. From his cathedral pulpit, Archbishop Romero became the voice of the voiceless poor. He inhabited, and was inhabited by, the Word of God and the world of the poor. That’s not a clever play on words. They were the basis of his spirituality, his prophetic witness, his teaching and his action. He loved God and he loved the poor. He loved God in the poor.
He was a self-effacing man with a special gift from God; and that was his spectacular talent as a preacher. The sermons were legendary – and the whole country listened by radio. With fake news monopolising the media, the sermons were Romero’s own vehicle to tell the full truth of torture, killings and disappearances. There was no ‘spin’, no evasion, no hidden agenda, no empty words. He spoke the unvarnished truth with breathtaking clarity and without a thought for his personal safety – week in, week out.
Romero with Julian Filochowski and MPs 1978
Julian presenting six volumes of Romero Homilies to Pope Francis
He unpacked the gospel and presented it as truly good news to his people; and then, and this is absolutely crucial, he set about making that good news a reality in their lives through diocesan human rights projects and food-bank programmes. Compassion and words of hope were translated into deeds. Unmistakably, it was a faith that does justice.
Romero contended that only if we put into practice the beatitudes found in the Gospels can we begin to build that civilisation of love, to which we all aspire.
“A civilisation of love is not sentimentality; it is justice and truth. A civilisation of love that did not demand justice for people would not be true civilisation… Because of this, it is only a caricature of love when we try to patch up with charity what is owed in justice, when we cover with an appearance of benevolence what we are failing in social justice. True love means demanding what is just.”
With the emergence of armed guerrilla groups on the far left, civil war loomed. Archbishop Romero, rejecting the violence perpetrated by the left as well as the right, strained every nerve to promote peaceful solutions to his nation’s crisis. He was vilified in the press, attacked and denounced to Rome by Catholics of the wealthy classes, and harassed by the security forces.
The death threats multiplied; the atmosphere was charged. Archbishop Romero realised he was going to be killed. And he came to accept it.
“I have frequently been threatened with death… I am bound as a pastor by a divine command to give my life for those whom I love, and that is all Salvadorans, even those who are going to kill me.
Martyrdom is a grace from God which I do not believe I deserve… But if they succeed in killing me, can you tell them that I pardon and bless those who do it. But I wish that they could realise that they’re wasting their time. A bishop may die, but the Church of God, which is the people, will never die.”
At 6:26pm on 24 March, 1980, with a single marksman’s bullet, he fell at the foot of a huge crucifix with blood pouring from his mouth, nostrils and ears.
The execution of Romero, and that is what it was, the public execution of this devoted disciple of Jesus Christ was met with disbelief; it stunned the world and the Church. It was carried out by a death squad linked to the country’s armed forces, close ally of the Pentagon in Washington. It was planned, approved and financed, not by atheists or communists or Islamist fanatics, but by wealthy and powerful members of the Catholic and evangelical Christian oligarchy and their military leaders.
Pope Francis declared that Romero died a martyr, out of ‘hatred of the faith’. But hatred of what faith? Not hatred of an abstract faith or of the Apostles’ Creed; but hatred of a faith that does justice.
He gave his life for the poor. He ‘talked the talk and he walked the walk’. He went like a lamb to the slaughter – and gave us an inspirational martyr, a guiding light for our times.
St Oscar Romero – Pray for Us.
Julian Filochowski is Co-chair of the Archbishop Romero Trust and was Director of CAFOD (the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development) from 1982 to 2003. According to files in the National Archives at Kew, his time as a human rights activist at the Catholic Institute for International Relations (1973-1982) saw him called “A Marxist or worse” by the Foreign Office. He is 77 years old.
This article is from S(h)ibboleth magazine Issue 4. Buy your copy today!