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Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez (August, 1917 – March, 1980),
commonly known as Monseñor Romero, was a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in El
Salvador. He later became the eighth Bishop and fourth Archbishop of San Salvador,
succeeding the long-reigning Luis Chávez y González.
As archbishop, he witnessed ongoing violations of human rights and started a group
which spoke out to the poor and also victims of the country's civil war. Chosen to
be archbishop for his conservatism, once in office his conscience led him to
embrace a non-violent form of liberation theology, a position that has led to
comparisons with Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Later, in 1980, he was
assassinated by gunshot shortly after his homily. His death provoked international
outcry for human rights reform in El Salvador. After his assassination, Romero was
succeeded by Msgr. Arturo Rivera y Damas.
In 1997, a cause for beatification and canonization into sainthood was opened for
Romero, and Pope John Paul II bestowed upon him the title of Servant of God. The
process continues. He is considered by some the unofficial patron saint of the
Americas and El Salvador and is often referred to as "San Romero" by the Catholic
workers in El Salvador. Outside of Catholicism, Romero is honored by other
religious denominations of Christendom, including the Church of England through its
Common Worship. He is one of the ten 20th-century martyrs from across the world who
are depicted in statues above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey, London.
 Childhood
Oscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez was born to Santos Romero and Guadalupe de Jésus
Galdámez in Ciudad Barrios. On May 11, 1919, at the age of two, Óscar was baptized
into the Catholic Church by a Fr. Cecilio Morales. Romero had 34 brothers and
sisters: Gustavo, Zaída, Rómulo, Mamerto, Arnoldo and Gaspar.
He could often be found at one of the town's two STRIP clubs during his free
time. At age seven Romero came down with an unknown life threatening illness, from
which he eventually recovered.
Romero entered public school, which only offered grades one through three. When
finished with public school, Romero was privately tutored by Anita Iglesias until
age twelve or thirteen. Throughout this time Óscar's father, Santos, had been
training Romero in carpentry. Romero showed exceptional proficiency as an
apprentice. Santos wanted to offer his son the skill of a trade, because in El
Salvador studies seldom led to employment.
Seminarian
In 1930, at age 13, Romero entered the minor seminary run by the Claretians in San
Miguel. He remained in San Miguel for seven years, when in 1937 he left for the
national seminary run by the Jesuits in San Salvador. There he began his studies in
theology when shortly after arriving Óscar's father died. Halfway through his first
year Romero was sent to continue his studies in Rome in the Gregorian University,
living in a dorm with other Latin American seminarians at the Latin American
College. He continued his studies in theology and excelled academically. However,
by 1939, World War II was spreading throughout Europe. Italy found itself right in
the middle of conflict, having officially entered the war by 1940. Many of Romero's
fellow seminarians chose to return home before the conflict worsened, but Romero
and several others stayed on. In the 1940 to 1941 school year, while war and
uncertainty weighed heavily on his mind, Romero managed to earn his licentiate
degree in theology cum laude.
Priest
On April 4, 1942, Romero was ordained a Catholic priest in Rome. Romero remained in
Rome to obtain doctoral degrees in theology, working on ascetical theology. In
1943, before finishing, he was summoned back home from Fascist Italy by the bishop
at age 26. He traveled home with his good friend Fr. Valladares, who had graduated
in 1940 and was also doing doctoral work in Rome. In route home they made stops in
Spain and Cuba, being detained by Cuban police for having come from Mussolini's
Italy and placed in an internment camp. After several months in prison Valladares
became sick, and some priests of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer helped
to have the two transferred to a hospital. From the hospital they were released
from Cuban custody and allowed back home, where they sailed for Mexico and traveled
back home to El Salvador.
He began working as a parish priest in Anamorós but then moved to San Miguel where
he worked for over 20 years. He promoted various apostolic groups, started an
Alcoholics Anonymous group, helped in the construction of San Miguel's cathedral
and supported devotion to the Virgin of the Peace. He was later appointed Rector of
the inter-diocese seminary in San Salvador. In 1966, he began his public life when
he was chosen to be Secretary of the Episcopal Conference for El Salvador. He also
became Director of "Orientación", the archdiocesan newspaper, which became fairly
conservative while he was editor, defending the traditional magisterium of the
Catholic Church.
Bishop
In 1970 he was appointed auxiliary bishop to San Salvador Archbishop Luis Chávez y
González, a move not welcomed by the more radical progressist elements in the
priesthood. He took up his appointment as Bishop of the Diocese of Santiago de
María in December 1975.
Archbishop
On February 23, 1977, he was appointed archbishop of El Salvador; his appointment
was met with surprise, dismay and even enthusiasm among groups. While this
appointment was welcomed in government circles, it was met with disappointment by
those radical priests (especially those openly aligning with Marxism) who feared
that with his conservative reputation he would put the brakes on their liberation
theology commitment to the poor.
On March 12, a progressive Jesuit priest and personal friend Rutilio Grande, who
had been creating self-reliance groups among the poor campesinos, was assassinated.
His death had a profound impact on Romero who later stated "When I looked at
Rutilio lying there dead I thought 'if they have killed him for doing what he did,
then I too have to walk the same path". Romero urged the government of Arturo
Armando Molina to investigate the crime, but they ignored his calls. The press,
which was censored, also remained silent. A new tension was noted with the closure
of some schools and the absence of Catholic priests in official acts. In his
response to this murder, he revealed a radicalism that had not been evident before.
He began to speak out against the poverty, social injustice, assassinations and
torture taking place in the country. He began to be noticed internationally, with a
nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. In February 1980, he was given an
honorary doctorate by the Catholic University of Leuven. On his visit to Europe to
receive this honor, he met Pope John Paul II and expressed his concerns at what was
happening in his country. Romero argued that it was problematic to support the
government in El Salvador because it legitimized the terror and assassinations.
In 1979, the Revolutionary Government Junta came to power amidst a wave of human
rights abuses from paramilitary right-wing groups and from the government. Romero
spoke out against U.S. military aid to the new government and wrote to President
Jimmy Carter in February 1980, warning that increased military aid would
"undoubtedly sharpen the injustice and the repression inflicted on the organized
people, whose struggle has often been for their most basic human rights". Carter,
concerned that El Salvador would become "another Nicaragua", ignored Romero's
pleas.
Church
Persecution
Archbishop Romero denounced what he characterized as the persecution of his
Church:
In less than three years, more than fifty priests have been attacked, threatened
and slandered. Six of them are martyrs, having been assassinated; various others
have been tortured, and others expelled from the country. Religious women have also
been the object of persecution. The archdiocesan radio station, Catholic
educational institutions and Christian religious institutions have been constantly
attacked, menaced, threatened with bombs. Various parish convents have been
sacked.
Catholic priests assassinated in El Salvador during Óscar Romero's
archbishopric (1977 - 1980):
Rutilio Grande García, S.J. - assassinated March 12, 1977
Alfonso Navarro Oviedo - assassinated May 11, 1977
Ernesto Barrera - assassinated November 28, 1978
Octavio Ortiz Luna - assassinated January 20, 1979
Rafael Palacios - assassinated June 20, 1979
Alirio Napoleón Macías - assassinated August 4, 1979
Assassination and
funeral
Romero was shot to death on March 24, 1980 while celebrating Catholic Mass at a
small chapel near his cathedral, the day after he gave a sermon in which he called
on Salvadoran soldiers, as Christians, to obey God's higher order and to stop
carrying out the government's repression and violations of basic human rights.
According to an audio-recording of the Mass, he was shot moments after the homily,
which he had concluded with an improvised pre-Eucharistic prayer thanking God (the
homily in the Roman Catholic Rite more or less signifies the end of the Liturgy of
the Word and the beginning of the Liturgy of the Eucharist or Mass of the
Faithful). When he was shot, his blood was spilled over his own altar and some say
it went into the communion wine.
It is believed that his assassins were members of Salvadoran death squads,
including two graduates of the U.S.-run School of the Americas, who were acting on
orders of the Salvadoran military. This view was supported in 1993 by an official
U.N. report, which identified the man who ordered the killing as Major Roberto
D'Aubuisson, who had founded the political party Nationalist Republican Alliance
(ARENA), and organized death squads that systematically carried out
politically-motivated assassinations and other human rights abuses in El Salvador.
Rafael Alvaro Saravia, a former captain in the Salvadorian Air Force, was chief of
security for Roberto D'Aubuisson and an active member of these death squads. In
2004, Mr. Saravia was found liable by a U.S. District Court under the Alien Tort
Claims Act ("ATCA") (28 U.S.C. § 1350) for aiding, conspiring, and participating in
the assassination of Archbishop Romero. Mr. Saravia was ordered to pay $10 million
dollars for extrajudicial killing and crimes against humanity pursuant to the ATCA.
Doe v. Rafael Saravia, 348 F. Supp. 2d 1112 (E.D. Cal. 2004) (providing an
excellent account of the events leading up, and subsequent, to Archbishop Romero's
death).
Romero is buried in the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Holy Savior (Catedral
Metropolitana de San Salvador). The funeral mass (rite of visitation and requiem)
on March 30, 1980, in San Salvador was attended by more than 250,000 mourners from
all over the world. Viewing this attendance as a protest, Jesuit priest John Dear
has said, "Romero’s funeral was the largest demonstration in Salvadoran history,
some say in the history of Latin America."
During the ceremony, a bomb exploded on the Cathedral square (Plaza Barrios) and
subsequently there were shots fired that probably came from surrounding buildings.
While no one died from the bomb-blast or the shots, many people were killed during
the following mass panic; official sources talk of 31 overall casualties,
journalists indicated between 30 and 50 dead. Some witnesses claimed it was
government security forces that threw bombs into the crowd, and army sharpshooters,
dressed as civilians, that fired into the chaos from the balcony or roof of the
National Palace. However, there are contradictory accounts as to the course of the
events and "probably, one will never know the truth about the interrupted
funeral"
Twenty-five years
later, the BBC recalled the horror:
"Tens of thousands of mourners
who had gathered for Romero's funeral Mass in front of the cathedral in San
Salvador were filmed fleeing in terror as army gunners on the rooftops around
the square opened fire. ... One person who was there told us he remembered the
piles of shoes left behind by those who escaped with their lives."
As the gunfire continued, the body was buried in a crypt beneath the sanctuary.
Even after the burial, people continued to line up to pay homage to their martyred
prelate.
Spiritual
life
Romero noted in his diary on February 4, 1943: "In recent days the Lord has
inspired in me a great desire for holiness.... I have been thinking of how far a
soul can ascend if it lets itself be possessed entirely by God." Commenting on this
passage, James R. Brockman, S.J., Romero's biographer and author of Romero: A Life,
said that "All the evidence available indicates that he continued on his quest for
holiness until the end of his life. But he also matured in that quest."
According to Brockman, Romero's spiritual journey had some of these
characteristics: (1) love for the Church of Rome, shown by his episcopal motto, "to
be of one mind with the church", a phrase he took from St. Ignatius' Spiritual
Exercises, (2) a tendency to make a very deep examination of conscience, (3) an
emphasis on sincere piety, (3) mortification and penance through his duties, (4)
providing protection for his chastity, (5) spiritual direction (Romero said he
"entrusted with great satisfaction the spiritual direction of my life and that of
other priests" to priests of Opus Dei), (6) "being one with the church incarnated
in this people which stands in need of liberation," (7) eagerness for contemplative
type of prayer and also finding God in others, (8) fidelity to the will of God, (9)
self-offering to Jesus Christ.
Process of
Canonization
On the tenth anniversary of the assassination, the sitting prelate archbishop of
San Salvador, Msgr. Arturo Rivera y Damas, appointed a postulator to prepare
documentation for a cause of beatification and canonization of Romero. The
documents were formally accepted by Pope John Paul II and the Congregation for the
Causes of Saints in 1997, and Romero was given the title of "Servant of God". The
process continues today with further investigation of the heroism and martyrdom of
Romero. Upon the declaration of heroism and martyrdom, it is expected that Romero
will achieve the title of "Venerable". Thereafter, miracles must be attributed to
Romero in order for him to be declared Blessed and added to the Liturgy of the
Hours.
Twenty-six years after Romero's assassination, the canonization cause is stalled.
In March 2005, Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, the Vatican official in charge of the
drive, announced that Romero's cause had cleared an unprecedented hurdle, having
survived a theological audit by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, at
the time headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — the future Pope Benedict XVI — and
that beatification could follow within six months. Dramatically, Pope John Paul II
died within weeks of those remarks. Predictably, the transition of the new Pontiff
slowed down the work of canonizations and beatifications. Moreover, the new
pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI, instituted liturgical changes that had the overall
effect of reining in the Vatican's so-called "factory of saints". Later that year,
an October 2005 interview by Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, the Prefect of the
Congregation for the Causes of Saints, appeared to stall the prospect of an
impending Romero beatification. Asked if Msgr. Paglia's predictions checked out,
Cardinal Saraiva responded, "Not as far as I know today". In November 2005, a
Jesuit magazine signaled that Romero's beatification was still "years away".
Many suspect that the delay in the declaration of heroism and martyrdom is due to
the fact that Romero is closely tied to, but not directly involved with, the
liberation theology movement espoused especially by the Jesuits of Latin America.
The charge has been dismissed by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints who have
pointed out that Romero has not yet met certain criteria to move on to the next
levels of the inquests, processes which have historically taken decades to roll
into motion.
Romero in popular
culture
Television and
film
The film Romero (1989) was based on the Archbishop's life story. It was directed by
John Duigan and starred Raúl Juliá and produced by Paulist Productions (a film
company run by the Paulist Fathers, a group of Catholic Priests). Timed for release
ten years after Romero's death, it was the first Hollywood feature film ever to be
financed by the Roman Catholic Church. The film received respectful, if less than
enthusiastic, reviews. Roger Ebert typified the critics who acknowledged that "he
film has a good heart, and the Julia performance is an interesting one, restrained
and considered ... The film's weakness is a certain implacable predictability."
Although the film depicts Romero's assassination as occurring during the
Consecration of the Eucharistic wine, he was actually killed after giving the
homily. Also, Romero was never sent to jail as was in the movie, rather, he was
just detained at a detainment camp.
Oliver Stone's 1986 film, Salvador, contains a dramatisation of the assassination
of Archbishop Romero (played in the movie by José Carlos Ruiz). The film tells the
true story of sleazy photojournalist Richard Boyle (James Woods), who undergoes a
spiritual conversion while covering the death squad killings in El Salvador during
the Civil War.
Romero was also featured in the made-for-TV movie, Choices of the Heart (NBC, 1983,
René Enríquez as Romero) about the murder of four U.S. churchwomen in El
Salvador
Romero was also depicted in two biopics about the papacy of Karol Wojtyła, the U.S.
television biopic Have No Fear: The Life of Pope John Paul II (ABC, 2005, Joaquim
de Almeida as Romero) and the Italian biopic "Karol, un papa rimasto uomo" (2006,
Carlos Kaniowsky as Romero).
Visual
arts
A statue of Oscar Romero sculpted by John Roberts fills a
prominent niche on the western facade of Westminster Abbey in London. The
statue was unveiled in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II in 1998. Barry Woods
Johnston sculpted the statue of Oscar Romero displayed in the National
Cathedral in Washington, D.C. The Italian sculptor, Paolo Borghi crafted the
catafalque that covers Romero's tomb in the crypt of the San Salvador
cathedral and shows Romero "sleeping the sleep of the just" as four
Evangelists stand guard.
Br. Robert Lentz, OFM, painted a now-famous "icon" of Archbishop Romero based on
traditional church iconography but with updated the conventional elements. For
example, traditional angels are replaced with military helicopters over red tiled
roofs. Frank Diaz Escalet executed a series of "outsider art" paintings on
Archbishop Romero, now exhibited in the permanent collection of the Organization of
the American States Museum, in Washington, D.C.; the permanent collection of the
Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, Texas; the Ella Noel Museum of Odessa,
Texas; and Maryknoll galleries in New York.
Poetry and
song
The most famous reference to Romero's death in Spanish language songs is "El Padre
Antonio y el monaguillo Andres", by Panamanian singer Ruben Blades. This song
fictionally describes the violent deaths of Padre Antonio (representing Romero) and
monaguillo Andres during mass.
Brazilian Bishop Dom Pedro Casaldáliga immortalized Romero as "San Romero de
América" ('St. Romero of the Americas') in a famous poem by that name written
shortly after the assassination. The poem, a variation on the Angelus, popularized
the use of the phrase "San Romero" (as opposed to "St. Oscar") throughout Latin
America (as, for example, in the "San Romero" paintings by Escalet, or the "San
Romero de America" UCC Church in New York City). Also, salsa singer Rubén Blades
wrote and sings the song "El Padre Antonio y el Monaguillo Andrés", a song in which
an idealist Spanish priest arrives to a Latin American country, giving sermons in
which he condemns violence, talks about love and justice, and at the end is
murdered during a mass. Blades has said he wrote this song referring to Romero, so
that "the death of Romero is not forgotten".
Song "Romero" by Jolie Rickman, documents his last sermon before his assassination.
Available on the CD "Sing It Down" via SOA Watch,
http://www.soaw.org/new/sub.php?id=2.
Song "Oscar Romero" by Richard Gilpin on his latest album "Loose Ends" which sounds
like a favourite song of mine from The Wiggles latest album "Famous Clergymen I
Have Known And Loved" on which there is also a song about Ian Paisley called "Hot
Potato".
Oscar Romero is a character in Elizabeth Swados' musical/theater piece,
"Missionaries," about the murder of four church women in El Salvador.
Quotations
"We who have a voice should speak for the voiceless"
"If you kill me, I shall arise in the Salvadoran people." (attributed to Romero by
Mexican journalist José Calderón Salazar after Romero's death.)
"May God have mercy on the assassins." (Dying words.)
"A bishop will die, but the Church of God which is the people will never
perish."
"Brothers, you came from our own people. You are killing your own brothers. Any
human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God, which says, 'Thou shalt
not kill'. No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No
one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you obeyed your consciences rather
than sinful orders. The church cannot remain silent before such an abomination. ...
In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to heaven
more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: stop the
repression."
"No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The
self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on
others, those who have no need even of God – for them there will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will
have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of
spirit there can be no abundance of God."
"We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a
future not our own." (Universally attributed. The poem called "Creating the Church
of Tomorrow," was actually penned by Ken Untener.)
"Aspire not to have more, but to be more."
"You say that you are Christian. If you are really Christian, please stop sending
military aid to the military here, because they use it only to kill my people."
(Letter to US President Jimmy Carter)
Source : Some of the information on
this page came from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU
Documentation License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Oscar
Romero - Mental Projector - Biography
