El Salvador Perspectives

Sunday March 24 is the 44th anniversary of the assassination of Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero.  For this year's post commemorating the anniversary of Romero's martyrdom, we listen to Romero's voice in sermons he gave on the final two days of his life. On Sunday March 23, 1980, the archbishop preached his Sunday sermon which was broadcast by radio throughout the country.   His homily concluded with these powerful words: I would like to make an appeal especially to the men of the army, and concretely to the National Guard, the police, and the troops. Brothers, you are of part of our own people. You are killing your own brother and sister campesinos, and against any order a man may give to kill, God’s law must prevail: «You shall not kill!» No soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God.  No one has to observe an immoral law. It is time now for you to reclaim your conscience and to obey your conscience rather than the command to sin. The church defen...

In the 1970's in El Salvador, the government engaged in widespread violations of human rights, with arbitrary detentions, torture and disappearances.  Then archbishop, now Saint, Oscar Romero, denounced such atrocities from the pulpit of San Salvador's Metropolitan Cathedral in his weekly sermons. That courage to speak out against the repressive government would result in slander and vilification of Romero by the ruling oligarchic regime, and would ultimately lead to his assassination. On the 43rd anniversary of Romero's martyrdom this past March 24, another bishop of the Roman Catholic church in El Salvador took to that pulpit to point to abuse of human rights and innocent persons imprisoned.  Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chavez preached on the abuses of the State of Exception and the timidity of the local church, so far, in responding. Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chavez addressing “state of exception” here, which has resulted in arbitrary detentions without right to legal counsel...

March 24, is the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of Saint Oscar Romero, archbishop of San Salvador.  I am republishing here a post which first appeared on the 40th anniversary in 2020. Carlos Dada , founder of the online periodical El Faro, has been researching and reporting on the Romero murder for years.   His most recent piece, titled  A 5-Millimeter Hole appeared in the English version of El Faro and is taken from a book he is working on.  Dada describes in detail Romero's actions in the final few days of his life, beginning with the planning for the fateful final sermon which Romero would preach on Sunday, March 23 to the time when an assassin's single bullet would end the life of the voice for the voiceless. Dada describes the fateful moment: Romero read from the Gospel of John: “Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” It was a short mass and the homily...

Thursday March 24 is the 42nd anniversary of the murder of Saint Oscar Romero.   The archbishop of San Salvador was slain by a single sniper's bullet while saying mass as a consequence of defending the poor and powerless against the oligarchy in El Salvador and its military enforcers.  Romero was declared a martyr and a saint of the Roman Catholic church in a canonization ceremony in 2018.    It seems to me that since the date of Romero's canonization, the memory of his importance and his message, which formerly echoed in every corner of the country, has started to fade.  Political and civic leaders rarely mention his name.  In the churches, he is beloved, but his memory does not call to action the way it once did.   If you have not spent much time with Romero, here are some great resources in English to gain a deeper appreciation for his life and what he meant for the people of El Salvador. Monseñor Romero: Memories in Mosaic   by ...

Ninety years ago yesterday on January 22, 1932, mass executions of indigenous campesinos in El Salvador began after a failed uprising.  The military government in El Salvador headed by General Maximillian Hernandez massacred twenty thousand or more in an event which is known in Salvadoran history simply as “ La Matanza ” – The Massacre. Yesterday was also the day that the Roman Catholic church chose to celebrate the beatification of four of its martyrs, a formal step on the process of being declared saints of the Catholic church.  The four included Jesuit priest RutilioGrande, and two of his lay parishioners – 17 year old Nelson Lemus and the campesino Manuel Solorzano. These three were gunned down by the Salvadoran military as Grande drove towards El Paisnal to preside over a mass.   The fourth martyr beatified yesterday was Friar Cosme Spessotto , a parish priest from Italy, murdered in San Juan Nonualco, in similar fashion in 1980.  I don’t know if the chur...

  One Christmas Eve, St. Oscar Romero, archbishop of San Salvador, visited the poverty-stricken community of La Bernal to celebrate with its inhabitants: After the Mass and the First Communions, we fixed up two tables really nice. They were kind of long tables with white tablecloths that hung down to the floor. The children who had received their first communion sat at one table, with Monseñor at the head. The rest of the community sat at the other table. Tamales had been made. "Two apiece!" said the women who were handing them out. There was one regular tamal and one sweet one for everyone. Suddenly a little boy appeared out of nowhere. He was a tiny little kid, about four years old. Light haired and covered with dirt. Barefoot, and with a nose full of snot. He came up to Monseñor Romero from behind and pulled on his cassock with his grubby fingers. "You want some?" Monseñor asked him. The little boy nodded his head a few times. Yes. This kid was filthy with dirt a...

 Wednesday, March 24, was the 41st anniversary of the assassination of Oscar Romero by a death squad in El Salvador.   As was true a year ago, commemorations of the event had to be more limited to adhere to public health measures dictated by the pandemic. Chapel at Divina Providencia Hospital changes its name .  The Vatican announced a change in the name of the chapel where Oscar Romero was murdered.    The chapel will now be known as " Saint Óscar Arnulfo Romero, Bishop and Martyr, Martyrial Chapel."   But it will still also be recognized as the chapel associated with the Divina Providencia cancer hospital where the martyred archbishop chose to live. Archbishop speaks at mass at Romero's tomb . The current archbishop of San Salvador Monsignor José Luis Escobar Alas said that Romero's message today would be focused on continuing to denounce inequality, and a system which oppresses the poor and protects the corrupt.   A gallery of i...

When I was searching for a quote from Saint Oscar Romero to share on this 40th anniversary of his martyrdom, a quote which would be appropriate in these strange days of pandemic, it seemed to me we should hear words of Romero on solidarity with the human family: The present form of the world passes away, and there remains only the joy of having used this world to establish God’s rule here. All pomp, all triumphs, all selfish capitalism, all the false successes of life will pass with the world’s form. All of that passes away.   What does not pass away is love. When one has turned money, property, work in one’s calling into service of others, then the joy of sharing and the feeling that all are one’s family does not pass away. In the evening of life you will be judged on love. (Jan. 21, 2979) Taken from The Violence of Love , a collection of excerpts from homilies of Oscar Romero, translated by James Brockman. You might be interested to review these other acc...

A  guest post from Carlos Colorado, author of the Eminems Doctrina and Super Martyrio blogs. In March 2000 I was in El Salvador for what was then the 20th anniversary of Archbishop Oscar Romero’s assassination—the halfway point between the 1980 killing and the 40th anniversary we commemorate this year. At a reception in a trendy boarding house in western San Salvador, I brashly suggested to the guests that Romero could become El Salvador’s Socrates—who was forced to drink poison by fervid Athenians, but was later embraced by the city as its most quintessential son. It fell to the late, legendary NCR correspondent Gary MacEóin to let me down gently, explaining that the entrenched hostility toward Romero from the powerful meant that he would be persona non grata to the political establishment indefinitely. Of course, MacEóin was right about the elites; Romero is “not a saint of their devotion”—as the Salvadoran expression goes—to this day. But many things were already...

Yesterday, international human rights lawyer Almudena Bernabeu gave a declaration in the criminal proceedings in El Salvador for the 1980 assassination of archbishop Oscar Romero, now a saint of the Roman Catholic church.  The declaration gave the court background about the facts developed in a  US federal court action where Captain Álvaro Rafael Saravia was found liable for Romero's killing.  Saravia has been named as a defendant in the proceeding filed by Salvadoran prosecutors. From the Guernica Center . The Guernica Centre for International Justice recently traveled to El Salvador as part of its on-going work supporting local partners in their search for justice, truth, and accountability for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the twelve-year civil war. While in El Salvador, Almudena Bernabeu, the executive director of The Guernica Centre, gave a deposition in the Romero case at the Juzgado Cuarto de Instrucción before Judge Rigoberta C...

The audio visual department at the University of Central America (UCA) has produced a three part animated video series about the life of Saint Oscar Romero with subtitles in English. Intended for children, but adults will appreciate it too. Episode 1 : Episode 2 : Episode 3 :

March 24 is the 39th anniversary of the assassination of Oscar Romero by a death squad in El Salvador.   It was one of the opening events of a bloody civil war which would have tens of thousands of civilian victims. Despite the notoriety of the murder of a man who would subsequently be declared a martyred saint of the Roman Catholic church, no prosecution of his killers has ever reached conclusion in the Salvadoran courts. After an amnesty law was passed in 1993, no prosecution moved forward for 23 years until that law was declared void by the Constitutional Chamber in El Salvador.   Shortly thereafter the case against Romero's killers was reopened, but there has been little visible progress.  The Due Process of Law Foundation has a good summary this week of where such legal proceedings stand today: The Attorney General’s office (under Douglas Meléndez, whose term ended in early January 2019) publicly supported the reopening of the Romero case. Nonethe...

Embed from Getty Images In a ceremony in Rome today, Pope Francis canonized Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, along with Pope Paul VI, and five other saints.   The event was attended by as many as 70,000 of the faithful in St. Peter's Square, and was watched by tens of thousands of Salvadorans gathered outside the Metropolitan Cathedral in San Salvador and at Divina Providencia, the chapel where Romero was assassinated. Some video highlights: A video of highlights of ceremony from Catholic New Service. This video offers images of the pilgrimage and vigil outside the Metropolitan Cathedral in San Salvador where Oscar Romero is entombed leading up to the canonization. This video shows the scenes around the chapel at Divina Providencia last night. La Prensa Grafica also offers a collection of images and video of the celebrations in El Salvador. There has been extensive coverage of Romero's canonization in the English language press. ...

In many simplified accounts of the life of Oscar Romero, there is one central turning point event in his ministry. In these accounts, the murder of Jesuit priest Rutilio Grande in 1977 by a death squad opened the eyes of Romero to the social injustice around him. Typical of this narrative is an article by John Dear in the National Catholic Reporter in 2010. Dear writes: Romero spent his years up until 1977 as a typical quiet, pious, conservative cleric. Indeed, as bishop, he sided with the greedy landlords, important power brokers, and violent death squads. When he became archbishop, the Jesuits at the Univeristy of Central America in San Salvador were crushed. They immediately wrote him off -- all but one, Rutilio Grande, who reached out to Romero in the weeks after his installation and urged him to learn from the poor and speak on their behalf.  Grande himself was a giant for social justice. He organized the rural poor in Aguilares, and paid for it with his life on M...

No one was ever prosecuted in El Salvador for the assassination of Oscar Romero.  A homicide case was initially opened, but the first judge was threatened and fled the country and subsequently the case proceeded only by fits and starts over the following years. The failure to investigate and prosecute the crime was condemned by the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights, which concluded :           119.          As has been established, in the instant case the State did not undertake an effective investigation nor did it adopt the necessary measures to bring to trial all of the persons implicated.  Nor did it act as was required to duly try the accused.  In effect, from the first procedural acts, one could note an official attitude of reluctance to proceed properly in the case of Monsignor Romero.  The judicial proceeding was so drawn out that it unfolded from 1980 to 1994.  During that time, several...

On Sunday October 14, martyred Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero will be canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church at a ceremony in Rome.  His image is everywhere in El Salvador as the people remember the voice of the voiceless, who walked as a shepherd of the suffering people of El Salvador before his murder in 1980. If you have not spent much time with Romero, here are some great resources in English to gain a deeper appreciation for his life and what he meant for the people of El Salvador. The best documentary:   Monsenor: The Last Journey of Oscar Romero .   This documentary, which was released on DVD last year, offers lots of archival footage of Romero and the remembrances of many people who knew and worked with him.  Highly recommended. The best dramatization:  Romero  starring Raul Julia.   This Hollywood movie is the way that many English speakers get to know Romero.   Some of the details are not historically accurate, ...

Yesterday, would have been the 75th birthday of former Salvadoran major Roberto D'Aubuisson, leader of death and torture squads, giver of the order to assassinate Oscar Romero, and founder of the right wing ARENA party.    Party leaders, including their presidential candidate Carlos Calleja and Norman Quijano, president of the National Assembly,  gathered at D'Aubuisson's grave to celebrate their former leader. In El Salvador, the leaders of ARENA still call it "fake news" that their founder was the intellectual author of Romero's martyrdom.  Responding to a reporter, Carlos Calleja said it was " total speculation " that D'Aubuisson was behind the murder of Romero: El candidato presidencial de ARENA, Carlos Calleja, dice que los señalamientos como autor intelectual de Roberto d'Abuisson en el asesinato de Moseñor Óscar Arnulfo Romero son "rumores", en un intento por deslegitimar el informe de la Comisión de la Verdad....

I was on sabbatical from posting to El Salvador Perspectives for the last few weeks.   Here is a short summary of some of the recent news during that time.   I will be expanding on many of these stories in coming days. Tony Saca's confession to massive embezzlement and money laundering .   Former president Tony Saca has confessed to embezzling and money laundering charges involving more than $300 million in public funds during his administration.  His ongoing corruption trial has revealed a wide-ranging machine to divert funds from hidden accounts controlled by the presidency to bribe journalists, enrich Saca and friends, and fund ARENA political campaigns.  The death of Fernando Llort .   Famed Salvadoran artist Fernando Llort died on August 11 at the age of 69.   Among Llort's most famous works was the mosaic on the facade of the San Salvador cathedral, a work which was later destroyed by church authorities.  Llor...

The Vatican announced yesterday that the ceremony in the Roman Catholic church to canonize slain Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero as a saint will take place on October 14 in Rome.   Romero will be canonized in a ceremony which will include five other saints of the church. The ceremony for Romero's beatification in 2015 drew hundreds of thousands to the streets of San Salvador.  The choice of Rome as the location for his canonization had been pointed to for several months, but Salvadorans were still holding out hope for a ceremony in Romero's home country.  From Catholic Herald Online :  The Salvadoran bishops’ conference and many Salvadorans had hoped Pope Francis would preside over the canonization in San Salvador, particularly because of the difficulty and expense of traveling to Rome. Others, however, argued that holding the ceremony at the Vatican makes it clear that Blessed Romero is a saint for the entire Church, not just for the Church...

Today is the 38th anniversary of the martyrdom of archbishop Oscar Romero, slain by a sharpshooter's bullet while saying mass.  Thirty-eight years later, the Roman Catholic church will officially canonize Romero as a saint.   The sniper's bullet failed to silence the message of this prophet and martyr who was a "voice for the voiceless." The anniversary of Romero's deaths falls this year at the beginning of Holy Week.  Forty years ago, in Holy Week, Romero preached these words in one of his sermons: Christ would not be Redeemer  if he had not concerned himself with giving food  to the crowds that were hungry,  if he had not given light to the eyes of the blind,  if he had not felt sorrow for the forsaken crowds  that had no one to love them, no one to help them. Christianity cares about human development,  about the political and social aspects of life.  Redemption would not be complete  if it did not...