The murder in 1980 of one of the contemporary Church’s most prophetic and courageous champions of peace, justice and the rights of the poor is recalled by Dermot Keogh.
Early on Tuesday morning, 25 March 1980 I heard on the radio of the murder of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero while he was offering Mass for the mother of a newspaper publisher. The radio report confirmed that just after the Archbishop had finished the Liturgy of the Word, during which he had spoken about the triumph of the Resurrection over death. Four men entered the church and one fired from about 30 metres. It was a cold-blooded execution and he died instantly. The Salvadoran extreme right and their military backers had a rather profane sense of timing. Some weeks earlier 70 sticks of gelignite had been found there, primed to blow up during the Archbishop’s sermon.
Working as a journalist in RTE and with financial help from Trócaire, I attended his funeral on 30 March 1980. It was Palm Sunday. Bishops, priests and nuns were gathering to vest and walk in procession to the cathedral. The streets were surprisingly deserted. However, the Plaza Barrios before the cathedral was thronged with enthusiastic, joyful people – an island of humanity in a deserted city. The majority were campesinos who had come on foot, by lorry and crowded bus to the city. They clasped pictures of Romero, pieces of palm and umbrellas, to protect them from the sweltering sun.
There was a high railing in front of the main steps of the cathedral where an altar had been erected for the funeral Mass. When the sermon began I stood behind the altar. Suddenly there was a huge explosion in the far, right-hand corner of the square. As shots began to ring out, thousands of people stampeded. There was nowhere to run for shelter.
The coffin was hurriedly taken inside. A huge mass of humanity clambered up the steps. Anyone who fell, and many did, were trampled, some to death. Over a dozen people were killed that day. Those responsible were members of the security forces who had fired on the crowd from roofs on three sides of the square. It was a case of cold-blooded murder.
The history of El Salvador is complex. “Independence from Spain was achieved in 1821 and from the Central American Federation in 1839. A 12-year civil war, which cost about 75,000 lives, ended in 1992 when the government and leftist rebels signed a treaty providing for military and political reforms.” What this CIA Handbook entry neglects to point out is that the conflict was also international in character – allegedly part of a cold war confrontation between Washington and Moscow.
It was also a social conflict having its origins in the great inequities in wealth distribution. In 1932, some 30,000 Indians in the western provinces had been systematically and brutally massacred by the military following an uprising over their right to organise. About 6.5 million people lived in a country which remained firmly in the grip of about 14 coffee plantation owners – an oligarchy that exercised a monopoly of power through the military and a corrupt parliamentary and presidential system. Romero’s predecessor, Archbishop Chavez, had set the process of social engagement in train by his August 1975 pastoral letter. He highlighted that the best land was dedicated to coffee, cotton and sugar-cane for export, while only the worst land remained to provide Salvadorans with their daily bread. Some 92% of pre-school children suffered from malnutrition and only 35% of the men were employed throughout the whole year.
Two days after fraudulent elections placed General Carlos Romero in power, Oscar Arnulfo Romero (no relation) was named Archbishop of San Salvador on 22 February 1977. He was seen as a moderate tending towards conservatism on doctrinal questions and most traditional in his attitude towards authority. The fact that Romero was chosen reflected the serious divisions within the Salvadoran Church. He was a ‘safe’ compromise.
Romero was only a week in his new position when his close friend and leading Jesuit intellectual, Rutilio Grande, was murdered along with a 71-year-old man and a boy of 16 in Aguilares on 12 March 1977. On hearing of Grande’s death, the new archbishop demanded an explanation from the authorities, excommunicated those responsible and refused to take part in any official ceremony until the killing was solved and the murderers brought to justice. This led him to boycott the presidential inauguration of Gen. Carlos Romero on 1 July 1977.
Between 1977 and 1980, Romero issued a number of pastoral letters, the contents of which caused him to be condemned, threatened and menaced. His determination to stick by the gospel of the poor, and to remain a firm defender of human rights, won him the hatred of the right and the mistrust of most of his fellow bishops in El Salvador. There were many in the country who believed that they held “the deposit of the true faith”. On the right a combination of self-interest, greed and a widespread belief in a world communist conspiracy propelled groups to greater and more brutal violence. Within the hierarchy, Romero faced vigorous opposition; all the more so because of his new-found political radicalism. His efforts to bring about some unity amongst the bishops met with little or no success. His main opponents were the Bishop of San Vicente, Pedro Arnoldo Aparicio y Quintanilla, who was also president of the episcopal conference; and José Eduardo Alvarez, chaplain-in-chief to the armed forces and the bishop of San Muguel.
In his final pastoral letter, Mision de la Iglesia en Media de La Crisis del Pais of August 1979, Romero selected three “idolatries” for special exposition: the absolutisation of wealth, which emphasises “having more”, and not “being more”: the absolutisation of the idea of private property, when the wealth of the few increases while the poverty of the masses worsens; finally, the idolatry of political power which conspired with the other two to form the root of structural and repressive violence. Romero went on to condemn the doctrine of national security which “places the individual at the total disposal of the state, denies him any political rights and creates inequality in the fruits of development”.
During a press conference in Pueblo, Mexico, the Archbishop related the news that a right-wing group had put out a contract on his life. He spoke of taking reasonable precautions but he felt everyone was in the hands of God: “to know one has died fulfilling his vocation, his duty, that is a victory, a triumph,” he said. “I will stay with my people,” he ended. And so they killed him on 24 March 1980.
Article Credits
This article first appeared in The Word (March 2005), a Divine Word Missionary Publication.
