Roberto Morozzo Della Rocca's research proved a key element in Pope Francis's decision to beatify the former Archbishop of San Salvador in May. Here, Della Rocca reflects on the life and legacy of the Catholic martyr
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Although Romero was a “Roman” priest and bishop, he was nevertheless
not a “Western” bishop. This historical fact should be considered by those who
thought that he took exaggerated positions against the public authorities, or
by those who regarded his insistence on human rights as insufficiently
ecclesiastical. El Salvador
in the 1970s was ruled by a military regime that applied a local variation of
the ideology of national security in favour of an oligarchy that was
economically dynamic but politically reactionary. Although democracy was
guaranteed in theory by the Constitution, it was denied in practice. A tacit
agreement was in force in the ruling class, for whom any applicable laws were
ignored in political life and in the labour marketplace. Elections were a sort
of institutionalized fraud. The minimum wages guaranteed by law were not paid.
Even the leader of the right-wing oligarchy later admitted the lack of justice
and democracy in El Salvador
at that time, such as to provoke well-founded reactions of protest. Alfredo
Cristiani, President of El Salvador, acknowledged at the signing of the 1992
peace agreements that concluded the Salvadoran civil war:
The crisis in Salvadoran society
in the last decade did not come from nothing, nor was it the result of isolated
purposes. This very sorrowful and tragic crisis has deep roots, ancient social,
political, economic, and cultural roots. [These roots lie] in the complete lack
or inadequacy of the forums and mechanisms necessary to allow for the free play
of ideas, and the natural development of various political plans that result
from freedom of thought and of action. In sum, the absence of a true democratic
system of life.
Romero was not inspired by a fashionable political doctrine in opposing
an unjust regime, that is, the dictatorship of the rich and of the military,
which was the El Salvador
of his day. It was not necessary to be a revolutionary to wish for the downfall
of a government that showed contempt for the very Constitution and common law
of the State. Romero’s activity was founded on an ethical and religious view of
reality. To his way of thinking, a political doctrine would not be enough for a
true solution to the country’s problems. Not even the Church’s social doctrine
would be enough. A true solution required the conversion of hearts.
Romero was a bishop in the bloody Latin America
of his time. He was not a bishop in a country of the politically correct
Western world. In this sense, Romero is difficult to understand in terms of Western
categories. He was a bishop with a lofty sense of responsibility, who was
deeply moved at the sight of bloodshed. He has been classified politically. But
in order to be moved and to have compassion it was not necessary to be on the
left or on the right. Romero was not a rationalist, nor was he a politician.
Rather he was a man of intense feelings, a man of prayer who experienced history
as a journey toward God.
Romero’s beatification by the Catholic Church recognizes his martyrdom
in odium fidei. Those who were his
enemies during his lifetime thought that Romero had been killed out of hatred
for his political positions. But it is difficult to argue that Romero, a bishop
killed at the altar, during a Eucharistic liturgy, was not struck down in odium fidei, out of hatred for the faith.
It was because of the faith that Romero spoke about reconciliation, loved the
poor, and demanded social justice. It was because of the faith that he invited
all to conversion and pointed out the sin of his contemporaries: this was the kerygma, the heart of the Gospel
proclamation, as he used to say in his preaching. It was because of his confidence in the Gospel that Romero
did not take cover from the threats, did not abandon his faithful, did not
retreat, but accepted the death that he then knew was certain. Romero is a martyr
for the Gospel, killed in odium fidei.
Romero’s burial plaque quoted a love poem that began: “The kindest, meekest,
most righteous, most handsome, noblest, holiest man has been killed.” Romero
had pronounced many eulogies, but he did not imagine that he would receive them
post mortem. He did not feel holy.
However in 1979 he had said, concerning some of his priests who had suffered a violent
death: “What human being does not have something to repent of? The murdered priests
were human beings too and had their sins. But the fact that they allowed their
lives to be taken away without fleeing, without being cowards but accepting a
sort of torture, suffering, assassination, in my opinion is precious as a baptism
of blood, and they were purified. We must respect their memory.” One could say
the same about Romero’s story and his martyrdom. People do not become martyrs because
they are holy, but martyrdom purifies them.
No doubt Romero could have fled from death. He wanted to follow his
conscience, understood in the Ignatian sense as the search for God’s will.
Romero’s death was due to the fact that he was not resigned to the violence,
the injustice, and the torment of his country. He felt that it was urgent to
illuminate life with the Gospel. He had the charism of communicating in an
extraordinary way with the crowds, translating the profound contents of
Scripture into terms accessible to all. Like many martyrs before him, Romero
was faithful to his mission. He did not flee.
The odium, the hatred toward
Romero was real. Think of the many death threats, or of his systematic
defamation in the extreme right-wing press. Since Romero spoke about social
justice, he was accused of being Communist. He was ridiculed as “Marxnulfo,” a
play on his second name Arnulfo, although he had always maintained that
Communism was an evil. In 1979, the year of Khomeini’s triumph in Iran , they called
him “the Salvadoran Ayatollah,” so as to brand him as a fanatical agitator of
the masses and an instigator of class hatred. This was odium for the way in which Romero lived the Gospel and for his
being a bishop. Together with Romero, the Church was hated and persecuted,
insofar as she called for justice, peace, and reconciliation. In order to be
killed in the Salvadoran campaigns, it was enough to have a Bible, or to go to
church to pray. While the Catholic Church was involved in verifying the conditions
for his canonization, the passionate disagreements about the figure of Romero
raised the question of whether that process would be opportune. On May 9, 2007,
Benedict XVI replied to a journalist who asked him for news about Romero’s
beatification process:
Archbishop Romero was certainly
an important witness of the faith, a man of great Christian virtue who worked
for peace and against the dictatorship, and was assassinated while celebrating Mass.
have to say on the matter.
A political myth has developed about Romero. It has not helped to
overcome the prejudices of those who regarded him as a rabble-rouser, a subversive,
a fanatic who became a media success. For a long time the glorification of
Romero as a “martyr of the people,” as the guerrillas styled him, imprisoned
his figure in the stormy atmosphere of the Salvadoran civil war and the clash
between right and left. It was already mentioned that Romero found himself being
compared to Camilo Torres, “Che” Guevara, Salvador Allende and other “martyrs,”
if by martyrdom you mean dying while carrying a Tommy gun in the name of the
people. The myth locked Romero up in the box of the ideological conflicts of
his era. The climate today is quite different, as evidenced by the speeches of
the Salvadoran left after it took power in 2009. Both President Mauricio Funes
Cartagena and his successor, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, have spoken about Romero
with respect, without denying his spiritual roots to make him a merely
political banner as had happened in the past. Moreover, with the passage of
time, more light has been shed on Romero and on his career, so that opinions about
him have converged more. This is true even in El Salvador where the hatreds of
the civil war had divided the country into factions that were opposed
specifically over Romero’s name. In his fatherland Romero is regarded today as an
eminent figure in the nation’s history, even by representatives of the
political right that opposed him. Few people today still maintain that Romero was
a Savonarola brainwashed by the Jesuit followers of liberation theology or by
Communist revolutionaries.
Romero was accused of going beyond his responsibilities and engaging in
politics. His authoritative statements had vehement political repercussions,
but he compromised with no party or political faction, bound as he was by the
Church’s discipline in this matter. He was accused of fomenting violence, yet
he suffered from the widespread violence in his country and tried to offer a
remedy for it, condemning it wherever it came from. He was accused of being a
subversive, while in reality he called for obedience to the laws and the Constitution.
In them he found the norms that, if applied, would have brought justice to El Salvador . He
was accused of being an extremist, and certainly he went outside the lines of
conventional conduct. But he did so while proclaiming loudly and clearly the widespread
need for justice. Romero would have liked to dedicate himself entirely to the salus animarum [salvation of souls]. The
constant emergency situation prevented him from doing so. He wanted to be
consistent with the many documents of Vatican II and of the papal magisterium
that called him to illumine earthly realities with the Gospel. Because of the
situation in which he lived and because of how he reacted to the actions of the
civil authorities, he has been compared to Saint Stanislaus of Krakow . This eleventh-century saint was martyred by King
Bolesław II for having criticized his cruel, unjust behaviour toward his
subjects. The comparison is appropriate.
Sometimes improper terms are used in reference to the martyrs. One is
heroism, which not only misrepresents the sentiments of genuine martyrs but
accentuates, so to speak, motivations based on character as opposed to
spiritual motivations. Just as he did not feel that he was a prophet or a
saint, Romero did not feel that he was a hero. Just think of his human fears,
which drove him so often to consult physicians. Romero had no superhuman
heroism, yet he did not want to give up being human, listening to his
conscience, and respecting the dignity of the oppressed. He was unwilling to
renounce his mission, even to save his life.
Another improper notion about martyrdom stresses the wickedness of the
executioners, often against an ideological background, more than the testimony
of faith. But martyrs, according to the Christian Tradition, are not protest symbols.
Even Romero had no hatred for his enemies, from whose ranks his assassins came.
He desired their conversion, not their chastisement. Romero did not think of
his possible death as an act that would require reparation, much less
retribution. He did not want his blood that might be shed to cry out for
vengeance against someone, against an enemy, against a hostile ideology. Bloodshed
and suffering ought to be situated in God’s plan for the salvation of humanity.
His death should help complete the sufferings of Christ in view of the
redemption, to put it in the essential terms of Christian theology. Romero
believed in this theology, spelled it out for the poor, for the victims of
violence, and applied it also to himself from the moment he knew that he was
close to a violent death.
Aside from his being well-liked by some and disliked by others, and
apart from his successes and defeats, his strengths and his limitations, Romero
was a man who considered it more important to be Christian than to safeguard
his own life.
This is an extract from Oscar Romero: Prophet of Hope by Roberto Morozzo Della Rocca – it is available in
paperback and as an eBook. The research which forms the backbone of this
biography was essential in bringing about the case for Romero’s beatification
which happened in May of this year.
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