25 years ago today, Oscar Romero was murdered

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

Published on Thursday, March 24, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Oscar Romero, Presente!
by John Dear
 
“I have often been threatened with death,” Archbishop Oscar Romero told a Guatemalan reporter two weeks before his assassination on March 24, 1980. “If they kill me, I shall arise in the Salvadoran people. If the threats come to be fulfilled, from this moment I offer my blood to God for the redemption and resurrection of El Salvador. Let my blood be a seed of freedom and the sign that hope will soon be reality.”

Oscar Romero was killed twenty-five years ago today, but he lives on in El Salvador, Latin America and even in the United States, wherever people give their lives in the nonviolent struggle for justice and peace. He gave his life for that struggle in the hope that the outcome was inevitable, that justice would be done, that war would be abolished, that truth will overcome, and that love and life are stronger than hate and death.

Romero’s journey took him from the spoiled life of a quiet, conservative pious cleric whose silence blessed decades of poverty into a prophet of justice, “the voice of the voiceless” in war-torn, politically explosive El Salvador. He represented no political party or ideology, only the suffering people of El Salvador, and became a stunning sign of God’s active presence in the world, of the struggle for justice itself.

After his friend Jesuit priest Rutilio Grande was brutally killed for speaking out against injustice on March 12, 1977, Romero was transformed overnight into one of the world’s great champions for the poor and oppressed. At the local mass the next day, Romero preached a sermon that stunned El Salvador. Like the sermons of Martin Luther King, Jr., Romero defended the work of Grande, demanded justice for the poor, and called everyone to take up Grande’s prophetic stand for justice. In protest against the government’s suspected participation in the murders, Romero closed the parish schools for three days and canceled all masses in the country the following week. Over one hundred thousand people attended the Mass at the Cathedral in a bold call for justice. While the government and military were concerned, the campesinos were inspired to stand up for a new El Salvador.

more at:
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0324-21.htm

[H2O Man]

1. He was a beautiful man.

He took his vows of poverty very seriously. I remember reading in '80 that he often stayed in poor houses and mental institutions. He was Christ in the poverty of Central America, and American tax dollars helped fund his murder.

[OneBlueSky]

10. ever notice that really, truly good leaders always get killed? . . .

from RFK and King to Wellstone to Oscar Romero . . . sometimes it's an accident, sometimes an outright assassination . . . it's enough to make you go "hmmmmm" . . .

[H2O Man]

13. Truth forever on the cross

lies forever on the throne, as Martin Luther King often quoted at the end of his speeches.

[aquart]

2. He spoke for three years after the murder of his friend.

Have I heard that somewhere before?

[etherealtruth]

3. Than you, thank you ,thank you

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

4. nothing in the news today

not even in the left-leaning alternative magazines.

what a shame

[DemBones DemBones]

5. Another Article: "A Shepherd of the Poor: Remembering Oscar Romero"

An excerpt from the middle of the article:


"Romero was a surprise in history. The poor never expected him to take their side and the elites of church and state felt betrayed. He was a compromise candidate elected to head the bishop's episcopacy by conservative fellow bishops. He was predictable, an orthodox, pious bookworm who was known to criticize the progressive liberation theology clergy so aligned with the impoverished farmers seeking land reform. But an event would take place within three weeks of his election that would transform this ascetic and timid man.

The new archbishop's first priest, Rutilio Grande, was ambushed and killed along with two parishioners. Grande was a target because he defended the peasant's rights to organize farm cooperatives. He said that the dogs of the big landowners ate better food than the campesino children whose fathers worked their fields.

The night Romero drove out of the capitol to Paisnal to view Grande's body and the old man and seven year old who were killed with him, marked his change. In a packed country church Romero encountered the silent endurance of peasants who were facing rising terror. Their eyes asked the question only he could answer: Will you stand with us as Rutilio did? Romero's "yes" was in deeds. The peasants had asked for a good shepherd and that night they received one.

Romero already understood the church is more than the hierarchy, Rome, theologians or clerics—more than an institution—but that night he experienced the people as church. "God needs the people themselves," he said, "to save the world... The world of the poor teaches us that liberation will arrive only when the poor are not simply on the receiving end of hand-outs from governments or from the churches, but when they themselves are the masters and protagonists of their own struggle for liberation."


http://www.bruderhof.com/articles/golden-romero.htm?sou...

[whistle]

6. Oscar Romero Preaching to the Rich and the Poor....

God's Justice

Three short years transformed Archbishop Oscar Romero from a conservative defender of the status quo into one of the church's most outspoken voices on behalf of the oppressed. But he always spoke to all the people of El Salvador, people supportive of the guerrillas as well as people in the government and the army, the oppressed as well as the oppressors.

<snip>

Peoples are free to choose the political system they want
but not free to do whatever they feel like.
They will have to be judged by God’s justice
in the political or social system they choose.
God is the judge of all social systems.
Neither the gospel nor the church can be monopolized
by any political or social movement.
January 14, 1979

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.
January 21, 1979


<more>
<link> http://www.peacemakersguide.org/articles/Justice.htm?format=print

[whistle]

8. School of the Americas, sounds pretty innocent....

SOA: Guns and Greed, Maryknoll World Productions.

This is a documentary about the School of the Americas (now named WIHSC, Western Institute for Hemispheric Security Cooperation) and the 10 year old non-violent movement to close it. The SOA is a U.S.Army training camp for Latin American military whose graduates have been responsible for the murder of thousands of civilians in Latin America. Among its graduates are Manuel Noriega and the murderers of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the six Salvadoran Jesuit martyrs, and Bishop Juan Gerardi. of Guatemala. Length: 21 minutes.

[KG]

7. this man deserve a sainthood.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

9. just a bump before i check out for the night

..

[JanMichael]

11. THAT guy could get me into a church.

Period.

PS; Im a fucking lunitic existentialist athiest too.

[scarletlib]

12. He was a disciple ofChrist in the truest meaning of the words

He preached a liberation theology and said what Jesus said about the poor and the rich.

He was a radical in the eyes of the Church and the Powers that Be.

He couldn't be allowed to live.