Remembering Romero

Pat Jones, the former deputy director of the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, reflects on how the Oscar Romero story of placing trust in God must be treasured, remembered, and re-told for future generations.

Several times in recent months, I have had a small experience which has shaken me; in conversations with young people, and in a workshop about spirituality, I have spoken of Archbishop Romero, and found that quite active Catholics knew little or nothing of his story.

The generation born after his death in particular are now young adults, and many have never heard of him. His life and death, and the struggle of the Salvadoran people for whom he died, have been so much part of my own formation and such an inspiration when all else fails, that I have tended to take for granted that he is known. But this is not the case.
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For those of us who know the story, whose lives have been affected and whose faith has been shaped in part by his example, it is vital both that we remember and re-tell the story; and that we tell others.

The memory of Oscar Romero has been given to us but it is not for us alone. It is for the whole Church and the whole world. And it is not just an honouring of the past; we remember today so that we know the direction to take in the future.

Oscar Romero was a priest and bishop whose love for his people who were suffering violence and oppression led him to take their side and to denounce their oppressors. And so he was killed, whilst saying Mass, on this day, 27 years ago.

We remember him not just because he was a holy man or a humble priest; not even because he is a saint, even while we wait for the Church to recognise this.

It is because he is a martyr that his life and death have lasting significance. And his significance is not only within the Church but beyond it, in the public world of politics and power.

The life and death of a holy person, even of a saint, inspires and encourages us; and draws others to the Gospel by its example; but the life and death of a martyr does something more.

It reveals to the whole world the structures of sin and evil which operate in a particular situation; and at the same time it proclaims something more powerful; that love can overcome any violence and even death; martyrdom could therefore be described as ‘public truth’, truth for the whole world, because it tells the truth about what is happening in the world.

The rest of this article is available here.