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The Role of the Martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador’s Liberation Theology

By Aidan Berinyuy In the beginning of his public ministry in Galilee, Jesus proclaimed the following words which have come to be considered as his inaugural address “The spirit of the lord is upon me, he has anointed me, to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and new sight to the blind; to free the oppressed and announce the lord’s year of mercy” (Lk. 4:18-19). This passage has come to be regarded as the New Testament foundation of liberation theology which emerged in Latin America in the early 1950s and 1960s. Christopher Rowland stated “liberation theology is an understanding of the faith from a commitment to the poor and the marginalized, an understanding of the faith from a point of departure in real, effective solidarity with the exploited and the vulnerable.” This point is buttressed by Philip Berryman, when he described liberation theology as “an interpretation of Christian faith out of the suffering, struggle, and hope of the poor.”  Liberation theology arises out of the specific needs and concerns of the poor in accordance to the biblical narratives. From their concerns, the doors were opened for the development of a theology from the periphery, which dealt with the concerns of the periphery, concerns that presented and still present an immense challenge to the evangelizing mission of the church From a historical perspective, the Catholic Church in the 1950s started experiencing a theological and liturgical revival concentrated especially in the seminaries and religious orders. This ferment surfaced in the general conference of the Latin American Episcopal (CELAM I), which was convened in Rio de Janeiro in 1955 with Pope Pius XII in attendance. However, the official impetuses to the emergence of liberation theology were the Vatican II and the Medellin conference (CELAM II) of 1968. Most proponents of liberation theology stress the importance of Vatican II and its convener, Pope John XXIII. Gustavo Gutierrez of Peru, one of the leading exponents of liberation theology maintained that the Medellin conference would have not been possible without Vatican II and Pope John XXIII. One should not minimize the significance of the Vatican II documents and of major importance was ‘Gaudium et spes’ which underlined the increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots and the right of the church to defend the oppressed. Deanne William Ferm specifies the importance of this document: Gaudium et Spes recognizes the importance of organized labor and even of the right to strike for just demands, as part of the efforts to press for a fairer distribution of goods. It affirms that the church itself, although independent of the political sector, has the right-even the duty- to pass moral judgment on political matters Thus, this document was one of the catalysts for the emergence of liberation theology. Focusing on the importance of Medellin, Deanne stipulates “Medellin is the cradle of liberation theology.” Most observers consider Gustavo Gutierrez as the preeminent Latin American Liberation Theologians. Gutierrez was an active participant at Medellin, serving as the principle author of the document on peace. This is what he said about Medellin Ever since Medellin, the development of liberation theology in Latin America has been accompanied by a continual awareness that we have entered into a new historical stage in the life of our people and by a felt need of understanding this new stage as a call from the lord to preach the gospel in a way that befits the new situation. Thus, a new approach of doing theology was formulated. Worthy of mention is (CELAM III) which was held in Puebla, Mexico in 1979. The bishops saw the growing gap between the rich and the poor as a scandal and a contradiction to Christian existence and as such, they reaffirmed Medellin’s clear and prophetic option expressing preference for and solidarity with the poor. Philip Berryman captures this “the preferential option for the poor became a slogan encapsulating the central thrust of the Puebla meeting and endorsing solidarity with the poor as God’s will for the church.” The emergence of liberation theology in Latin American had far reaching ramifications and consequences. Those in power and presumably the rich openly violated the human rights defended by this theology and struck hard at Christians who were trying to express their solidarity with the poor and oppressed. Gutierrez alluded to the magnitude of this violent “…frequent attacks on the church and its representatives and, more concretely, the determination to hamper their mission, undermine their reputation, violate their personally freedom, deny them the right to live in their own country, and make attempts against their physical integrity, even to the point of assination.” Many Christians were killed including Archbishop Oscar Romero. The death of Archbishop Romero was not an event in isolation. Gutierrez called it “a milestone in the life of the Latin American church.” My concern in this paper is to examine the role of the martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador’s liberation theology. Since its inception, the experience of martyrdom has remained so close to the doors steps of the church. The stoning of Stephen because of his firm belief in the risen lord marked the beginning of a pattern for the faithful and committed Christians. The church has always considered those who bear witness to the message of the gospels as martyrs. Eventually, the term was reserved for those who bore witness with the spilling of their blood Karl Rahner is in the same direction when he defined martyrdom as “the free, tolerant acceptance of death for the sake of faith.”  Due to a large-scale violence against religious activities in Latin American during the 1970s an 1980s, most theologians began to challenge the traditional definition of martyrdom. From a general perspective, martyrs are those who have undergone violent death in witness to the religious truth or on account of practices which are derived from the religious truth. The controversy over the definition of martyrdom has made the church to be slow in determining who should be called a martyr in the Latin American context. Whatever the case, the pope has identified Oscar Romero as a martyr for now. Oscar Arnulfo Romero was born on August 15, 1917, in the town of Ciudad Barrio, in the department of San Miguel, El Salvador. He studied in Gregorian University in Rome and was ordained priest in April 1942. After returning home, Romero spent some time as the parish priest of Anamores before becoming the secretary of the bishop, Rector of the cathedral, director of the seminary at San Miguel. In 1966, he became secretary of the bishop conference of El Salvador. By 1970 he had become the auxiliary bishop of San Salvador and fours years later, bishop of Santiago de Maria. He was consecrated as archbishop of San Salvador in 1977. El Salvador was not left out from the influence of liberation theology. The archdiocese of San Salvador under Archbishop Luis Chavez, who had led it since 1938, backed the peasants’ right to organize and exert political pressure. Other priests like Fr. Rutilio Grande were actively involved in the plight of the poor as William Purcell confirmed “Grande, a Jesuit priest, had been totally identified with the cause of the ‘campesinoes’, the peasants poor of the countryside” But Oscar Romero was known as a pious and relatively conservative bishop and there was nothing in his background to suggest that he was a man to challenge the status quo. This is supported by Purcell “socially and politically, his outlook was, it was said, very conventional.” Undoubtedly this was the reason why the government of Molina and the others in strong economic positions in the country, promoted his candidature for the office of the archbishop and it is why the Curia circles in the Vatican preferred him to bishop Rivera Damas who was seemingly the logical candidate both because of his longevity and his position. When news came from Rome that Oscar Romero had been chosen to succeed archbishop Chavez, the Salvadorans government, the oligarchy group and the traditionalists were jubilating because “Romero appeared to be the perfect man to return the church to the sheepfold, the priests to the sacristy, and catholic teaching back to council of Tent and Vatican I.” The conversion of Oscar Romero to liberation theology was gradual. On February 22, 1977, Romero inherited an archdiocese in the midst of a storm. Brockman substantiated “not only had Survil, Penaux and Ramirez been expelled from the country, some six weeks earlier, the government had expelled two formal Jesuit seminarians who had been working with peasants organizations.” He was taking over from a man whom the press criticized and accused for allowing and encouraging communistic sermons and initiating the violence of ‘campesino’ organizations. Oscar was taking over an archdiocese that clergies were committed to the directions given to the church by Vatican II and the 1968 Latin American bishop conference at Medellin. Another step to his conversion was the 28th of February, barely a week to his installation, as Ignacio and Sobrino affirmed “the security forces together with the military spread violence and destruction in the Plaza Liberlad, where huge numbers of demonstrators were protesting against the fraudulent presidential elections. Many of the protesters took refuge in the church, many were killed on its steps and those who managed to get in were caught by the gas which the military threw into them. However, the zenith of his conversion was on the 12th of March 1977, when his friend Fr. Rutilio Grande and two companions were killed while they were on their ways to celebrate mass in the village of El Paismal, where Grande was born. For Romero, the assassination of Fr. Grande, was the crucial moment in his conversion, it was his road to Damascus. Fr. Grande was his great personal friend, a faithful and close collaborator, a man of stamina and apostolic clarity that he had always admired and he was one of the key figures in the apostolic renewal in the archdiocese, a pioneer of the application of the Vatican II and Medellin to the Salvadoran church, a leader of Christian work and with the poor and oppressed. From this incident, Archbishop Oscar became the champion of the poor and the oppressed. His opposition to the repressive violence came to climax in his Sunday homily on the March 23, 1980. He called upon the troops and the national guardsmen to obey the law of God and therefore not to obey the orders of officials who might instruct them to kill their brothers and sisters “in the name of God, and in the name of this suffering people whose lamentations rise to heaven each day more tumultuously, I beg you, I ask you, I order you in the name of God, stop the repression.” This was seemingly the last straw. He died the following day from assassin’s bullets on March 24, 1980, will celebrating mass for Jorge Pinto’s mother. One well-aimed shot, fired with professional precision, was enough to bring down the man of God. He had given his entire being over to the service of the people of El Salvador, particularly to the service of the poor and the oppressed. Why did the man whose appointment was celebrated by the government, the oligarchy and the Catholic traditionalists become a target for elimination and eventually martyrdom? Archbishop Oscar Romero symbolized the figure of the persecuted church in El Salvador. He was murdered like the others because he challenged the status quo. The Salvadorans society consisted of a political and economic structure that benefited the upper class, while excluding the majority. The state at the same time protected the privileges of these minorities at the cost of justice and physical security of the marginalized. Susan Bergman gave the statistics “two hundred families owned 60% of the arable land and controlled 75% of export earnings; they live aristocratically, protected behind high walls and on massive estates, with houses in Miami, Houston and Switzerland. Among the poor, half were unemployed and more than 90% earned less than $100 a year.” Oscar the symbol of the church was aware that true Christianity required the defense of the weak, the oppressed and the poor; he criticized the status quo and faced repressive reactions. Anna Peterson buttressed this point …this ethical mandate to defend the weak and suffer the consequences according to activists, leads the church into conflict with the forces that preserve the interest of the minority over the survival of the majority and places the church, along with other groups that defend the poor, under attack from the powerful. People from El Salvador would agree that Romero and others were killed because of their commitment to the truth. According to Anna Peterson, the Catholic progressives of El Salvador saw the connection between proclaiming the truth and martyrdom as she said “Jesus was killed for telling the truth, and other martyrs from John the Baptist to Romero, have suffered for the same reason.” It should be noted that many Salvadorans linked the understanding of truth to concrete political and economic conditions. From their perspectives, telling the truth involved a positive struggle against injustice and death. It entailed not just dissipating ignorance but fighting lies. Peterson confirmed “the biggest lies, in this view, are those that disguise, justify, and maintain unjust political and economic structure.” To maintain these injustices required further lies, often through the silencing and distorting critical views. That is why the armed forces and the death squads in El Salvador called their victims, criminals, terrorists, subversives, and delinquents Archbishop Oscar spoke out in his homilies, his pastoral letters and his Sunday reports in the archdiocesan radio that become the symbol of unmasking lies. Telling the truth for Romero meant “denouncing injustice and oppression, pointing out structural violence, naming killers, and describing a more just alternative” This approach awakened people to the oppressiveness of the economic and political system and provoke resistance to it, which the elites sought to crush at all costs. Romero was murdered for this and this is the link between truth and martyrdom. The choice of Oscar’s option for the poor contributed enormously to his demise. To him, serving the poor made him to recover the central truth of the gospel, which the church must proclaim. For Romero, the church’s option for the poor was not just a matter of priority; it was a defining characteristic of the Christian faith. He said “A church that does not unite itself to the poor in order to denounce from the place of the poor the injustice committed against them is not truly the church of Jesus Christ.” He acknowledged that by defending the poor, the church had entered into serious conflict with the powerful who belong to the moneyed oligarchies and with the political and military authority of the state. In his address on the occasion of the conferral of a Doctorate, Honoris Causa, by the University of Louvain, in Belgium, he mentioned how during his three years as Archbishop, six priests have been murdered, how some were tortured and expelled, how nuns were persecuted and how the archdiocesan radio and other Christian institutions had been bombed. He maintained that if this was happening to the most evident representatives of the church, then the poor, the ‘campesinos’, catechists, lay ministers were surely experiencing worse persecutions. He made it clear that not the whole church was under attack but those that stood strongly beside the poor “not any and every priest has been attacked. That part of the church has been attacked and persecuted that put itself on the side of the people and went to the people’s defense” Like Jesus, he was crucified for standing by the poor and the down trodden. The scriptures tell us that “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruits” (Jn.12:24). The last part of this paper is focused on the fruits of the martyrdom of Oscar Romero. Archbishop Romero played a leading role in the church and in the society of El Salvador, because of his profound faith in the God of Jesus. It was because of this that he knew how to renew the life of the church, and how to guide the nation along the road of liberation. His martyrdom simply confirmed the truth of his life and his cause. His faith in God led him to foresee his martyrdom and the consequences. This is what he said in his last interview granted to Excelsior, just two weeks before his death, “I have frequently been threatened with death. I must say that, as a Christian, I do not believe in death but in the resurrection. If they kill me, I will rise again in the people of El Salvador. I’m not boasting; I say with the greatest humility---if they manage to carry out their threat, I shall be offering my blood for the redemption and resurrection of El Salvador” The belief in a close connection between martyrdom and resurrection permeates popular Catholicism in El Salvador. Catholics activists attest to the continuing relationship between the martyrdom of Oscar and the communities that share his ideals. Purcell, talking about the martyrdom and the resurrection said “that splendid thing has been his resurrection, because he still lives in the hearts and minds of his people and because also, he still lives as a challenge to the conscience of many Christians thought the world who have not been called upon to face so severe a challenge” The Salvadorans understood this resurrection to imply a spiritual presence in those who were determined to keep his ideas alive and active as Purcell concluded “his resurrection is not a future event, it is a present reality. He is life for us now, and that is why we must defeat the forces of death inEl Salvador and wherever Jesus continues to be crucified” It is seemingly evident that repression does not always or only have the negative social effects of fear and withdrawal as intended by its authors. While martyrs show the high cost of resistance, they also demonstrate that resistance is possible. Peterson believed that the sacrifices of members of an oppressed group provide dramatic challenge to the dominant belief and could thus weaken resignation to a status quo that appeared inevitable and untouchable. The death of Oscar and others strengthened the commitment of the El Salvadorans to their cause and motivated others to continue the struggle they had started. Elena, one of the survivors of the brutal regimes in El Salvador declared “the murderers think that we’ll kill that Christian and this thing will end, but for us it’s not that way.”  Just as the early Christian martyrs demonstration of courage and conviction strengthened public awareness and appreciation of the nascent church, the martyrdom of contemporary martyrs like Oscar has also helped to show the way to defend the poor and denounce injustice. Ten years after the archbishop’ murder, resident of San Pablo parish declared according to Ann Peterson “Monsignor Romero left us the example of not being afraid to denounce and tell the truth. He left both a challenge to serve also, not just to be served and an example of living life, with action and not just with words.” Thus activists in El Salvador as well as in other parts of Latin American, often point to the people like Oscar who gave their lives for the cause of justice as a primary motivation for their lives and their own participation. Martyrdom is also seen as an effective sacrament producing truth for the church. The church has martyrs and they are its glory. Whenever a Christian, in following Christ commits himself in such a way that he is martyred for this, he lends credibility to the church. Metz affirms “…he gives substance to the church in the sense that a church is only a church of Christ in the degree to which it is prepared to live in such a way that it sees its normal practice as sharing the fate of the martyrs Jesus Christ. The martyr makes the truth of the church and reveals God’ holiness communicated to the church. The church is holy because of its saints.” Thus martyrdom is important for the church itself, so that it may recover the truth of the gospel and makes this the foundation of its mission, so that it may retain its credibility which it can only keep among humankind today if it offers effective love to the poor. In the Salvadoran’s example, Jon sobrino affirmed that the martyrdom of Romero has given credibility to his life and his cause. The fact that he found a principle worth sacrificing for, compel others to contemplate that ideal and to follow his foot steps despite the risks. Martyrdom is equally a sign. Seemingly, what gives dignity to life is not self-centeredness but outgoingness. Martyrs give their lives as gifts to the others. Life is regarded as the supreme value but the sacrifice of life through martyrdom points to something which is of still higher value. In other words, life is ordered to something greater and worthy. In this connection, other people and society are signs of God, the true name for the supreme meaning of life and of history This was the understanding of Romero when he presented his address on the occasion of his investiture as a Doctor of Humanities, Honoris Causa, in February 14, 1978 as he said “At this solemn moment of  my life, I do not want to be anything more than a sign, a sign whose greatest glory and greatest satisfaction it is, as it was for John the Baptist, to decrease  in notoriety so that the eternal word of the gospel may increase and triumph.”  From this perspective of martyrdom, Metz considered life and almost everything to be relative to this greater good as he said “martyrdom points up the relative nature of everything, even life itself-relative in a double sense: everything is relative to a greater good for whose sake everything can be, and something should be sacrificed; compared to this greater good, all things are secondary or even tertiary, and so relative.”  Romero was a sign of hope for his people and has remained thus a sign after his martyrdom. Two weeks before his death, he said to Jose Caldero of Excelsior, about his impending death “---a bishop will die, but the church of God, which is the people, will never perish.” Almost three decades after his death, the Salvadoran people have remained committed to his ideals. El Salvador is a different place than it was in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. The war that divided the country ended in 1992. After peace accords were signed in 1992, all armed FMNLN (Farabundo Marti National liberation Front) unites wee demobilized and their organization became a legal political party. FMNLN is now one of the two major political parties in El Salvador. In the elections of March 15, 2009, the left wing guerrilla movement changed political party won the presidential election with the former journalist Mauricio Funes as its candidate. The relative peace that has come to this country is attributed to Oscar Romero, as Tod Swanson maintained “More than any other individual, it was Oscar Romero, the former Archbishop of San Salvador, who was instrumental in bringing peace to fruition, though he did not live to see it.” He promoted the use and effectiveness of peaceful means even when violence might have been necessary to some extent. By nature, he was a peaceful man and peace maker. So as to humanize even the violence that was legitimate, he repeatedly drew attention to all the other elements that had to be employed in building up peace, justice, dialogue, truth, magnanimity. In his third pastoral letter coauthored by Bishop Arturo RiveraDamas, bishop of Santiago de Maria, Oscar stated “we proclaim the supremacy of our faith in peace and we appeal to everyone to make determined effort to secure it. We cannot place all our trust in violent methods if we are true Christian or even simply honorable persons.” Before the actual peace in 1992, Oscar had sown the seeds for peace. That explains why toward the end of 1978 various groups in several parts of the world, including 118 British parliamentarians, put him forward as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. The struggle for the liberation of the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized and the crucified has continued in El Salvador. His courage to challenge the status quo and to call evil by its real name has continued to inspire Christians to follow his foot steps. Relative peace has returned to the country but the ingredients that contributed to this peace were planted some three decades ago by Oscar Romero. He has actually risen in the Salvadorans as he promised. His single contribution to the El Salvador’s liberation theology is immeasurable.

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