Saint Óscar Romero

He was born on August 15, 1917, in the small town of Ciudad Barrios, in El Salvador. ¹³ The Dicastery for the Causes of Saints says his father was a telegraphist and that the family owned a modest farm; Vatican News, in Spanish, says he was the second of eight children. ¹⁵ He was trained as a carpenter, and the sources give his entry to the minor seminary at San Miguel differently: at twelve, says the Dicastery; in 1930, after working for a carpenter from the age of twelve, says the booklet for his canonization Mass; at thirteen, say both Vatican News articles. ¹³⁴⁵

In 1937 he went on to the major seminary in San Salvador, and the same year his bishop sent him to Rome, where he studied at the Gregorian University until 1943. ¹⁵ The Dicastery says Rome gave him a sense of the universal Church and a deep attachment to the papacy, and that he especially admired Pius XI for standing up to the totalitarian regimes. ¹ He was ordained there on April 4, 1942. ¹⁵ Vatican News quotes what he wrote in his diary that day, translated here from the Spanish: "I want to be a host for my diocese." ⁵

The war brought him home in 1943. ¹⁵ The Dicastery says he had to leave before finishing his doctorate in theology; the canonization booklet says he obtained a licentiate in theology that year. ¹³ For more than twenty years he was a parish priest in the diocese of San Miguel, first, Vatican News says, at Anamorós. ¹⁵

He was named secretary of the bishops' conference, on June 8, 1967, according to the Dicastery, or in 1968, according to Vatican News in Spanish. ¹⁵ On May 23, 1970, he was appointed auxiliary bishop of San Salvador and took as his motto Sentir con la Iglesia, to think with the Church. ¹ The Dicastery says his years as auxiliary were spent largely on administrative work he was glad to leave; the canonization booklet says he gave himself then to the defense of the poor. ¹³ On October 15, 1974, he became Bishop of Santiago de María, a diocese in the eastern highlands, where he was valued, the Dicastery says, for his humility and his closeness to the poor. ¹

On February 3, 1977, he was named Archbishop of San Salvador. ¹ The country was under a military government allied to a landowning oligarchy, with a revolutionary opposition rising against it, and the Church's defense of poor farmworkers had made it a target. ¹⁴ Vatican News says he was considered a safe choice, a conservative intellectual who talked about holiness, and Vatican News in Spanish that the appointment caused misgivings among those who feared the archdiocese would draw back from the poor. ⁴⁵

On March 12, 1977, within weeks of his taking office, the Jesuit Rutilio Grande, his closest friend, who had chosen to live as a poor man among the poor in the rural parish of Aguilares, was shot dead as he came back from celebrating Mass. ¹⁴⁵ The Dicastery and Vatican News in Spanish say two peasants died with him; Vatican News in English says an elderly peasant and a boy. ¹⁴⁵ Romero kept vigil all night over the body. ¹⁵ Vatican News quotes him: "When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead, I thought... I, too, have to walk the same path." ⁴

People have called what followed his conversion. The Dicastery says he always denied it, saying rather that he felt he must defend the poor with fortaleza, a pastoral fortitude, as his friend had done. ¹ Two days after the murder he broke publicly with the government, the Dicastery says, once he saw that the president had no intention of finding the killers. ¹

For three years he was the most prominent public figure in the country. ¹ He defended the poor, asked for justice and condemned violence from whatever side it came. ¹⁴ His Sunday homilies were broadcast on the diocesan radio, and Vatican News says they gave a weekly list of disappearances, tortures and killings and had a larger audience than any other radio program in El Salvador. ¹⁴ Vatican News in Spanish says the diocesan station was bombed ten times in a single year. ⁵ In 1979 members of the United States Congress and the British Parliament put him forward for the Nobel Peace Prize. ¹⁵

The Dicastery insists that he was a pastor, not a theologian, and that his social commitment came from Scripture and the Church's teaching rather than from political theory. ¹ He made no important decision without praying a long time before the crucifix, and he was so unsure of himself by temperament that he consulted three confessors at once; once he was convinced of God's will, he did not move. ¹

On March 23, 1980, after a week in which, Vatican News in Spanish says, 43 bodies were found, he spoke directly to the soldiers. ⁵ "No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God," he said, in Vatican News's English. "In the name of God, and in the name of this long-suffering people, whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I beseech you, I beg you, I command you! In the name of God: stop the repression!" ⁴⁵

He knew he was in danger. A month before his death he wrote in his spiritual notebooks, in words the Dicastery quotes and translated here from the Italian, that it cost him to accept a violent death, "which in these circumstances is very possible," and that "more than the moment of dying, what counts is giving him all of life and living for him." ¹ He would not leave the country, the Dicastery says, because, again in translation, "a shepherd does not go away; he must stay to the end with his people." ¹

On March 24 he spent the day at a retreat for priests, and in the evening he celebrated Mass in the chapel of the Hospital de la Divina Providencia, a hospital for the terminally ill where he lived. ¹⁴⁵ In the homily, Vatican News says, he spoke of those who give themselves to the service of the poor out of love for Christ living "like the grain of wheat that dies." ⁴ As he came to the altar, a gunman fired from the door of the church, and he fell with a bullet through his heart. ¹⁴⁵ Vatican News in Spanish says the shot came from a rifle in a car stopped outside the chapel. ⁵ He was not yet 63. ¹ Vatican News in Spanish adds that it came out three decades later that the death squads had paid the killer 114 dollars. ⁵

His people called him a martyr at once and came in crowds to pray at his tomb in the cathedral. ⁵ Cardinal Amato recalled that John Paul II, standing at that tomb in 1983, said, in words translated here from the Italian of the homily, "Romero is ours." ¹ The cause opened in San Salvador in 1994, was halted in 1998 while the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith studied his homilies, and resumed in April 2013 after a decision of Benedict XVI. ¹

On February 3, 2015, Pope Francis approved the decree recognizing that he was killed in hatred of the faith, which is why Vatican News in Spanish dates his beatification to February. ¹⁵ The rite itself was held in the open air in San Salvador on May 23, 2015, before half a million people. ¹ For the canonization the Church accepted the healing, in San Salvador in 2015, of a woman whose pregnancy was threatened by severe preeclampsia. ¹ Francis canonized him in Saint Peter's Square on October 14, 2018, with Paul VI and five others, and Vatican News says he wore the bloodstained belt Romero had worn at his last Mass. ¹²³⁴ In the homily he said Romero "left the security of the world, even his own safety, in order to give his life according to the Gospel, close to the poor and to his people." ²

Speaking to Salvadoran pilgrims afterward, Francis added, as Vatican News in Spanish reports, that the martyrdom did not end with his death: as a young priest he had witnessed Romero being defamed and slandered after he was killed, even by brother priests and bishops. ⁵

None of the sources consulted for this page names a patronage for Saint Óscar Romero, so none is given here. ¹²³⁴⁵ Pope Francis, writing for the beatification, spoke of those who have Romero as a friend in faith and those who "invoke him as protector and intercessor," words translated here from the Italian. ¹

Saint Óscar Romero's feast is kept on March 24, the day he was killed. ¹⁴ The Dicastery for the Causes of Saints gives it as his liturgical memorial. ¹

The Dicastery calls him a man of the Beatitudes: he consoled the afflicted, loved the poor, was meek in rejecting violence, sought peace, asked for justice, and offered everyone, the rich included, a way to salvation. ¹ Cardinal Angelo Amato, who beatified him, added that his charity reached his persecutors too. ¹

He was not a natural hero. By the Dicastery's account he was hesitant by temperament and had to pray his way to every decision. ¹ The courage people remember came late, in his last three years, and he himself understood it as a gift received at the side of a murdered friend. ¹⁵

He was killed at the altar, and Pope Francis, writing for his beatification, said that in that moment he was given the grace to identify himself fully with the one who gave his life for his sheep. ¹ He had written beforehand that he did not want to give his death an intention of his own, and left that to God. ¹