The legacy of Monseñor Oscar Romero has assumed heroic
dimensions in the twenty-five years since his assassination on March 24, 1980.
Part of the mythology of Romero in North America has been the
account of his “road to Damascus” conversion on the road to Aguilares after the
assassination of Fr. Rutilio Grande, S.J, on March 12, 1977. After this event,
the myth goes, he became the voice of liberating faith in El Salvador and
“revitalized the Church of El Salvador.”[1]
Yet the real story of Romero’s commitment to the poor, his
transformation into the “voz de los sin
voz” – the voice of the voiceless – and his pastoral approach is much more
complex and more interesting for an understanding of the transformative role of
the church in Latin America in the 1970s.
In this paper I will first treat Romero’s process of conversion
to the cause of the poor and secondly how this fit into the projectory of an
already existing liberating pastoral approach of the Archdiocese of San
Salvador.
Romero’s Transformation
From the beginning of his pastoral work in San Miguel, Romero
had an openness to the poor and those in need. His work with Caritas, his
largesse with the poor who came asking for help, his visits to prisoners were
just a few of the ways he kept in contact with those at the margin of society.
From its founding as a hospital for indigent cancer patients in
1966, Romero had a close relationship with the Divina Providencia hospital
where he was killed. From 1974 to 1977, while bishop of Santiago de María, he
would stay at the hospital when he visited the capital for meetings.[2]
But Romero’s approach to the poor was rooted in the somewhat
paternalistic understanding of charity that was characteristic of the
pre-Vatican II church. In the early 1970s, Romero’s approach lacked the radical
critiques of society found in the documents of the Latin American Bishops 1968
conference at Medellin. In fact, Romero was wary of Medellín and the projects
undertaken in its name by pastoral workers in El Salvador.
It seems that in the early 1970s, while auxiliary bishop of San
Salvador, Romero became more conservative than he had been. His first response
to conclusions of the Interdiocesan Pastoral Week in 1970 was somewhat open;
but he turned against them when they were criticized in the Bishops Conference
and in Rome.[3]
During this time, he seems to have had less direct contact with
the poor and the misery of the campesinos. Ignacio Ellacuría suggested that his
pastoral practice appealed “to some small elite groups, served by Opus Dei, or
to the classic groups of the Christian Family Movement. But the pain and misery
of the people scarcely spoke to him…”[4]
But, under a number of influences, Romero did move from a hierarchically-based
understanding of his ministry to a more liberating pastoral approach, from a
paternalist and individualistic approach to poverty to one that included an
analysis of social sin.
Part of this transformation can, I believe, be attributed to
the influence of a number of the priests he knew and with whom he worked who
opened his eyes to see more clearly the misery of the people. These include
José Inocencio Alas, Fr. Rutilio Grande, S.J., and several the priests in the
diocese of Santiago de María, especially Fr. Juan Macho, C.P., and others
involved in the training center at Los Naranjos.
Romero had known Inocencio [Chencho] Alas since they both
worked with the Cursillos de la Cristiandad in the early 1960s. The Cursillo
movement in El Salvador in the 1960s attracted many of the elite and powerful,
including the Salvadoran president. Alas moved away from the Cursillos in 1967
and began working more with the poor. He however maintained contact with
Romero.
In July 1974 Romero accompanied Inocencio Alas back to
Suchitoto after Inocencio and his brother Higinio had fled, because their
liberating pastoral practice had enraged local authorities. At the Mass in the
plaza in front of the church that day during the
celebration Romero whispered to Higinio, “I see how you are being persecuted.
But the people are with you. Continue forward, but be careful.”[5] Nearly thirty years later Higinio saw this as one of the
first signs that Romero was turning toward a more radical commitment to the
poor.
As Inocencio Alas recalled later:
Romero preached the sermon and, though he
was still somewhat conservative, used the sermon to analyze the national
situation and to invite the people to continue struggling for justice, peace,
and freedom.[6]
Less than three months later, Romero was named bishop of
Santiago de Maria. Romero later remarked that during his time there, from
December 1974 to February 1977, “En Santiago de María me topé con la miseria – In Santiago de Maria, I ran into misery.”
During his first year, on June 21, 1975, six
campesinos – all of whom were catechists – were massacred in Tres Calles in his
diocese. His visit there and his talks with the families provoked him to make a
call for redress of grievances; however, he intervened with a deferential
private letter to his friend, Colonel Molina, the president of El Salvador.
Romero still thought that redress of grievances meant a personal appeal to
authorities who were often his friends, not advocacy for structural changes.
In Santiago de Maria, Romero began to realize the structural
exploitation of the campesinos. Seeing the coffee workers sleeping in the
square in Santiago de Maria, he opened diocesan offices for them. But Fr. Juan
Macho pointed out to him that some coffee workers were not being paid the wages
mandated by the government.[7]
In the November 28, 1976 issue of the diocesan newspaper, El Apóstol, Romero addressed this fate
of coffee workers and lamented the lack of fair wages, but his article lacked
his later social analysis and expressed his hope that the landowners would not
be selfish.
However, in response to President Molina’s 1976 call for
agrarian transformation, Romero brought Rubén Zamora to the diocese to give a
three-day workshop on agrarian reform for priests, religious and laity. Romero
attended all sessions, sitting in the front row, taking notes.[8]
Though the minimal reform suggested by Molina was never implemented, Romero had
begun to look at systemic approaches to injustice.
During this time, Romero was still wary of what he saw as the
politicization of the clergy. In a
confidential memorandum to the Vatican in November 1975 he was highly critical
of many of the liberation initiatives in the Salvadoran church. This critique
of activist priests came to a head in late 1975 as the pastoral training center
for campesinos at Los Naranjos in his diocese was threatened with closure. Only
a series of intense correspondence and meetings between Romero and the priests
in charge saved the center.
However, Romero was becoming more open to the liberating
pastoral practice of many in his diocese, moved by observing it in practice on
several occasions.
During a visit to the Los Naranjos center he sat in on a course
by Fr. Davíd Rodríguez. At the end of the class he stated, “If this priest is a
communist, I’m Chinese.”[9]
During a pastoral visit to Jiquilisco, a campesino’s commentary
on the Gospel led Romero to remark, “I had prepared a homily for today but
after all I’ve heard, all that I could add is to quote the words of the Gospel:
‘I give you thanks, Father, because you have revealed these things to the
simple and they have been hidden from the wise and the experts.’”[10]
During his time in Santiago de María, Romero seems to have been
growing in his ability to listen to the others and to have begun to expand his
Episcopal motto, “sentir con la iglesia –
to feel with the church” to mean that he had to listen to the whole People of
God and not merely the institutional hierarchy. At his first meeting with
clergy in the diocese he asked them, “Help me see clearly and to react and act
correctly.”[11]
Yet he still remained suspicious of the new theology,
especially Jon Sobrino’s Christology, subtly attacking it in his August 6, 1976
Transfiguration day homily in the San Salvador cathedral.[12]
And yet he remained cautious. On February 10, 1977, a few days
after his appointment as archbishop he told an interviewer from La Prensa Grafica, “We must keep to the
center, watchfully, in the traditional way, but seeking justice.”[13]
But upon his taking over as archbishop of San Salvador on
February 22, 1977, Romero proceeded – at first slowly – to appropriate as his
own the liberating praxis already at work in the archdiocese.
Romero’s actions served to deepen and to expand the work of his
predecessor, Monseñor Chávez y González. Romero supported, sustained and
promoted the growth of the institutions of the archdiocese. He also proceeded
to continue and expand the consultation processes in the archdiocese that had
been nurtured by the pastoral study weeks in 1969 and 1975. He initiated and
maintained dialogue with the more radical members of the clergy. During one of
his first meetings of the clergy, on March 1, he urged them to continue their
post-conciliar pastoral ministry.
The death of Grande must be seen as catalytic in Romero’s
subsequent commitment to a liberating pastoral. Salvador Carranza, who worked
with Grande has written, suggests that the death of Romero’s friend Rutilio
Grande and the way the people had been moved by him removed any doubts Romero
might have had about Grande’s liberating pastoral method.[14]
Several events, I propose, must also have influenced him,
including the fraudulent elections of February 20, the attack on demonstrators
in the Plaza Libertad on February 28, the resistance of most of the other
bishops, and the continuing attacks on churches and church workers in early
1977.
Thus, from the time of Rutilio Grande’s death, Romero was
moving in a trajectory of a liberating pastoral approach which put the church
of the archdiocese of San Salvador even more radically on the side of the poor
and oppressed.
The archdiocesan context
Romero’s
transformation and the strong advocacy for the poor of his episcopacy must also
be seen in the context of a liberating pastoral approach already existent in
the archdiocese.
Romero’s predecessor, Monseñor Luís Chávez y González,
initiated a number of projects, supported others, and permitted others.
From the1950s Chávez had supported and help initiate a number
of major projects for the development of the poor.
He had been promoting the formation of
cooperatives, specially loan and credit coops (ahorro y credito), sending priests to Canada to study cooperative
theory and practice. He formed the Pius XII Institute to teach cooperativism
and Catholic social teaching; in 1958 he supported the formation of a section on cooperatives in
the Social Secretariat.[15]
He also promoted a number of other efforts
to help the rural poor. In 1961 the Escuelas Radiofónicas, rural Radio Schools,
were founded to promote literacy for campesinos in remote villages. At one
point there were as many as 10,000 campesinos studying in these small groups.[16]
In
the 1970s the archdiocese developed a Centro Rural Itinerante which gave
courses in rural and urban areas.[17] This was
another tool used to evangelize campesinos in the countryside and encouraged
the formation of small base communities.
Concerned about the workers Chávez y
González saw to it that there was a program for workers on YSAX, “En marcha,
obreros – Go forward, workers”
In the early 1970s, the archdiocese also encouraged women
religious to go to the countryside and work with the poor.
Chavez’ approach was close to the social democratic approach of
the Christian Democrat Party, founded in November
1960 in the Hotel International in San Salvador.[18] Six year later, in August 1966, Monseñor Chávez’s
thirty-seventh pastoral letter, “The Responsibility of the Laity in the
Ordering of Temporal Life,” aroused massive opposition because it was seen as
supportive of the PDC. [19] The themes developed in this letter, controversial for the
times, flowed from a centrist vision of Catholic social teaching: “the duty of
the church to denounce injustices; the injustices which the Salvadoran people
is suffering; the causes of these injustices which have their origin in the
disorder provoked by the accumulation of riches in the hands of very few.”[20] Communications was
important for Archbishop Chávez. He founded a Catholic radio station and the
diocesan weekly newspaper Orientación.
The Archdiocesan Pastoral Commission published a journal Búsqueda, which in the early seventies included articles by the
exiled Chilean theologian Segundo Galilea, who had also been brought into the
country for programs for priests.
Recruitment and education of Salvadoran clergy was important
for Chavez. He sent priests to study abroad, not only in Europe, but later to
IPLA, Instituto Pastoral Latinamericana, a
center connected with the liberating pastoral approach of Ecuadoran Bishop
Leonoidas Proaño and Chilean bishop Manuel Larraín.
Archbishop
Chávez had attended the Second Vatican Council and was proud of having attended
every session. Later he initiated reforms in the archdiocese in conformity to
Vatican II and the 1968 meeting of Latin American bishops at Medellín.
He initiated pastoral study weeks – first a nation-wide week in
1970 and later an archdiocesan one in 1975.
The First National Pastoral Week,
June 22-26, 1970, was called to discuss how to implement Vatican II and
Medellín in El Salvador.[21] This meeting, sponsored by the National Bishops Council,
came up with a series of proposals. Many of these were not included in the
final report which was written for the bishops by a commission headed by Bishop
Oscar Romero, then auxiliary bishop of San Salvador.[22]
The
second pastoral week in January 1975 was organized by the archdiocese.
Inocencio Alas was chosen by the priests for the team which would pull together
the conclusions of the meeting. 306 priests, religious and laity of the
archdiocese took part and even laity – professionals and campesinos – were
given opportunities to speak.
The
archbishop permitted and supported programs that were more radical.
In
March 1972, Fr. Fabián Amaya, other priests, and campesinos initiated a
mimeographed bulletin, Justicia y Paz.
Under the auspices of the Social Secretariat and the Justice and Peace
Commission[23]
it served to raise the consciousness of the campesinos and promote rural
organizational efforts. Its editorial board included several priests and
campesinos from Suchitoto and other parishes.
He
also supported the efforts of Fr. Inocencio Alas in Suchitoto.
In
March 1969 Chávez came to the parish and officially commissioned the
celebrators of the Word whom Alas had trained. These celebrators brought the
Eucharist to their rural communities each Sunday and led weekly celebrations of
the Word there. Their training was founded in the theology and pastoral
practice of Vatican II and Medellín and included a study of scripture from the
perspective of community.
Two
months later he visited Inocencio Alas in Suchitoto during a critical period,
staying overnight in the parish house. At the end of the Sunday Mass, he
expressed his support for the demonstration which local campesinos were
planning on land use that afternoon; After the final blessing, he said, “I hear
you have something planned. Go and do it! God bless you.” More than five
thousand attended the demonstration in the plaza outside the church, despite
the blockade of the city by the National Guard.
In January 1970 the National Assembly
convened the Agrarian Reform Congress; governmental, nongovernmental, labor,
and business groups were invited to participate. The archdiocese participated
and Archbishop Luís Chávez y González handpicked a progressive group of priests
and laity to represent the church and chose Inocencio Alas to present the
church’s position on the issue.
The archbishop provided financial support of many of Inocencio
Alas’s efforts including the agricultural school in Suchitoto, which was later
named in the archbishop’s honor.
In July 1974, Chávez supported and harbored Inocencio Alas and
his brother Higinio when a warrant was issued for their arrest. He declared, “When a priest preaches what the Gospels and
the documents of the church contain, you cannot conclude that he is preaching
subversion or irreverence. The Gospel and the doctrine of the church will
certainly always defend justice, truth, and human rights.”
His support of the very controversial
organizing efforts of workers and campesinos is evident from remarks in his
March 1975 pastoral letter: “The Inflation in El Salvador and Christian
Consciousness.” An important paragraph read:
“The poor also ought to form associations,
agrarian leagues, cooperatives, unions of campesinos and of marginalized
persons to control the activities of the multinational and national companies
which sow hunger in our country, reducing over and over again the land used to
produce basic foodstuffs (grains) in order
to dedicate them to produce goods for international consumption which bring in
cash.”[24]
Because of his support of popular
organizations and progressive priests he was called a Marxist and Communist and
campaigns in the newspapers defamed the archbishop.
Thus when Romero assumed his role as archbishop of San
Salvador, there were already existent institutions and even a ‘mystique’ of
liberating social practice.
The real legacy of Romero
Jon Sobrino has written, “The martyrdom of Father [Rutilio]
Grande, the support of the majority of the clergy, and. above all, contact with
the suffering of the people – all these changed him [Romero].”[25]
But Romero’s change and the pastoral approach he embodied must
be seen in an even wider context, including the influence of friends and of the
institutional approach to pastoral practice in the San Salvador archdiocese.
In analyzing Romero’s process of transformation in context we
find that an environment of friends who were liberationists and an institution
that had taken the side of the poor were major factors in his unfolding
pastoral practice. This suggests that what has happened in terms of personal
change has at times been due to a nexus of relationships that helped people
like Romero move from a hierarchical view of church and society and a paternalistic
and individualistic approach to poverty and social change.
This analysis will not diminish Romero’s importance as a
catalyst for the church in El Salvador but brings to the fore the crucial role
of institutional support that made efforts at a liberating pastoral approach
possible in many parts of Latin America. The lack of institutional support is
but one of the causes of the diminishment of a liberating pastoral in Latin
America and throughout the world.
To understand the roots of Romero’s conversion and his relation
to the institutions and pastoral plan already existent in the archdiocese of
San Salvador can help researchers and pastoral workers understand what is
needed for an effective liberating pastoral practice, in terms of formation of
both personnel and institutional structures.
The future of a liberating pastoral practice in the Catholic
Church thus needs to learn from Romero’s experience the importance of personal
transformation and institutional support.
Romero’s significance is thus not that of a bolt of lightning
out of a blue sky but of a catalyst who deepened the tradition of pastoral work
in the archdiocese and moved it into a more open liberating praxis with strong
institutional support. Rather than seeing him as exceptional it is important to
see the framework of his transformation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
“The Catholic
Church in El Salvador,” El Salvador
Bulletin 2 (December 1982): 1-8.
Alas, José
Inocencio, 2003. Iglesia, Tierra y Lucha
Campesina. Suchitoto, El Salvador, 1968-1977. San Salvador, El Salvador:
Colección Cantera.
Brockman, James
R., 1989. Romero: A Life. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis
Books.
Cáceres Prendes,
Jorge, 1983. “Revolutionary Struggle and Church Commitment: The Case of El
Salvador,” Social Compass XXX/2-3:
261 – 298
López Vigil,
María, 1993. Piezas para un Retrato. San Salvador, El Salvador: UCA editores.
Maier, Martin,
2005. Monseñor Romero: Maestro de
espiritualidad. San Salvador, El Salvador: UCA editores.
Sobrino, Jon,
1985. “A Theologian’s View of Oscar Romero,” in Archbishop Oscar Romero:
Voice of the Voiceless: The Four Pastoral Letter and Other Statements
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books): 22 – 51.
Swedish,
Margaret (1999), “Archbishop Romero and His Commitment to the Church,” in Monsignor Romero: A Bishop for the Third
Millennium, edited by Robert S. Pelton, C.S.C., (Notre Dame, IN: University
of Notre Dame Press, 2004): 51-64.
Vega, Juan
Ramón. 1994. Las Comunidades Cristianas
de Base en América Central: Estudio Sociológico. San Salvador, EL Salvador:
Publicaciones del Arzobispado.
Zacarías Diez y
Juan Macho, 1995. Mons. Romero: “En
Santiago de María me tope con la miseria.”
[2]
When Romero was named archbishop he first lived in a room off the chapel and
later in a small house built for him on the hospital grounds.
[3] Meier, 35-6
[4] Cited in Meier, 99.
[5] Interview with Higinio
Alas, July 201, in Costa Rica
[6] J. Alas, 2003: 214
[7] López Vigíl, 66
[8] Ibid., 64
[9] Zacarias & Macho, 138;
López Vigíl, 67-68.
[10] Ibid., 153; Meier, 44.
[11] Cited in Meier, 34.
Romero’s growing openness to dialogue is another factor in his transformation.
Romero had chosen “Sentir con la iglesia” as his Episcopal model in 1970. In
the retreat before his Episcopal ordination he had written “I have to discover
in dialogue with bishops, priests, and laity, what God wishes.” (Meier, 34)
[12] Jon Sobrino, Jesuit
professor of theology at the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA), the Jesuit
university in San Salvador, became one of Romero’s trusted advisors while
Romero was archbishop of San Salvador.
[13] Brockman, 4
[14] Meier, 110
[15]
The Interdiocesan Social Secretariat was formed in
1958.
In the 1960s Chávez
assisted the formation of FUNPROCOOP (Foundation for the Promotion of
Cooperatives) as a separate organization.
[16] Vega, 1993, 76.
[17] One
of these teams, led by Msgr. Urioste and Sister Joyce Blum was instrumental in
the spiritual formation of the community of Santa Anita, which in the 1970s and
1980s was situated near Cojutepeque. About 1990. the community bought land and
moved to a site near Montepeque in the municipality of Suchitoto. The community
is notable for its commitment to nonviolence which it held from the 1970s.
[18]
Two factions were involved in the formation of this centrist party: one with
more social democratic leanings connected with Rubén Zamora, and another more
pragmatic faction was connected politically with José Napoleon Duarte.
[19] ES Bulletin, 3.
[20] Vega,
1994: 72.
[21] Cáceres
1983: 269
[22] The fundamental options of
the Week included:
1/ The animation of CEBs
[church communities of the base] as the bases of a new type of parish;
2/ The promotion of a new
type of ministry incarnated in the concrete reality of the local community to
represent the church there, ... responsible persons who give themselves to the
integral development of the human person and the formation of communities;
3/ To achieve the unity of
pastoral workers based in a Latin American theology and a continued reflection
on the Salvadoran reality. (Vega 1994:
82)
[23] It
was funded by the German Catholic aid agency Miserior.
[24] Cited
in Justicia y Paz, Abril de 1975, 7.
[25] Sobrino, 36
