Óscar Romero

Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez (1917–1980) was the Archbishop of San Salvador whose fearless denunciation of social injustice, state-sponsored violence, and the persecution of the poor in El Salvador led to his assassination while celebrating Mass — making him one of the most significant martyrs of the twentieth century and a powerful symbol of the Church's commitment to the oppressed. Born in Ciudad Barrios, a small mountain town in eastern El Salvador, Romero entered seminary at age thirteen and was ordained in Rome in 1942. For decades, he was considered a conservative, bookish churchman — cautious about liberation theology and focused on traditional pastoral concerns. His appointment as Archbishop of San Salvador in 1977 was welcomed by the Salvadoran government and oligarchy, who expected him to be a compliant ecclesiastical leader. They were profoundly mistaken. Just three weeks after his installation, his close friend Father Rutilio Grande — a Jesuit priest who organized peasant communities — was assassinated by a death squad. The killing transformed Romero. He began using his weekly radio homilies, broadcast across the country, to document and denounce the escalating violence against civilians by military and paramilitary forces. He named victims, cited specific abuses, and called for justice, becoming the most trusted and authoritative voice in a country descending into civil war. Romero's final years were marked by increasingly direct confrontations with the Salvadoran military government. He wrote personally to President Jimmy Carter, asking the United States to stop sending military aid. In his last sermon, on March 23, 1980, he made a direct appeal to soldiers and national guardsmen: 'I beseech you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression!' The next day, March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass in the chapel of the Hospital of Divine Providence, he was shot through the heart by a single bullet fired by a sniper. He died at the altar. A United Nations Truth Commission later concluded that the assassination was ordered by Major Roberto D'Aubuisson, leader of a right-wing death squad. Romero was beatified in 2015 and canonized by Pope Francis on October 14, 2018.