Saint of the week: Óscar Romero
- Aimee Boudreaux MacIver
- Mar 24
- 3 min read
March 24, 1980: Inside a small El Salvador chapel, Archbishop Óscar Romero had just finished offering a morning of reflection, confession, and began celebrating Mass. Outside, the country verged on civil war. Amid the escalating oppression and violence, Romero had tirelessly advocated for the poor while denouncing violence from all sides.
He stepped to the lectern to deliver his homily, as usual broadcasting it over the radio for others outside the chapel to hear. As usual, he called for an end to the suffering and for justice. “You have just heard Christ's Gospel,” he preached, “that one must not love oneself so much as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life... that those who avoid danger will lose their life, while those who out of love for Christ give themselves to the service of others will live, like the grain of wheat that dies, but only apparently. If it did not die, it would remain alone. The harvest comes about because it dies, allows itself to be sacrificed in the earth and destroyed. Only by destroying itself does it produce the harvest.”
He paused, looked up, and then continued. “I beg you all, dear brothers and sisters, let us look at these matters at this moment in our history with this hope, with this spirit of giving, of sacrifice, and let us do what we can. We can all do something.”
He concluded, stepped back to the altar—then a gunshot rang out. The assassin fled as Archbishop Óscar Romero collapsed, blood pouring from his pierced heart.
Born in 1917, Romero had been a reserved priest, considered a safe choice for archbishop by the militarized government. But then the assassination of his friend, Fr Rutilio Grande, changed him.
That Sunday, Archbishop Romero declared that Fr Grande’s funeral mass would be the only mass celebrated in the entire archdiocese. He used the occasion to boldly preach justice through love: “Dear people of El Salvador, there may seem to be no peaceful solution, and some feel they must resort to violent means. Yes, there is a solution! The solution is love. The solution is faith. Let us live this faith, and I assure you that there will be a solution to all of our great social problems.”
For the next three years, Romero fought for the rights of the impoverished: writing letters, broadcasting messages, and gaining powerful enemies. Aware of the risks, he persisted, knowing that only complete self-gift could truly imitate Christ. Until that last moment just before he would have consecrated the Body of Christ Himself, Romero preached not politics, but dignity.
“The transcendence that the church preaches is not going to heaven to think about eternal life and forget about the problems on earth. It’s a transcendence from the human heart,” he said. “It is entering into the reality of a child, of the poor, of those wearing rags, of the sick, of a hovel, of a shack. It is going to share with them. And from the very heart of misery, to transcend it, to elevate it, to promote it, and to say to them, ‘You aren’t trash.’ It is to say exactly the opposite, ‘You are valuable.’”
His feast is March 24.
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