The Beatification of Oscar Romero

An image from the side of a bus in San Salvador. The profusion of religious imagery in public can be a shock to foreign visitors, as can be their often-graphic and gory imagery. Here, Satan arm-wrestles a very Anglo-looking Jesus.

Graffiti near the site of Blessed Oscar Romero’s beatification mass: “Mara Salvatrucha-18: We love each other until death.” MS-18 is one of two major gangs responsible for much of the violence that plagues El Salvador; the murder rate approached 30 deaths a day in the weeks leading up to the beatification.

The tomb of Oscar Romero in the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Holy Savior in San Salvador. This is actually Romero’s third tomb, and was designed by Italian artist Paolo Borghi for the 30th Anniversary of Romero’s death. Some have criticized its placement in the crypt, as its predecessor was placed upstairs in the right transept of the Cathedral. The artist describes the four figures at the corners of the tomb thusly: “They represent the Gospels. When I visited Romero’s home, I was offered a copy of the texts he had written. As I read through them, I noticed that they all began with some passage or other from the Gospel. The stance he took against the violence of the military regime of the time, did not stem from a purely political vision but also from a vision of evangelical justice. His vocation as defender of the poor came from the Gospel and that’s where my inspiration came from. I designed the four angels holding each of the Gospels. Each of them is holding a shroud which, as you move toward the centre, turns into a bishop’s dress and then into Mgr. Romero himself.”

The altar at the Chapel of the Hospital of Divine Providence in San Salvador, where an assassin murdered Archbishop Oscar Romero as he said mass on March 24, 1980. “I have often been threatened with death,” Romero had said previously, “I must tell you, as a Christian, I do not believe in a death without resurrection. If am killed, I shall arise again in the Salvadoran people.” Romero was one of more than 75,000 Salvadorans to die from violence between 1980 and 1992.

The view from the altar at the Chapel of the Hospital of Divine Providence in San Salvador, where an assassin murdered Archbishop Oscar Romero as he said mass on March 24, 1980. The assassin’s car pulled up on the street, and the killer fired a single shot through the open doors, killing Romero at the altar.

The statue of Oscar Romero in the Plaza El Divino Salvador del Mundo. The ten-foot tall statue has been vandalized six times since it was erected in 2002, most recently in March of this year. While Romero is “very much loved by a vast majority of Salvadorans,” Marisa Martinez of the Archbishop Romero Foundation told Catholic News Service at the time, “he is also one of the most hated by a small minority.” Each of the six times, Romero’s right hand (holding up a cross) has been chopped off.

A soldier guards a San Salvador intersection at 5:00 a.m. the morning of the beatification. Throughout the weekend, a heavy military and police presence was visible everywhere—a reminder that at Romero’s funeral 35 years before, 41 mourners were killed by gunfire and the resulting panic.

A view of priests queueing up to distribute communion gives a sense of the crowd at the beatification (estimated at 300,000), extending for miles down the paseo in the background.

Oscar Romero’s bloodstained shirt—he was wearing it when the assassin’s bullet cut him down—is carried into his beatification mass by acolytes. The day before, the shirt, traditionally kept by the women religious who maintain Romero’s rooms at the Hospital of Divine Providence in San Salvador, was brought to the Cathedral. 

The official image of Blessed Oscar Romero is unveiled in the Plaza El Divino Salvador del Mundo during the beatification mass.

American Jesuits Stephen Privett, S.J. and Ted Gabrielli, S.J. at the beatification mass. They were among more than a thousand priests who concelebrated at the beatification. 

From the sacramentary used at the beatification mass, the “Preface of the Holy Martyrs.”

The scene the morning following the beatification at the Plaza El Divino Salvador del Mundo in San Salvador, as crews broke down the extensive altar and press galleries.

A monument at the rural site where the bodies of four American women, the “Churchwomen of El Salvador,” were dumped after they were tortured, raped and murdered by members of the Salvadoran National Guard on December 2, 1980: Maryknoll Sisters Ita Ford, M.M. and Maura Clarke, M.M., laywoman Jean Donovan, and Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, O.S.U.  The monument reads “Catholic missionaries Dorothy Kazel, Maura Clarke, Jean Donovan, and Ita Ford gave their lives here on December 2, 1980.  Receive them, Lord, into your kingdom.” A simple church also marks the location. The night before they died, Ita Ford had quoted Archbishop Romero: “One who is committed to the poor must risk the same fate as the poor. And in El Salvador we know what the fate of the poor signifies: to disappear, to be tortured, to be captive, and to be found dead.”

A young Salvadoran girl takes a break from an outdoors catechism class to peer into the church built at the spot where the bodies of the murdered Churchwomen of El Salvador were found in December 1980. 

The passport of Jesuit priest Ignacio Ellacuria, who at the time was rector of the Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas" ('UCA') in San Salvador. Born in Spain, Ellacuria became a Salvadoran citizen in 1975.  He was murdered on October 16, 1989 along with five other Jesuits, their housekeeper Elba Ramos, and her daughter Celina Ramos, by soldiers of the Salvadoran army.

From an album kept at the Monsenor Romero Center at the UCA, a photograph of three of the Jesuit martyrs taken the morning of October 16, 1989.  Their killers dragged their bodies out onto the lawn, which is now covered by rose bushes planted by Elba Ramos’ husband Obdulio.

From the room of Juan Ramon Moreno, S.J., murdered on October 16, 1989 by soldiers of the Salvadoran army: his copy of Jurgen Moltmann's The Crucified God, stained with his blood.