Martyred in March 1980, El Salvador’s Óscar Romero was canonized in October 2018. Martyred in March 1977, Rutilio Grande García, S.J., was beatified in January 2022. Sadly, the church of El Salvador can offer any number of priests, men and women religious and lay people to choose from to hold up as modern exemplars of Christian self-sacrifice. During its bloody civil war, more than 75,000 perished and more than 8,000 were disappeared, primarily at the hands of the Salvadoran military and government-sponsored death squads, according to a U.N. truth commission in 1992.
On Aug. 6, the Most Rev. José Luis Escobar Alas, archbishop of San Salvador, said that the El Salvador’s bishops’ conference had initiated the canonization process “of a large group of our martyrs from the recent armed conflict suffered in our country.” Though the archbishop did not share any specific names from the list submitted to Rome, the nation’s long litany of martyrs includes six Jesuits (Ignacio Ellacuría, Ignacio Martín-Baró, Segundo Montes, Juan Ramón Moreno, Joaquín López y López and Amando López) and a mother and daughter (Elba and Celina Ramos) who worked with them who were murdered by Salvadoran soldiers on the grounds of the University of Central America in San Salvador in 1989, as well as four American women murdered in December 1980—Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford and lay missioner Jean Donovan.
Sadly, the church of El Salvador can offer any number of priests, men and women religious and lay people to choose from to hold up as modern exemplars of Christian self-sacrifice.
Archbishop Escobar quoted “one of those martyrs,” Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J., the rector of the U.C.A. at the time of the attack, who said 10 days before he was assassinated that only in hope can we have the courage and belief “with all the poor and oppressed of the world to reverse history, subvert it and launch it in another direction.”
Archbishop Escobar made the announcement as he celebrated Mass on the Feast of the Transfiguration in San Salvador’s Metropolitan Cathedral, where 40 people were killed as a terror attack engulfed the funeral Mass for St. Óscar Romero on March 31, 1980.
Archbishop Escobar cited Father Ellacuría as an example for contemporary El Salvador, which has struggled for years with gang violence and now contends with a breakdown in due process and human rights in order to combat that violence. “Violence has struck and led to the deaths of many Salvadorans, mainly the poorest,” Archbishop Escobar said. “At present, that violence seems to have almost been overcome, but there are many challenges to be addressed so that history of fratricidal violence is not repeated.”
During his homily, he noted that the Transfiguration is a reminder that “there is no resurrection without a cross.”
“This suggests,” he said, “that from the place each of us occupies in history you must work to lift the cross off of [the world’s] crucified peoples, communities like ours that for centuries have suffered the oppression and obliviousness of those who have had in their hands the duty to lead with justice and right, as God has always asked.”
Archbishop Escobar urged the government under populist president Nayib Bukele “to avoid the imprisonment of innocents” and called for the prompt release of those unjustly detained.
The poor and the oppressed of the world “are the ignored, the invisible, the marginalized, those excluded from society; and yet, they are the ones who represent Christ,” he said, offering up a vision of a transfigured El Salvador. He urged a series of social reforms in El Salvador, where a revived state militarism, responding to out-of-control gang violence under a state of emergency decree (which was extended in July), has resulted in the imprisonment of more than 70,000 young people suspected of ties to criminal gangs. The anti-gang policy enjoys wide popular support and homicide rates have sharply declined, but human rights groups allege that many of those arrested and held without trial are innocent of gang associations.
Archbishop Escobar urged the government under populist president Nayib Bukele “to avoid the imprisonment of innocents” and called for the prompt release of those unjustly detained. He asked Salvadorans “to continue working on the prevention of the origin of violence” and called attention to “the gaps and shortcomings that we have always suffered, especially in the public education system,” that he argued contributed to the modern violence in Salvadoran life.
He also urged that greater investment be made in shoring up the nation’s public health system “to build a dignified infrastructure for the human and ethical care of the poor.” He asked that chronic problems of public corruption and criminal impunity be addressed and that the dignity of Salvadoran agricultural and other workers be respected with better pay and working conditions. He urged contemporary Salvadroans “to say ‘never again’ to mining exploitation based on toxic materials that contaminate our aquifers” and called for a legal system “that always protects the right to water and food security; a legal system that improves the public transport system, and that ensures and promotes the defense of the environment.”
Finally, he urged Salvadorans across classes to unite in an effort to overcome the nation’s chronic poverty and underdevelopment. Reversing the course of history in service to the poor and marginalized, he said, “demands that all the… forces of this country; that is, the owners of the capital, those who occupy managerial positions in education, justice, government, religion and all fields of science and knowledge, unite, leaving behind the divisions exacerbated by ideologies and partisanship that have bled this country for years, especially the poor.”
