The Assassination of Óscar Romero

Óscar Romero was named archbishop of San Salvador on 3 February 1977. On 12 March, a few days after his installation, his friend the Jesuit Rutilio Grande was murdered, and two days later Romero broke off public relations with the military authorities, having understood that the president did not intend to clear up the killing (Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, profile of Óscar Romero). The United Nations truth commission describes him as a well-known critic of violence and injustice whose sermons, which reported the human rights violations recorded by the legal aid office of the archdiocese, made right-wing civilian and military circles regard him as a dangerous enemy. In February 1980 he received death threats, and on 10 March, the day after he had celebrated a memorial Mass, a case holding a bomb that had failed to go off was found near the high altar (UN Truth Commission for El Salvador, From Madness to Hope (S/25500), pp. 127–128).

On 17 February 1980 he read out in his homily a letter he had written to President Carter. As a Christian and a defender of human rights, he wrote, the president should forbid military aid to the Salvadoran government, which would sharpen the repression, and should not intervene in the country’s affairs (Romero, Homily of 17 February 1980, p. 14).

On Sunday 23 March he preached in the presence of an ecumenical delegation from the United States, which included a representative of the National Council of Churches (Romero, Homily of 23 March 1980, p. 1). At the end he addressed the men of the army, the National Guard and the police. They were killing their own brothers and sisters, he said; against any order to kill stood the commandment of God, and no soldier was obliged to obey an order against the law of God. In the name of God and of the suffering people he begged them, besought them and ordered them to stop the repression (Romero, Homily of 23 March 1980, p. 20) (Exodus 20:13).

The next day, Monday, he said a memorial Mass in the chapel of the Divina Providencia hospital. He preached on the grain of wheat that dies and on a passage of the Second Vatican Council about the hope of a new earth (Romero, Homily of 24 March 1980, pp. 1–2) (Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes 39) (John 12:24–25). He had just finished the homily when, as the transcript records, a shot rang out (Romero, Homily of 24 March 1980, pp. 1–2). A gunman had fired a single bullet from a car outside the main entrance of the chapel (UN Truth Commission for El Salvador, From Madness to Hope (S/25500), pp. 127, 131).

The truth commission set up under the peace agreements reported in 1993 that there was full evidence that former Major Roberto D’Aubuisson gave the order to assassinate the archbishop and instructed members of his security service, acting as a death squad, to organise it. It also found full evidence that the Supreme Court, by preventing the extradition of one of those involved, had ensured impunity for the planners (UN Truth Commission for El Salvador, From Madness to Hope (S/25500), pp. 1 and 131), and it called the official investigation inefficient and plagued by political motives (UN Truth Commission for El Salvador, From Madness to Hope (S/25500), p. 128). The Catholic Church recognised Romero as a martyr killed in hatred of the faith and beatified him in 2015 (Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, profile of Óscar Romero). He was canonised on 14 October 2018 (Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, profile of Óscar Romero), on the same day as Paul VI (Holy See, biographical profile of Paul VI).