For anyone who is aware of the liberal struggles of the 1980's, this is wonderful news.
SAN SALVADOR — Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to convene in a central plaza here on Saturday to celebrate the beatification of Archbishop Oscar Romero, 35 years after he was shot in the heart while saying Mass.Many people in the United States finally woke up to what was happening in El Salvador about 9 months after Bishop Romero was assassinated when the military death squads raped and murdered four American nuns who were working with the poor in that country.
Romero, a towering and polarizing figure in Salvadoran history, was chosen by Pope Francis earlier this year to be beatified, the last step before sainthood. It is the first time a Salvadoran has received this religious honor. After years in which the process was stalled, Francis’s decision was a “surprise and a thrill for everyone,” said Simeon Reyes, a spokesman for the Catholic church in El Salvador...
Romero’s death was a watershed moment in El Salvador, a murder that helped propel the country into civil war. He was shot on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass in a church at the hospice for cancer patients where he lived. A “truth commission” set up after the war concluded that former army Maj. Roberto D’Aubuisson, a suspected right-wing death squad leader, ordered the killing, but he denied involvement and was never tried. He was the founder of the conservative ARENA party, which governed El Salvador until 2009 and now is in opposition...
The decision to beatify Romero suggests that Pope Francis, an Argentine well-acquainted with military repression in his home country during the “dirty war” of the 1970s and ’80s, found Romero’s saintly cause compelling, regardless of the concerns of his political opponents. But the progress of the case also signifies that the Cold War wounds are gradually healing. Today, a former Marxist guerrilla commander, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, is president of El Salvador.
As we did all over Central and South America, the United States supported the military dictatorships that carried out these kinds of assassinations.
The United States was heavily involved in wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s in what Reagan described as an effort to stem Soviet influence in the hemisphere. The United States spent more than $4 billion on economic and military aid during El Salvador's civil war, in which more than 75,000 people were killed, many of them civilians caught in the crossfire.That is why I still mark this moment when President Obama visited the tomb of Bishop Oscar Romero during his visit to El Salvador in March 2011 as one of the most moving of his presidency.
Hi death and the death of the four women, three nuns and a lay worker, was indeed a catalyst for change. But nothing did change until both President Obama AND Pope Francis made clear that those helping the poorest of the poor were heroes, not villains. Ending our nation's support for oppressive governments has been a quiet but steadfast part of this administration's work in the Southern hemisphere. To me, that alone marks this administration as transformational. It is part of the reason the rightwing detest him. Pope Francis' support for canonization is powerful as well. He has elevated someone whom the ultra right extremists thought they had eradicated. Now his name and ideals will live forever in the church's history, a testament to the power of human justice.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many of those who scream about Reverend Wright have even a tinge of doubt as to the Christianity of those who supported these killings?
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