Friend of Campesinos

“Christ invites us not to fear persecution, brothers and sisters,…because believe me, he who is committed to the poor must share the same fate as the poor; and in El Salvador we know what that fate signifies: it is to disappear, to be tortured, to be captive and to be found dead by the side of the road.”

~ Archbishop Romero was a pious, conservative bishop, who stayed out of politics until his close friend Rutilio Grande was gunned down. Realizing his own government was behind the repression of his people, he decided to stand up for the oppressed. He traveled the country compassionately listening to the cries of his people. Romero put his life on the line, regularly denouncing the repression.

Romero exposed the armed forces as the source of hundreds of murders and denounced the killers from the pulpit in his national broadcast weekly. In his March 23 sermon, he cried out to the security forces to stop the repression. The very next day Romero was fatally shot through the heart while saying Mass. The outcry was enormous and there was a great outpouring of grief and sorrow from many campesinos.