Kevin Clarke - Oscar Romero: Love Must Win Out

Introduction

During one of his trips to Rome after his elevation to archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero marveled at how the men in the Curia, indeed it seemed throughout Rome, did not quite understand the nature of the crucifixion being experienced by the church in Latin America, even after his repeated efforts to make these mortal difficulties plain to them. After a humiliating effort to wade through a curial bureaucracy that seemed intent on thwarting him, Romero finally had the chance to meet privately with Pope John Paul II in 1979. He detailed the extreme conditions of his ministry and the human rights violations being inflicted on average Salvadorans, especially church workers. Romero was treated to a few expressions of support but mostly to a good scolding on the importance of maintaining episcopal unity before the eyes of the public. Several of his subordinate bishops in El Salvador at that time were more or less in open revolt against his leadership.

In his diary account of the meeting, Romero writes, He acknowledged that pastoral work is very difficult in a political climate like the one in which I have to work. He recommended great balance and prudence... He reminded me of his situation in Poland, where he was faced with a government that was not Catholic and where he had to develop the church in spite of the difficulties. He said the unity of the bishops is very important.... Again I clarified, telling him that this is also something that I want very much, but that I was aware that unity cannot be pretended. Rather, it must be based on the gospel and on the truth.

Pope John Paul II had been receiving numerous reports from within the Salvadoran bishops conference full of accusations against the archbishop. Now closing out the meeting, Pope John Paul II suggested to Romero that to resolve the deficiencies in the pastoral work and the lack of harmony among the bishops an apostolic administrator sede plena be appointed, meaning that Romero would remain archbishop of San Salvador but that the actual responsibilities of the position would be moved to the administrator.

Romero apparently accepted the suggestion without protest and left, pleased by the meeting, but worried to see how much the negative reports of my pastoral work had influenced [the pope].... I think that the audience and our conversation were very useful because he was very frank. I have learned that one cannot expect always to get complete approval, and that it is more useful to hear criticism that can be used to improve our work. A remarkably cool accounting of the meeting, perhaps for posteritys sake, considering Pope John Paul II was essentially proposing to cut the episcopal legs out from under Romero and throw everything he had accomplished into turmoil.

But how could people in Rome and Washington or even in San Vicente understand what Romero understood as the leader of the Salvadoran church? They did not have the spiritual guidance from the Salvadorans that Romero had been receiving for years. He had by then come to believe that the poor were the prophets of the era, not the bishops of El Salvador or the clerical bureaucrats in San Salvador or within the Curia. He was learning from the poor and the oppressed how to be a good Christian in the contemporary milieu of El Salvador and struggling to impart his learning to the elite and powerful in El Salvador and North America and among his superiors in the old world.

This was not mere rhetoric to Romero. He had sat on the ground for impromptu Bible study among El Salvadors campesinos. He had visited with them in parish meeting halls, listening to their interpretation of Scripture and marveling at what he, the esteemed bishop, was learning about the nature of God and faith from the ignored and the oppressed. Yes, he heard the desperate cry of the poor for justice in El Salvador, but more than that he heard wisdom from the poorunexpected prophetsthat many simply refused to hear.

That unwillingness to hear persisted far longer than Romero could have imagined. Perhaps it awaited clarity from one whose experience more closely mirrored his own, someone who brought not only a fresh perspective but a personal familiarity with the contradictions and cruelties of life in some of the far-flung corners of Christendom. Perhaps it awaited the right ears for the hearing.

It had been a fantastic hope of the Catholic faithful of Latin America that one day one of their own should become Bishop of Rome and represent the perspective and experience of this largest population of Catholics in the world before the rest of their Catholic brothers and sisters. That hope was finally realized in the humble form of Argentinas Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who has become fondly known to the world as Pope Francis.

Soon after his election in April 2013, Pope Francis stepped into one of those occasionaland inexplicable to outsidersdisagreements that trouble somber Vatican corridors in what would become typical of his direct and empathetic style. Pope Francis unblocked the canonization process for Servant of Goddeclared so in 1997 by Pope John Paul IIand servant of the people of El Salvador, Oscar Romero.

Given the complex of concerns that collide over the notion of the canonization of this martyred archbishop, perhaps this definitive moment had to wait for a man like Cardinal Bergoglio to fully appreciate the life, wisdom, and sacrifice of Oscar Romero, to understand the nature of his sainthood and of his world. As a young man rushed into a position of authority during a period of grave national crisis, one for which he later acknowledged he did not believe himself ready, then Father Bergoglio vividly experienced the historical, spiritual, and psychological torrents that pulled apart the people of Latin America during the waning decades of the twentieth century.