The witness of the saints

Everybody loves a story. I really like biographies; they reveal in concrete lived lives the values that people say they have. I especially cherish the stories of those who have given their lives for others – for the poor, for justice, for peace. In fact, for many years, I have been assembling a calendar with dates of witnesses and a few quotes. You can find it on my website at <http://home.igc.org/~jdonaghy/calendar.doc>.

painting of Father Rafael Palacios and Monseñor Romero on a building in Suchitoto

Saturday, June 20, is the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Father Rafael Palacios in Santa Tecla, El Salvador. Father Rafael was a priest active with the base communities and very committed to the poor. He is buried in the church in Suchitoto. He grew up in Suchitoto and in 2000 they renamed the street where his family lived in his honor. He is buried in the Sacred Heart chapel in the church of Santa Lucía in Suchitoto, El Salvador.


His pastoral style and his work with the poor earned him the scorn of many and for this he was killed.

A hymn written in his honor notes his attempts to have people understand their faith and live it, not as mere individuals seeking to save their souls, but as members of the community seeking the Kingdom of God.

Nuestro Dios no está en el templo
sino en la comunidad.
Our God is not in the church building
but lives in the community.

A few weeks after his death, Archbishop Oscar Romero noted in his July 8, 1979 homily:

When Father Rafael Palacios was murdered in Santa Tecla,
and his body was laid out here,
I said that he was still preaching,
calling attention
not only to crimes outside the church
but to sins within the church.
The prophet also decries sins inside the church.
And why not?
We bishops, popes, priests, nuns, Catholic educators–
we are human, and as humans we are sinful
and we need someone to be a prophet for us too
and call us to conversion
and not let us set up religion
as something untouchable.
Religion needs prophets, and thank God we have them,
because it would be a sad church
that felt itself owner of the truth
and rejected everything else.
A church that only condemns,
a church that sees sin only in others
and does not look at the beam in its own eye,
is not the authentic church of Christ.

Prophetic words!

Sunday is the anniversary of the death in 2005 of Cardinal Jaime Sin, Archbishop of Manila in the Philippines who was a major force for justice in his country and very outspoken against the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. He supported the nonviolent efforts in the People Power Movement in 2006 which eventually led to the flight of Marcos from the Philippines and the presidency of Corrie Aquino.

There’s a great quote from him I ran across a few years ago:

Strength without compassion is violence.
Compassion without justice is sentiment.
Justice without love is Marxism.
And… love without justice is baloney!