Don’t
call me a saint;
I
don’t want to be dismissed so easily.
Dorothy Day
In February, shortly
after Pope Francis authorized the beatification of Archbishop Romero, the
Catholic News Agency presented an
interview with Monsignor Jesús Delgado, who knew Romero and wrote a
semi-official biography. In part it read:
Archbishop
Romero “knew nothing about Liberation Theology, he did not want to know about
it. He adhered faithfully to the Catholic Church and to above all to the
teachings of the Popes.”
His theology was focused on the presence of God among the poor, “which we could
describe like this: ‘God present and living with the poor and walking with the
poor’,” Msgr. Delgado said.
I will leave an
examination of this charge to others. Michael Lee has an article on this in an
upcoming book from Orbis Books, but it is available
here in Spanish.
When I read this I felt
that Dorothy Day’s warning was coming true. Blessed Oscar would be sanitized, a
sort of "Romero Lite." He would be invoked in prayer; his relics would be
venerated; candles would be lit in his honor. But his radical message of a
church that lives out the resurrection of a poor Christ would be pushed to the
sidelines.
Would these words of his
November 13, 1977, homily be ever heard?
Do you
want to know if your Christianity is genuine?
Here is
the touchstone:
Whom do
you get along with?
Who are
those who criticize you?
Who are
those who do not accept you?
Who are
those who flatter you?
Know
from that what Christ said once:
“I have
come not to bring peace, but division.”
There
will be division even in the same family,
because
some want to live more comfortably
by the
world’s principles,
those
of power and money.
But
others have embraced the call of Christ
and
must reject all that cannot be just in the world.
This concerned me.
When I
heard of all the preparations for the event I wondered if the church would
present a homogenized Romero.
The tension between a
Romero who is "acceptable" to all and a Romero who is really Good News to the
poor was present in the two days of celebration I attended. But I believe that
the Romero of the poor rose up in the voices and hearts of the poor and those
in solidarity with them.
The Vigil presented, for
the most part, a Romero who was truly in solidarity with the poor. It reflected his vision of Jesus:
“Christ appeared…with the signs of liberation: shaking off oppressive
yokes, bringing joy to hearts, sowing hope. And this is what God is doing now
in history.”
Even though a prominent
cardinal praised Romero and his commitment to the poor, he referred to both Romero and his successor Monsenõr Rivera y Damas as
“prudent.”
This was in contrast to the chant later that evening, led by a prominent Jesuit that
invoked Romero as courageous:
Romero valiente contigo está tu gente.Courageous Romero,your people is with you.
Yet almost all the hymns of the
Mass were from the Salvadoran and Nicaraguan campesino Masses. The opening hymn was from the Nicaraguan Mass: Vos sos el Dios de los pobres: You
are the God of the poor.
The hymn places Jesus in
the daily lives of the people, He is invoked as a worker, who sweats and
struggles with the people. Jesus’ identification with the poor is complete:
I have
seen you in the corner store,… selling lottery tickets, checking car tires in a
gas station…with leather gloves and overalls.
The hymns and songs of
the evening celebrated a Christ and a Romero – as well as the martyrs of El
Salvador and Guatemala –risking their lives for the poor.
The Mass of beatification
was a little more subdued, but not as traditionalist as some had feared.
Before the Mass there
were presentations on Romero as pastor, prophet, and martyr. These were fairly good and included a sense of
Romero’s commitment to the poor.
The Mass began,
surprisingly, with the opening song of the Salvador Popular Mass, Vamos todos al banquete.
We are
all going to the banquet
to the
table of Creation;
everybody
on a stool
with a
place and a mission.
I get up
very early:
the
Community is waiting for me.
I go up
to the Cathedral with joy,
searching
for friendship.
God
invites all the poor
to the
common table of faith,
where
there are no hoarders
and all
have more than tortillas.
But the third verse was
omitted:
God
commands us to make of this world
a table
where there is equality,
working
and struggling together,
sharing
our property.
That would be too much
for some – especially some dignitaries and government officials.
Cardinal Ángelo Amato who
came in the name of the Pope spoke strongly of Romero’s witness and mentioned
the witness of other American saints. He also noted “Heaven ought to begin here
[on earth].”
Yet the Romero of the poor
was especially present in the many poor who remembered him and whom he defended and
loved. And for many the rainbow ring around the sun, that came at the almost the
exact moment when Romero’s image was unveiled, as a sign that the heavens also
rejoiced at this remembrance of one who loved the poor.
Today at Mass in
Suchitoto I saw a woman I’ve known since I was here in 1992. She experienced
the repression of the 1970s, the war of the early 1980s, and lives in one of
the first repopulated communities here. I asked her if she ever met Romero. She
told me that he came for the parish feast day and stood at the door greeting
people as he left. She had shaken his hand.
She then recalled how a
relative had a large scratch on her chin. Romero gently touched it and asked
how she was.
The poor remember
Romero’s gentle love for the poor, his strong advocacy of the repressed, his
love of the poor Christ.
That Romero was present.
May his memory renew the
Church, the nations of Central America, and ourselves so that we may begin to
witness to the Reign of God, a Reign of justice, love, and peace.
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