ROMERO, THE TROUBLEMAKER
In his message for the World Youth
Day 2013,
Pope Francis enthusiastically told thousands
of young people coming from all over the
world:
elevated to sainthood a bishop from
Central
America who, for sure, caused
trouble even
when he had against him two Popes and
the
majority of the fellow bishops of his
country.
Canonization of Romero, the
troublemaker
A good move
Romero who, from being a reactionary became a revolutionary, was
declared a saint by pope Francis. A very good move, indeed! Romero actually was
a saint of nonviolence and forgiveness, but above all, he was a saint of
justice. He is among a few other saints the saint of the voiceless, a saint
anti "establishment", a saint of the liberation of the oppressed, a
saint who confronted identified oppressors with their machines of exploitation
and destruction. Romero is a saint who incarnated the Gospel of Jesus by
defying very powerful contrary forces, especially those most cunning and cruel
ones coming from within the Church itself.
It is to be hoped that the canonization ceremony, the pompous masses,
the golden haloes, the pink cheeks, the palms, the relics, the flowery pictures
and the indulgences will not emasculate that valiant defender of the poor.
Romero has not been canonized to perform miracles like curing kids from scarlet
fever, or the mother/father superior from diarrhea, but to confront directly
the political, economic and social system that, in El Salvador as well as in
all world countries, creates poverty and maintains its growth and its lasting
existence.
Romero once belonged, but does not anymore belong to the clerical
apparatchik. He is the blood brother of the millions of dispossessed in a
country taken over through force and corruption by fourteen families who manage
it like their own «ranch». That oligarchy is surrounded by heavily armed
acolytes who look like a kind of under product of the yankee empire. To kill or
to have killed almost a hundred thousand farmers dispossessed from their land
does not weigh a thing for them, and they would not let an archbishop ruin
their «party»…
By canonizing Romero, pope Francis (who, as a Latin American, understands those things), is making up, in
part, for a very severe injustice. He proclaims in the face of the whole world
that the battle waged with all his strength by that man in his country was not
the battle of a lunatic communist activist but that of a faithful disciple of
Jesus.
Salvadorans know very well Romero’s killer: a high ranking army officer
who was never prosecuted. This canonization should encourage them to continue
without respite to call for justice. Let us dare hope also that it will inspire
a real and sincere remorse among the bishops, the priests and the lay people
who have spared no effort to make immensely heavier and more cruel the cross of
Romero. Let us hope also that from heaven, the Polish pope (already canonized)
will at least shed a tear. He had answered the cries of distress of his brother
archbishop of El Salvador by lecturing him and making him cry. He even sent him
out of his pontifical bureau by telling him to stop harming the military
government of El Salvador that, even if it was not always a good catholic, at
least it had the merit of not being communist (!)… This took place at the
Vatican, barely two or three weeks before Romero be shot and killed in the
middle of the mass by a henchman of that good catholic government of El
Salvador.
Nowadays, Oscar Romero is praised here and there as the patron saint «of
a Church that had to pay the price of blood for having had the courage to oppose
itself against military dictatorships». That is true, but we have to know what
kind of Church it is all about. There are two churches: the one from above that
for centuries played in the yard of dictators and of people stinking rich, and
a church from below that was the church of Romero. In a large measure, the
church from above was a direct or indirect accomplice of real rivers of blood shed
by many Romeros and by thousands of men and women identified to the cause of
the poor. Saint Romero is certainly not the patron saint of that church from
above which has, moreover, the very bad habit of canonizing (so as to recuperate
them) those it has contributed in crucifying.
In any case, Romero is definitely not the patron saint of the Opus Dei,
of the Legionaries of Christ and of other organizations of the catholic right
that were mandated by John Paul II and by his successor, Benedict XVI, to bring
to an end the Theology of liberation, to the basic ecclesial communities and to
the «Church of the Poor» for which Romero (and thousands of others) shed their
blood in Latin America. To forget this or to keep on denying it would be equal
to spit once again in the face of the man whom pope Francis has just canonized.
Let there be no misunderstanding about that: the greatest sin of the
Church is not the scandalous actions of priests and bishops against the sixth
commandment, but its visceral rejection of its own prophets, less they are dead
(Read Matthew 23: 29-32).
This being clarified, may the new, courageous and magnificent saint of
the Americas, Oscar Arnulfo Romero, be known and imitated in the whole world!.
Eloy Roy
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