CCM Bulletin week of March 23

<![if !vml]><![endif]>Yesterday was the 35^th anniversary of the assignation of Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Oscar Romero was born in El Salvador in 1917. At age 13 he left home to enter the seminary and he was ordained in 1942 in Rome. He served as a country priest for a while, then ran the seminary, and then became an administrator. In 1970 he became a bishop.

In 1977, he was elected El Salvador’s archbishop. He was considered a ‘safe bet’ on the part of the conservative bishops. He was known to be orthodox, pious, a bookworm, and opposed to liberation theology, which was rapidly spreading throughout Central and South America. (Liberation Theology takes as its starting point God’s incarnation in history to liberate the poor and oppressed.) Romero offered no protest to any of the bloodshed that became increasingly prevalent in El Salvador, and supported the status quo.

Several weeks after his election as archbishop, his friend , Jesuit Fr. Rutilio Grande, and two parishioners, a 72 year-old man and a 7 year-old boy, were murdered while driving in the countryside. Romero began to question why there was no official inquiry into the murders; that led him to ask questions about how the country was run, and to discover that the wealthy elite ran the country and sanctioned the violence that maintained the status quo. He underwent a profound conversion. His weekly sermons, broadcast by radio throughout the country, began to feature a litany of each week’s human rights violations.

Within next year, 200 catechists and farmers were killed. By 1980, 3,000 people were being killed every month in a civil war; tortured bodies were showing up in the streets. In a country of 5.5 million people, 75,000 were killed, 1 million fled the country, and 1 million were left homeless. Romero’s pleas for international intervention were ignored, including the appeal he sent to US President Jimmy Carter (the US sent millions of dollars to fund El Salvador’s military) and the Vatican.

On the day before he died, he preached a homily in which he confronted the military: he called on soldiers to lay down their guns. The next day, March 24, 1980, while celebrating mass in a hospital chapel where he lived, he was assassinated, shot in the heart by a single rifle bullet by a member of the government death squads. Oscar Romero was the first bishop killed at the altar since Thomas Becket in the 12^th century. He is regarded by many as the patron saint of Central America, and will be canonized this coming May.

As we wind down our Lenten pilgrimage, I hope you’ve had some time to ponder your call to discipleship, and the uncomfortable places it might be leading you. Today is the Feast of the Annunciation, when Mary’s life—and the lives of all humanity through all ages—was changed, by saying ‘yes’ to a crazy and ‘impossible’ future. ~Karen

EVANGELICAL CATHOLIC

Evangelical Catholic is a program for Catholic College student leaders that is designed to help you be more effective leaders in your campus ministry, and to get other students involved. Don’t be freaked by the ‘evangelical’ part! It just means sharing the Good News through the work of campus ministry. There’s a chance to go to the conference this summer, with most/all expenses paid by the diocese. We’re going to the training camp near Philadelphia from July 20-24 (plus travel days). You need to let me know SOON if you are interested in going! And heads up, there might be a chance to go the training workshop in Florida next January, over the winter break. For more info, go here: https://www.evangelicalcatholic.org/etc/.

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Karen Soos
Associate Chaplain and Catholic Campus Minister
Davidson College
Campus Box 7196
Davidson NC 28035
704. 894. 2423