Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdémez was born on August 15th, 1917, in San Salvador. At the age of twelve, he was apprenticed to a carpenter. He was later able to attend seminary, but his family’s economic circumstances forced him to withdraw to work in a gold mine. Ultimately he entered another seminary and was eventually sent to the Gregorian University in Rome to study theology. After his ordination to the priesthood, he returned to his native land, where he worked among the poor, served as an administrator for the church, and started an Alcoholics Anonymous group in San Miguel.
When he was appointed a bishop, radicals distrusted his conservative sympathies. However, after his appointment as Archbishop of San Salvador in 1977, a progressive Jesuit friend of his, Rutilio Grande, was assassinated, and Romero began protesting the government’s injustice to the poor and its policies of torture. He met with Pope John Paul II in 1980 and complained that the leaders of El Salvador engaged in terror and assassinations. He also pleaded with the American government to stop military aid to his country, but this request was ignored.
Romero was shot to death while celebrating Mass at a small hospital chapel near his cathedral on March 24th, 1980. The previous day, he had preached a sermon calling on soldiers to disobey orders that violated human rights. He had said, “A bishop will die, but the Church of God which is the people will never perish.”
Romero was not the only Christian leader who was assassinated in El Salvador during this time. Almost nine months after Romero’s assassination, four women—two Maryknoll Sisters, an Ursuline Sister, and a lay missioner—werealso killed in the course of their ministry by the army. Six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter were similarly murdered in November of 1989.
The Roman Catholic Church canonized Romero on October 14th, 2018, and he is honored as a martyr by many Christian churches worldwide. A statue of Romero stands at the door of Westminster Abbey in London as part of a commemoration of twentieth-century martyrs.