“Unfortunately, the political community is not always organized and today our people are living in a time of crisis and seeking a new way of life so that they can move beyond the shameful times which we presently experience and form a new society and a new people.” These are the words of Archbishop Óscar Romero in his 1979 homily for the thirtieth Sunday in ordinary time. Reading Romero’s homilies and pastoral letters today in the United States, as our executive branch machetes its way toward a constitutional crisis, is like peering at our image in a carnival mirror—familiar, eerie, disturbingly prescient.
On March 24, 1980, Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez, Archbishop of San Salvador, was assassinated in a chapel at Hospital de la Divina Providencia. Shots rang out as he completed his homily at a memorial Mass commemorating the first anniversary of the death of the mother of the publisher and editor of El Independiente, a weekly newspaper noted for its persistent advocacy for justice and human rights.
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