Catholic Fire

34 years ago Msgr. Óscar Arnulfo Romero, then archbishop of San Salvador, was shot to death while celebrating Mass in a hospital. His only "crimes” were to denounce the violence in El Salvador and to share the suffering of the needy. An initiative called 'The Project' celebrates the life and work of this priest who always stayed close to his people. Among other things, with music: it released a song called "Romero” as part of the album "Martyrs Prayers.” Images of the Salvadorian priest can be seen in the video. The composers used texts and reflections from Fr. Romero to write the lyrics of the song, and the chorus repeats one of his most famous statements: "Let my blood be a seed of freedom.” Fr. Romero knew that they were after him long before being murdered. He was a "persona non grata” because he stood for the rights Salvadorian workers and farmers in his homilies, rights that were often attacked by the repressive military and the oppositio...

In 1989, I watched a movie at Illinois State University’s Newman Center entitled “Romero”.  That was my first experience viewing the death of a modern martyr on film and I will never forget it.  It was devastating to see a priest gunned down by an assassin while celebrating holy Mass. In the 1970s and 80s, El Salvador was under the heel of a military dictatorship supported by the U.S. government and the country’s poor suffered greatly. Appointed as archbishop of El Salvador in 1977, Oscar Romero became the “voice of the poor” in a time of brutal government repression.  From March 1977, until his death three years later, Romero became vocal and active with regard to issues of social justice and called upon the government, in the name of Christ and His Church, to cease its repressive activities of exploitation, torture, and assassination. In the CD, entitled “Martyrs’ Prayers,”, Michael Glenn Bell and Duane W.H. Arnold have taken the words of Archbishop Romero and...