Oscar Romero, A Political Saint

Paul VI and Saint Oscar Romero

 

OSCAR ROMERO, A POLITICAL SAINT

 

Oscar Romero is a political saint, and by this term we mean someone who gives Christian witness in a political context. The saint takes up a political cause for which the underlying motivation is some Christian virtue or principle.

The political words and deeds of the saint significantly define their Christian witness.

Examples of political saints in modern times include Franz Jägerstätter—beatified in 2007—Dorothy Day, and the White Rose martyrs. Jägerstätter was guillotined by the Nazis because of his refusal to take up arms in the war and against the testimony of his conscience. Similarly, the White Rose martyrs were guillotined because of their publication and distribution of materials opposing the war and the Nazi regime. They were Germans whose opposition was triggered by the massacres of civilians and Jews in Poland and Russia. Dorothy Day was an American Roman Catholic convert who pursued lifelong activism on the political left.

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Just when I was beginning to feel very discouraged about our political situation under the current administration I come across this:

“We know that every effort to better a society, especially one that is so enmeshed in injustice and in sin, is an effort that God blesses, that God desires, that God demands of us.”—Saint Oscar Romero

The source of this quote is documented as follows:

Oscar Romero “…was assassinated as he concluded his homily on March 24, 1980.

“…James R. Brockman, S.J., author of Romero: A Life (Orbis Books) and editor/translator of Romero’s The Violence of Love (Harper), reexamined the tape recording of Archbishop Romero’s homily and published the following translation of it in the March 28, 1992, issue of America….”

See this link, Óscar Romero, “This is the homily Óscar Romero was delivering when he was killed,” America (October 12, 2018):

https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/10/12/homily-oscar-romero-was-delivering-when-he-was-killed