Author Topic: Bl. Oscar Romero (Read 6258 times)

poche · « **on:** August 16, 2016, 02:21:42 AM »

In his role as Vicar General, Monsignor Ricardo Urioste was one of the closest collaborators of Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador who was martyred for the faith in 1980 and beatified just this past year.

And this monsignor has some stories to tell.

Among the most fascinating involve details surrounding the day Romero was killed, what the late archbishop really thought about the controversial and problematic Liberation Theology, and the fact that the martyr’s insides hadn’t decomposed when they were exhumed three years after his death.

Archbishop Romero was brutally killed while celebrating Mass on March 24, 1980 – a time when El Salvador was on the brink of cινιℓ ωαr. In February 2015, Pope Francis officially recognized his death as having been for hatred of the faith and gave the green light for his beatification.

Msgr. Urioste, who currently heads up the Archbishop Romero Foundation, said that during the time the martyr lived, whenever “he preached, spoke, was a pastor, they accused him of being communist, Marxist, a politician, and a thousand things."

However, he noted how after 12 years of extensive study on the life and writings of the archbishop, the Vatican never found anything that supported these claims.

In an interview with CNA, Msgr. revealed some the of the lesser known facts surrounding the new blessed, as well as his continuing legacy on the Church and the world at large.

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/insides-that-didnt-decompose-and-other-stunning-facts-about-oscar-romero-52016/

poche · « **Reply #1 on:** August 16, 2016, 11:24:43 PM »

What happened on the day Archbishop Romero died

Msgr. Urioste can easily recall the day that Archbishop Romero was killed, saying that it was “an ordinary day of work” for him.

In the morning the archbishop had a meeting with a group of priests, and then they ate lunch together. After the meeting he went to confession with his usual confessor, which was a priest named Fr. Segundo Ascue.

Once he confessed, Archbishop Romero went to celebrate a 6 p.m. Mass in San Salvador’s hospital of Divine Providence, which was staffed by nuns. The Mass, Mons. Urioste recalled, had been widely publicized throughout the diocese.

While he was celebrating Mass in the hospital’s chapel, the archbishop was shot in the chest from outside.

Msgr. Urioste said that after getting a phone call informing him of what happened, “I immediately went to the hospital, and he was already taken to the polyclinic. A television set arrived, they interviewed me, and after I went to the hospital where he was."

He recalled how as the sisters were going to embalm Archbishop Romero’s body, he told them “please be careful not to drop his insides anywhere, but that they pick them up and bury them, and they did, burying them in front of the little apartment he had in the hospital where he lived."

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/insides-that-didnt-decompose-and-other-stunning-facts-about-oscar-romero-52016/

Capt McQuigg · « **Reply #2 on:** August 17, 2016, 03:18:35 PM »

Didn't this archbishop make a public statement that if he was killed by the bad guys he would rise again with the Salvadoran people? Isn't that some form of pantheonism or such? Certainly sounded paganistic. I remember thinking, "Hey Archbishop, you'll rise with Our Lord or you'll sink somewhere dark and nasty."

And just like every "blessed" and "saint" of the Conciliar Church, I hope this Archbishop from a latino country really did love Our Lord and Our Lady.

---> For the repose of the soul of those who live and meet their death in the beliefs of the Concilliarists!

poche · « **Reply #3 on:** August 18, 2016, 12:21:06 AM »

Quote from: Capt McQuigg

Didn't this archbishop make a public statement that if he was killed by the bad guys he would rise again with the Salvadoran people? Isn't that some form of pantheonism or such? Certainly sounded paganistic. I remember thinking, "Hey Archbishop, you'll rise with Our Lord or you'll sink somewhere dark and nasty."

And just like every "blessed" and "saint" of the Conciliar Church, I hope this Archbishop from a latino country really did love Our Lord and Our Lady.

---> For the repose of the soul of those who live and meet their death in the beliefs of the Concilliarists!

Bl. Oscar Romero didn't believe in some sort of Pantheism. The idea that we will rise again comes from the Gospel and is found in the Creed.

According to those who knew him this is what Bl. Oscar was about;

Msgr. Urioste noted that the archbishop's library, “had all these books from the early Fathers of the Church, from the current Magisterium of the Church, but (he) never even opened any of the books from Liberation Theology, or Gustavo Gutiérrez, or of anyone else.”

“He read the Bible and there he encountered a Jesus in love with the poor and in this way started walking toward him,” he said.

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/insides-that-didnt-decompose-and-other-stunning-facts-about-oscar-romero-52016/

poche · « **Reply #4 on:** August 22, 2016, 11:37:17 PM »

Three years later, on the occasion St. John Paul II’s visit to the country, the nuns of the hospital “made a monument to the Virgin in the same place where we had buried (Romero’s) insides.”

“When they were digging they ran into the box and the plastic bag where they had placed the insides, and the blood was still liquid and the insides didn't have any bad smell,” he revealed.

“I don't want to say that it was a miracle, it's possible that it's a natural phenomenon, but the truth is that this happened, and we told the archbishop at the time (Arturo Rivera y Damas), look monsignor, this has happened and he said 'be quiet, don't tell anyone because they are going to say that they are our inventions,'” he said.

However, “Pope John Paul II was given a small canister with Archbishop Romero’s blood,” he noted.

Msgr. Urioste recalled that when John Paul II arrived to San Salvador, the first thing he did “was go to the cathedral without telling anyone. The cathedral was closed, they had to go and look for someone to open it so that the Pope could enter and kneel before the tomb of Archbishop Romero.”

John Paul II asked during his visit that no one manipulate the memory of Archbishop Romero, Msgr. Urioste recalled, and lamented how “they politicized him.”

“The left had politicized him, putting him as their banner. And the right politicized him, saying things that are untrue about the bishop, that are purely false, they denigrated him.”

One of the things that the Church in El Salvador wants, Msgr. Urioste said, is that “the figure of the archbishop, known now a little more than he was before, is a cause for reflection, a motive for peace, a motive for forgiveness, a motive for reconciliation with one another, and that we all have more patience to renew ourselves and follow the paths that Archbishop Romero proposed to us.”

“I think that (Romero’s) figure is going to contribute a lot to a better meeting and reconciliation in El Salvador,” he said.

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/insides-that-didnt-decompose-and-other-stunning-facts-about-oscar-romero-52016/

Capt McQuigg · « **Reply #5 on:** August 23, 2016, 03:03:37 PM »

I sure hope you're right, Poche.

However, the Archbishop did racialize and localize his resurrection as if it were unrelated to Our Lord but that may be a misquote.

Why were the people who shot the Archbishop dead while saying the Novus Ordo Mass angry? What was the issue?

poche · « **Reply #6 on:** August 23, 2016, 11:55:24 PM »

Quote from: Capt McQuigg

I sure hope you're right, Poche.

However, the Archbishop did racialize and localize his resurrection as if it were unrelated to Our Lord but that may be a misquote.

Why were the people who shot the Archbishop dead while saying the Novus Ordo Mass angry? What was the issue?

There was a cινιℓ ωαr in that country. On one side were the generals whose philosophy was largely masonic and the subversives who were communists. The archbishop was concerned about bringing Christ to the people with a concern for the poor who were largely trapped between the two sides.
Those who killed the archbishop were angry because part of his message was that it is wrong to indiscriminantly kill the innocent civilians,

poche · « **Reply #7 on:** August 25, 2016, 01:27:19 AM »

Quote from: Capt McQuigg

I sure hope you're right, Poche.

However, the Archbishop did racialize and localize his resurrection as if it were unrelated to Our Lord but that may be a misquote.

Why were the people who shot the Archbishop dead while saying the Novus Ordo Mass angry? What was the issue?

The resurrection of the dead is radical in a world of athiests and unbelievers. Every Sunday at the TLM we say the Nicene Creed. At the end of the Nicene Creed it says;

Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum,
And I await the Resurrection of the Dead:

et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.
And the Life of the world to come. Amen.

What Bl Oscar Romero said comes from this.

Capt McQuigg · « **Reply #8 on:** August 25, 2016, 08:41:56 PM »

Quote from: poche

Quote from: Capt McQuigg
I sure hope you're right, Poche.

However, the Archbishop did racialize and localize his resurrection as if it were unrelated to Our Lord but that may be a misquote.

Why were the people who shot the Archbishop dead while saying the Novus Ordo Mass angry? What was the issue?

The resurrection of the dead is radical in a world of athiests and unbelievers. Every Sunday at the TLM we say the Nicene Creed. At the end of the Nicene Creed it says;

Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum,
And I await the Resurrection of the Dead:

et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.
And the Life of the world to come. Amen.

What Bl Oscar Romero said comes from this.

No, it sounds like what Th Archbishop said was racial nationalism. I hope he was misquoted.

poche · « **Reply #9 on:** August 25, 2016, 11:25:07 PM »

Quote from: Capt McQuigg

Quote from: poche
Quote from: Capt McQuigg
I sure hope you're right, Poche.

However, the Archbishop did racialize and localize his resurrection as if it were unrelated to Our Lord but that may be a misquote.

Why were the people who shot the Archbishop dead while saying the Novus Ordo Mass angry? What was the issue?

The resurrection of the dead is radical in a world of athiests and unbelievers. Every Sunday at the TLM we say the Nicene Creed. At the end of the Nicene Creed it says;

Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum,
And I await the Resurrection of the Dead:

et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.
And the Life of the world to come. Amen.

What Bl Oscar Romero said comes from this.

No, it sounds like what Th Archbishop said was racial nationalism. I hope he was misquoted.

He was quoted out of context. The problem with that war is that there were too many people who had agendas. They ran around and said all sorts of things in order to advance their agenda whil the poor people of El Salvador suffered.

poche · « **Reply #10 on:** August 26, 2016, 11:37:28 PM »

Despite the many accusations leveled against the archbishop of San Salvador, his Vicar General said that Romero “never had a Marxist thought or Marxist ideology in his mind.”

“If there had been, the Vatican, which has studied so much, would not have beatified him, if they had found that he had Marxist interests.”

The real backbone of his closeness to the poor, he said, was the Gospel and the teaching of the Church.

“He was a servant of the Gospel, he never read anything from Liberation Theology, but he read the Bible.”

Msgr. Urioste noted that the archbishop's library, “had all these books from the early Fathers of the Church, from the current Magisterium of the Church, but (he) never even opened any of the books from Liberation Theology, or Gustavo Gutiérrez, or of anyone else.”

“He read the Bible and there he encountered a Jesus in love with the poor and in this way started walking toward him,” he said.

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/insides-that-didnt-decompose-and-other-stunning-facts-about-oscar-romero-52016/

poche · « **Reply #11 on:** August 29, 2016, 12:20:46 AM »

What set Archbishop Romero apart

One of the most distinguishing characteristics of Archbishop Romero was “his great sense of work. He was an extremely hardworking man and devoted to his work day and night – until midnight and until dawn,” Msgr. Urioste said.

He recalled how the archbishop would begin to prepare his Sunday homilies the day before, and would always include three reflections on the Eucharist. When Romero preached, he made frequent reference to the Fathers of the Church, based his comments on Church teaching and related his thoughts to the country's current reality.

“A homily that doesn't have this relation with what is happening sounds the same here as in Ireland, in Paris, as anywhere,” the priest said.

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/insides-that-didnt-decompose-and-other-stunning-facts-about-oscar-romero-52016/

clare · « **Reply #12 on:** August 29, 2016, 02:53:33 AM »

For what it's worth, here are some extracts of an article Fr Paul Crane SJ wrote for the August/September 1980 issue of Christian Order, and which I copied down some time ago:

Quote

Death Comes to the Archbishop.

THE EDITOR (Fr Paul Crane, SJ)

...Will the poor and the oppressed ever come to the Church unless and until they see the priests of the Church, in particular, and, indeed, the bishops of the Church actively and lovingly sharing their burdens with them and standing by them, not as a gimmick - they would be very quick to recognise that; but simply because they love them for the sake of the Poor Man of Galilee who died that all of us might share new life in love with Him. This at base is the Christian reality, yet there is little real witness to it in our lives. Love is not shared. Because it is not, the poor see themselves as unwanted, instruments only without charge over their lives, isolated, victims of forces outside their control, doomed to frustration. Theory cannot touch this kind of situation; words are futile. The time is for deeds...There is no ideology here, no question of Right or Left within this context. The question is one of reaction to the central Christian reality, which is that of Christ in our lives...

Option for the Poor

Our option, then, must be for the poor - and particularly for the poor of the Third World who are the most deprived of all - not through bogus sentiment, racism in reverse or false ideology, but simply because in the poor and oppressed of the World, Christ cries our for our love more loudly than anywhere else. And that cry will not be met - no more will Christianity be what it should be or, indeed be recognised for what it really is - unless and until the priests of the Church in particular take the step that must be taken. They must share their lives with the poor; taking to themselves the poverty and oppression of the poor, as some, thank God, are doing already, in witness of their love... Man does not live, indeed, by bread alone; but he does need bread in order that he may be helped not to live by bread alone...

Death Comes to the Archbishop

Then it came. A friend told me at breakfast on Tuesday, March 25th: "Archbishop Oscar Romero has been killed saying Mass yesterday"! What - I dashed at the morning papers. There was nothing there. It had happened too late, to far away from the published news next morning. I had to wait for the evening papers to get the first account in print. I found it headlined in the Evening Standard. The Archbishop of San Salvador, capital of the tiny Republic in Central America the bears the near name, had been shot at the altar of a pint-sized chapel, as he held up the chalice, immediately after the consecration at Mass. A minute or two before, in the course of the homily to the handful of sisters and layfolk, who were present at his evening Mass in this chapel attached to a hospital that he had founded for the incurably ill, Archbishop Romero spoke the following words: "This Holy Mass is an act of faith... in this chalice wine becomes the blood that paid the price of the salvation of this people... may this sacrifice encourage us to give our body to suffering and pain the way Christ did, not for Himself, but for justice and peace".

The words were prophetic. Only a minute or two after they were spoken, the body of the Archbishop was given not only to suffering and pain, but to death. After the consecration of the wine, as he raised up the chalice, a bullet smashed into his chest. It was fired, in all likelihood, by a hired gunman, through a door or window of the chapel. The Archbishop would not have been surprised. A few weeks before, he had learnt that outspoken words of his had led to his placement at the top of a death list drawn up by the "White Warriors"; these being a particularly foul excrescence on the ever-smelling body of a small, immensely rich, plantocracy that holds the bulk of El Salvador's poverty-stricken, peasant population in oppressive and degrading peonage. It is, in all probability, they who killed him, either directly themselves, or as seems more likely, by hiring a "hit man" to do the job. Dying, on his way to hospital, the Archbishop was heard to say, "May God have mercy on the assassin". No hate from the lips of a man in whose heart there had always been love....

...

Repression and Revolution

Archbishop Romero, then, was a thorn in the flesh of the infamous fourteen families of El Salvador, the 2% of its population that owned 60% of the country's land and kept 75% of its rural population at the level of landless peasants, on a pittance and in economic bondage to themselves. The shattering thing is that this has been going on for years and that the Church has been in El Salvador for years. Until very recently, I am afraid, making no protest, certainly taking no action against the crushing of Christ in the landless poor; sucked into an Establishment, I am afraid, which lived off the sweat of the poor. Archbishop Romero was a thorn in the side of this oppressive so-called Catholic minority, not because he liked being a thorn, but because he loved the poor. Neither was he content that love should express itself om simple relief work on their account. Their right under God was to conditions that accorded with their dignity as human beings and brothers of Christ, a purchased people redeemed by His blood....

....

Brother of the Poor

Archbishop Romero gave himself without stint to the poor, the dispossessed and the oppressed of his country. He made no neat distinctions to let himself out of the confrontation he knew would come to him when he took up the cause of those he saw so rightly and loved so well as his brothers and sisters in Christ. He took them to himself. Their cause was his cause; their suffering his. There was no ideology here. No partisan politics. Only love....Each Sunday in his cathedral, without a semblance of pomp or circuмstance, quietly, yet with enduring fearlessness, he spoke out on their account. And they came in their thousands to hear him... This is the Church as it should be; the giving of ourselves in love that Christ cries out for from us all... There has been plenty of theory, but almost no love - of the sort that causes one for Christ's sake to give oneself direct, like that. It is this that Archbishop Romero gave. Here, in him, was the ounce of practice that outweighed any ton of theory. His giving and his dying outweighed infinitely all the theoretical treatises, the sermons, lectures. conferences, committees, congresses, pastoral and social centres that you could cram into the Central American Republic and a hundred years.

Other Bishops Please Copy

Archbishop Romero was not a particularly learned man. There was nothing of the great prelate about him. He lived in the utmost simplicity. He was seen going about, as a rule, in a pair of scuffed shoes and a worn, somewhat crumply suit. His story is simple. He loved his brothers and sisters, the poor, gave himself to them, became one with them in Christ, faced their oppressors with quiet, unaffected, persistent courage and was murdered on their account. This is the Church as it should be. Other bishops please copy. Were you to do so, the problems which you think of today as besetting you would soon disappear. Archbishop Romero shines out because he took the one step we should all take. He gave himself without fear for Christ's sake. That is all and that is everything. The Church will not be herself; Christ will not reach fullness within her unless and until we all do that. For so much that besets us now is of our own making; due to our own failure to give the whole of ourselves as we should; that last bit of ourselves that makes all the difference. Rather than do this we tend to create imaginary enemies, laying the troubles of our time with the Church at their door. This is the mistake. We should lay them primarily at our own. The last enemy is always ourselves.

poche · « **Reply #13 on:** August 30, 2016, 11:29:08 PM »

Quote from: clare

For what it's worth, here are some extracts of an article Fr Paul Crane SJ wrote for the August/September 1980 issue of Christian Order, and which I copied down some time ago:

Quote
Death Comes to the Archbishop.

THE EDITOR (Fr Paul Crane, SJ)

...Will the poor and the oppressed ever come to the Church unless and until they see the priests of the Church, in particular, and, indeed, the bishops of the Church actively and lovingly sharing their burdens with them and standing by them, not as a gimmick - they would be very quick to recognise that; but simply because they love them for the sake of the Poor Man of Galilee who died that all of us might share new life in love with Him. This at base is the Christian reality, yet there is little real witness to it in our lives. Love is not shared. Because it is not, the poor see themselves as unwanted, instruments only without charge over their lives, isolated, victims of forces outside their control, doomed to frustration. Theory cannot touch this kind of situation; words are futile. The time is for deeds...There is no ideology here, no question of Right or Left within this context. The question is one of reaction to the central Christian reality, which is that of Christ in our lives...

Option for the Poor

Our option, then, must be for the poor - and particularly for the poor of the Third World who are the most deprived of all - not through bogus sentiment, racism in reverse or false ideology, but simply because in the poor and oppressed of the World, Christ cries our for our love more loudly than anywhere else. And that cry will not be met - no more will Christianity be what it should be or, indeed be recognised for what it really is - unless and until the priests of the Church in particular take the step that must be taken. They must share their lives with the poor; taking to themselves the poverty and oppression of the poor, as some, thank God, are doing already, in witness of their love... Man does not live, indeed, by bread alone; but he does need bread in order that he may be helped not to live by bread alone...

Death Comes to the Archbishop

Then it came. A friend told me at breakfast on Tuesday, March 25th: "Archbishop Oscar Romero has been killed saying Mass yesterday"! What - I dashed at the morning papers. There was nothing there. It had happened too late, to far away from the published news next morning. I had to wait for the evening papers to get the first account in print. I found it headlined in the Evening Standard. The Archbishop of San Salvador, capital of the tiny Republic in Central America the bears the near name, had been shot at the altar of a pint-sized chapel, as he held up the chalice, immediately after the consecration at Mass. A minute or two before, in the course of the homily to the handful of sisters and layfolk, who were present at his evening Mass in this chapel attached to a hospital that he had founded for the incurably ill, Archbishop Romero spoke the following words: "This Holy Mass is an act of faith... in this chalice wine becomes the blood that paid the price of the salvation of this people... may this sacrifice encourage us to give our body to suffering and pain the way Christ did, not for Himself, but for justice and peace".

The words were prophetic. Only a minute or two after they were spoken, the body of the Archbishop was given not only to suffering and pain, but to death. After the consecration of the wine, as he raised up the chalice, a bullet smashed into his chest. It was fired, in all likelihood, by a hired gunman, through a door or window of the chapel. The Archbishop would not have been surprised. A few weeks before, he had learnt that outspoken words of his had led to his placement at the top of a death list drawn up by the "White Warriors"; these being a particularly foul excrescence on the ever-smelling body of a small, immensely rich, plantocracy that holds the bulk of El Salvador's poverty-stricken, peasant population in oppressive and degrading peonage. It is, in all probability, they who killed him, either directly themselves, or as seems more likely, by hiring a "hit man" to do the job. Dying, on his way to hospital, the Archbishop was heard to say, "May God have mercy on the assassin". No hate from the lips of a man in whose heart there had always been love....

...

Repression and Revolution

Archbishop Romero, then, was a thorn in the flesh of the infamous fourteen families of El Salvador, the 2% of its population that owned 60% of the country's land and kept 75% of its rural population at the level of landless peasants, on a pittance and in economic bondage to themselves. The shattering thing is that this has been going on for years and that the Church has been in El Salvador for years. Until very recently, I am afraid, making no protest, certainly taking no action against the crushing of Christ in the landless poor; sucked into an Establishment, I am afraid, which lived off the sweat of the poor. Archbishop Romero was a thorn in the side of this oppressive so-called Catholic minority, not because he liked being a thorn, but because he loved the poor. Neither was he content that love should express itself om simple relief work on their account. Their right under God was to conditions that accorded with their dignity as human beings and brothers of Christ, a purchased people redeemed by His blood....

....

Brother of the Poor

Archbishop Romero gave himself without stint to the poor, the dispossessed and the oppressed of his country. He made no neat distinctions to let himself out of the confrontation he knew would come to him when he took up the cause of those he saw so rightly and loved so well as his brothers and sisters in Christ. He took them to himself. Their cause was his cause; their suffering his. There was no ideology here. No partisan politics. Only love....Each Sunday in his cathedral, without a semblance of pomp or circuмstance, quietly, yet with enduring fearlessness, he spoke out on their account. And they came in their thousands to hear him... This is the Church as it should be; the giving of ourselves in love that Christ cries out for from us all... There has been plenty of theory, but almost no love - of the sort that causes one for Christ's sake to give oneself direct, like that. It is this that Archbishop Romero gave. Here, in him, was the ounce of practice that outweighed any ton of theory. His giving and his dying outweighed infinitely all the theoretical treatises, the sermons, lectures. conferences, committees, congresses, pastoral and social centres that you could cram into the Central American Republic and a hundred years.

Other Bishops Please Copy

Archbishop Romero was not a particularly learned man. There was nothing of the great prelate about him. He lived in the utmost simplicity. He was seen going about, as a rule, in a pair of scuffed shoes and a worn, somewhat crumply suit. His story is simple. He loved his brothers and sisters, the poor, gave himself to them, became one with them in Christ, faced their oppressors with quiet, unaffected, persistent courage and was murdered on their account. This is the Church as it should be. Other bishops please copy. Were you to do so, the problems which you think of today as besetting you would soon disappear. Archbishop Romero shines out because he took the one step we should all take. He gave himself without fear for Christ's sake. That is all and that is everything. The Church will not be herself; Christ will not reach fullness within her unless and until we all do that. For so much that besets us now is of our own making; due to our own failure to give the whole of ourselves as we should; that last bit of ourselves that makes all the difference. Rather than do this we tend to create imaginary enemies, laying the troubles of our time with the Church at their door. This is the mistake. We should lay them primarily at our own. The last enemy is always ourselves.

Fr Crane did not know the archbishop personally. The archbishop was very learned in the Fathers of the Church and in t heir concern for the poor. The archbishop was not a person who promoted class hatred. Those people who say that he did did not know him. This is precislely the politicization that Pope St John Paul II said should not be done in the memory of Bl Oscar Romero.

ihsv · « **Reply #14 on:** August 31, 2016, 11:38:49 AM »

Quote from: poche

Fr Crane did not know the archbishop personally. The archbishop was very learned in the Fathers of the Church and in t heir concern for the poor. The archbishop was not a person who promoted class hatred. Those people who say that he did did not know him. This is precislely the politicization that Pope St John Paul II said should not be done in the memory of Bl Oscar Romero.

Just curious, did you know him? Personally?