Assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero
Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador was shot while celebrating Mass at the chapel of the Divine Providence cancer hospice on 24 March 1980, the day after he delivered a homily broadcast nationally over YSAX radio calling on Salvadoran soldiers to disobey orders to kill civilians: 'I beseech you, I beg you, I order you, in the name of God, stop the repression.' A single rifle bullet struck him in the heart as he raised the chalice at the consecration. He died within minutes. He was 62. The assassination was carried out under the direction of Roberto d'Aubuisson, a former military intelligence officer who founded the ARENA party and later the death squads that operated throughout the civil war. Romero's death radicalised Catholic clergy across Latin America and became the defining moment of liberation theology's politicisation: a bishop killed for defending the poor at the altar. He was beatified by Pope Francis in 2015 and canonised in 2018. The US State Department's reaction — State Department spokesman Hodding Carter called Romero's assassination 'a tragedy' while simultaneously approving $5.7 million in emergency military aid to the junta that had created the conditions for his death — became a symbol of Cold War moral inversion.
- Year: 1980 CE
- Category: Persecution
