Assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero
Archbishop Óscar Romero was shot dead while saying mass in a hospital chapel in San Salvador on 24 March 1980. He had been appointed three years earlier as a safe conservative choice, a bookish and cautious cleric whom the government welcomed and the reformist clergy regarded as a setback. The murder of his friend Rutilio Grande, a Jesuit priest, weeks after his installation is generally taken as the moment that changed him. He began broadcasting a Sunday homily on the diocesan radio that read out the week's disappearances, killings and detentions by name — the only reliable account available in the country, listened to by an audience far beyond the church. He wrote to President Carter in February 1980 asking him to stop supplying military aid because it was being used to repress the population, and received no reply. His last homily, the day before he died, addressed the soldiers directly: that no one has to obey an immoral order, that the law of God commanding not to kill comes before any human order, and that in the name of God he begged and ordered them to stop the repression. A sniper fired a single shot from a car the following evening as he stood at the altar. The funeral drew a quarter of a million people and was fired on, with dozens killed. The truth commission identified Roberto d'Aubuisson as having ordered it, and he was never tried. Romero was canonised in 2018. His statue stands above the west door of Westminster Abbey among the twentieth-century martyrs, which was unveiled in 1998 while the Vatican was still hesitating over the cause. Salvadoran governments spent thirty years avoiding the anniversary.
- Year: 1980 CE
- Category: Persecution
