Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Voice of the Day: Oscar Romero

Via Sojourners:

"Nothing is so important as human life, as the human person. Above all, the person of the poor and the oppressed... Jesus says that whatever is done to them he takes as done to him. That bloodshed, those deaths are beyond all politics: They touch the very heart of God."
–Oscar Romero, March 16, 1980
Archbishop Romero was a great advocate for the poor in El Salvador according to Wikipedia:
"Romero was killed by a shot to the heart on March 24, 1980 while celebrating Mass at a small chapel near his cathedral following a sermon where he called on Salvadoran soldiers, as Christians, to obey God's higher order and to stop carrying out the government's repression and violations of basic human rights. According to an audio-recording of the Mass, he was shot moments after the homily, which he had concluded with an improvised pre-Eucharistic prayer thanking God (the homily in the Roman Catholic Rite more or less signifies the end of the Liturgy of the Word and the beginning of the Liturgy of the Eucharist or Mass of the Faithful). When he was shot, his blood spilled over the altar."
"It is believed that the assassins were members of Salvadoran death squads. This view was supported in 1993 by an official U.N. report ..."