The Archbishop Who Became the Voice of the Poor

In 1977, the Catholic bishops of El Salvador chose Oscar Romero as archbishop, expecting a quiet, bookish man who would not make trouble. The powerful families of San Salvador breathed easy. But three weeks after his appointment, government soldiers gunned down Father Rutilio Grande, a priest who had been organizing poor farmers to read and to claim their dignity.

Romero drove to the village of Aguilares that night. He knelt beside the body of his friend and something broke open inside him. From that moment, the archbishop used every Sunday homily to read aloud the names of the disappeared, the tortured, the murdered. Peasant families who had never mattered to anyone heard their loved ones' names spoken from the cathedral pulpit as though each life were precious.

He opened the chancery offices to refugees. He visited prisons. He published lists of the detained so that mothers would know where to search. When foreign dignitaries came to the capital, Romero did not offer them comfortable pleasantries — he handed them documentation of atrocities and asked them to act.

Psalm 72 envisions a ruler who "delivers the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help." The psalmist dreamed of power bent low in mercy, authority measured not by tribute received but by tears wiped away. In Romero, the people of El Salvador glimpsed that ancient promise — a shepherd who counted every bruised life as "precious in his sight."