Saint Oscar Romero

Pope Francis recently canonized two new saints of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Paul VI and Bishop Oscar Romero. At the time Romero was martyred in El Salvador, its social condition was much like ours in the Philippines under the Marcos Dictatorship.

One fateful day in March 1980 an assassin made sure a bullet blasted his heart as he raised the consecrated bread and wine. Not so unlike Fr. Richmond Nilo, a priest in Zaragoza, Nueva Ecija, who was shot dead by unidentified gunmen as he was about to start his usual Sunday Mass. Or, Fr. Mark Anthony Ventura who, in April 2018, was shot dead by an unidentified gunman after celebrating Mass in Gattaran, Cagayan; and Fr. Marcelito Paez who was gunned down by unidentified assailants in December 2017 after assisting in the release of a prisoner in the town of Jaen, Nueva Ecija.

When politicians tend to rely too much on the military to keep themselves in power, in the Philippines or elsewhere, there seems to be a pattern of killing members of the clergy, particularly Catholic priests, known for airing criticism, adding their voice against violence, violation of human rights and corruption.

Nevertheless, our country is not lacking examples of “rebel priests” who did go underground to stand for their brand of Christianity in solidarity with the poor and the oppressed. We had the likes of the late Conrado Balweg and Edicio de la Torre of the Society of the Divine Word. De la Torre has since left the revolutionary movement and opted to work as a married secular reformer in the field of alternative education and social development. Our very own, erstwhile Cabinet Secretary, Leoncio Evasco, Jr., himself met then Fiscal Rodrigo Duterte of Davao City as a political prisoner in the 1980s.

But make no mistake about it, Oscar Romero was not a rebel priest. He did not take up arms. He did not go underground. In fact, verified accounts have it that he was even critical of priests who joined protests and refused to wear the long cassock. His viewpoints however changed when his best friend-priest was killed while helping the poor. Not that he became a rebel, far from it. He simply became vocal. He began to call attention to the excesses of government as Fathers Nilo, Ventura and Paez did. They chose the path of nonviolence.

During the papacy of Benedict, the process of Romero’s canonization was deliberately slowed down since the conservative pontiff was afraid of the consequences if an activist bishop was declared a saint.

But Pope Francis is a different kind of leader. He walks his talk. He lives simply. He eats at the canteen, and rubs elbows with the downtrodden. He probably is a living saint. That is why he knows when he sees a genuine one, like Saint Oscar Romero.