The side of the poor, the pope says. And by that he doesn't mean greater generosity in making up our Christmas baskets or giving an extra dollar in Sunday's second collection. He means doing what Oscar Romero did -- what Jesus of Nazareth did. He means identifying with the poor, their ways of seeing the world. He means refusing to support our culture's favorite way of dealing with them -- treating them with "tough love," depriving them of life's basics, waiting for wealth to "trickle down," and when push comes to shove, killing them (whether that's in Ferguson, Baltimore, Bagdad or Palestine).
In other words, Oscar Romero provides a case study of the kind of conversion and relevance the Holy Father urges us to embrace.
Like most of us -- I speak for myself -- Oscar Romero started out uncritical and unquestioningly patriotic. Until he was 60 he supported a system that had 1% of El Salvador's population controlling 90% of its wealth. He sided with his county's police and military which were at war with its own people to keep things that way.
He bought the line that those opposing the system were communists. So while his country was on fire, his sermons addressed the usual banalities: the afterlife, heaven, hell, and individual salvation.
The United States supported El Salvador's government too. All during the 1980s, it gave its military more than one million dollars a day to fund what was called "the El Salvador option" for defeating the country's insurgency. It was a "death squad" solution which killed everyone who might be connected with the insurgency -- teachers, union organizers, social workers, priests and nuns. The slogan of the military's "White Hand" death squad was, "Be a patriot; kill a priest."
That slogan took on new meaning for Archbishop Romero when his good friend, the Jesuit, Rutilio Grande, was martyred by the White Hand. Grande was killed because El Salvador's government saw how he lived among and served peasants and slum dwellers sympathetic to the insurgents. So they considered him a terrorist.
In reality, Father Grande was entirely motivated by the Gospel. He had come to see the world from the viewpoint of the poor. That was the essence of Jesus' message, he said -- good news for the poor. In the gospels, Grande found, Jesus not only saw the world from the viewpoint of the poor, he identified with them becoming one of them. He shared the values and characteristics of the poor that El Salvador's rich despised.
For instance, Jesus' skin was black or brown, not white like the elite of El Salvador. Jesus was dirt poor. He was conceived out-of-wedlock by a teenage mother. He was an immigrant in Egypt for a while. He belonged to the working class. His hands were calloused; his clothes were sweat-stained. Jesus liked fiestas and was accused of being a drunkard, possessed by the devil, and friend of sex workers. He was harassed constantly by the police and died a victim of torture and capital punishment, because the occupation forces of Rome considered him a terrorist.
That was the Jesus Rutilio Grande worshipped and preached -- a Jesus completely like the people he served.
And so the "White Hand" or "The Secret Anti-Communist Army" (or one of those death squads) killed him -- along with 75,000 other El Salvadorans. (Imagine the impact of those deaths in a country of just 6 million people!)
Grande's death profoundly changed Oscar Romero. He said, "When I saw Rutilio lying there dead, I knew I had to follow his path." And he did.
Archbishop Romero began speaking out against the government, army and police. He saw that the soldiers fighting against peasants and poor people weren't heroes, but misled and brainwashed victims. Just before his death, he fairly shouted at them in a final homily: "No soldier is bound to follow orders that contradict the law of God. Don't you see; you are killing your own brothers and sisters? . . . I beg you; I implore you; I order you: stop the repression!"
Those words sealed San Romero's fate. The next evening while celebrating Mass for nuns in a hospital chapel, a sniper got him too. He became the first bishop to be murdered at the altar since Thomas Beckett at the beginning of the 12 th century.
That's the Romero story. It's the story of a churchman converted late in life to centralizing peace and social justice concerns. And that's the "Joy of the Gospel" connection. In that Apostolic Exhortation, the pope calls us to a similar centralization. The beatification of Oscar Romero reinforces that message.
To understand all of that, you have to grasp one shocking fact: Oscar Romero was killed by Catholics. And when he was murdered, there were fireworks and celebrations in the neighborhoods of El Salvador's elite. These people were friends of the Vatican.
As a result, Pope Francis' predecessors (John Paul II and Benedict XVI) were not anxious to canonize the archbishop. He was too polarizing, they thought. He too clearly took the side of the poor in their struggle with the rich. They even wondered if he had been duped by the communists.
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