So he gave his
radio broadcast to the whole country the next day. There were thousands of people in the square
near the cathedral, as well as people on their radios all over the
country. Chencho, when interviewed for
this collection of oral histories said, "You know, people are baptized in
different ways. There's baptism by
water, but there's also baptism by the people.
And that's what happened to Oscar Romero that day." And of course, it led right on to his
assassination.
The lady from
Nicaragua interviewed the soldier who wrote to Romero (the member of the
National Guard) and said, "You know, MonseÃ...ˆor, maybe you can help us. But we're being told to go out and shoot up
peasant homes, and we don't know what they did, and we don't want to be doing
this! They're just like us." And that was what led Romero, the day before
he was killed, to give a radio address, widely heard as were all his radio
talks, and saying "I'm talking to my brothers in the National Guard. I beg you, I plead with you, I order you in
the name of God, stop this killing!" And
so, Romero was assassinated the next day.
Rob Kall:
Now, Liberation Theology: many of the Catholic Priests who were part of
that movement were excommunicated. They
lost their Priesthood. I got to know one
a little bit, Matthew Fox.
Staughton Lynd:
And Alice and I got to know a Franciscan Priest in Managua,
Nicaragua. We lived in a neighborhood on
three of our visits where the nearby church was Saint Mary's of the Angels, and
there was a cast iron representation of Saint Francis and the Wolf just
outside the church. You went in, and all
around were murals of the popular history of Central America from the 16th
Century: Bartolomà ©o de las Casas to the present moment.
The Mass was the
so-called Misa Compesina, "The Peasant's Mass," and the part I remember
most clearly is a portion of the liturgy which says, "Jesus, we know you. We stood in line with you at the end of the
week to collect our wages, and you were dirty and sweaty just as we were. And then when we got paid, we went across the
street and had a sno-cone together."
There was indeed a popular consciousness.
Then, after we
came home, here comes a letter from Ore-l(sp?), the Priest at that church,
saying that he had experienced certain deaths, and he wanted to tell us about
them; that his mother had died, his adopted son had been killed in a car
accident, and, just as you said, he had his pulpit taken away from him by the
Franciscan Order. So yes, there has been
a worldwide repression, and the present Pope is one if it's leaders.
Rob Kall:
Yeah. Romero has some wonderful
things to say. I'm reading from your
book, and you quote him as saying, "When the church demands a more just
society, wealth better shared, more respect for human rights, the church is not
meddling in Politics, or becoming Marxists and Communists, the Church is
telling people, 'Only those will be saved who can use the things of earth with
the heart of God.'"
Staughton Lynd:
(laughs)
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