Oscar Romero was a passionate advocate of social justice and human rights. As the Catholic Archbishop of San Salvador (the capital of El Salvador), this made him one of the repressive government’s most highly placed and widely respected opponents. He repeatedly called for the soldiers who served on the Salvadorian “Death Squads” to lay down their arms and end their brutal repression of their fellow Christians.
In order to send a message in no uncertain terms, he was shot and killed while celebrating mass on Sunday, March 24, 1980. His funeral on the following Saturday was disrupted by further assaults. Although in the short term Romero’s opponents succeeded in silencing him, they made of him a martyr to the cause of all who would oppose them. Today, thirty years later, Oscar Romero is a candidate for sainthood in the faith he gave his life for.
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By Arzobispado de San Salvador; Congregatio de Causis Sanctorum – https://anep.or.cr/media/uploads/fotos/cyclope1_sin_cat/Romeroao4282_big.png, Public Domain, Link
As mentioned in:
Casey — Christy Moore
Oscar Romero — Dafydd Iwan
Oscar Romero — Richard Gilpin
Marching Song of the Covert Battalions — Billy Bragg
El Padre Antonio (Y El Monaguillo Andres) — Rubén Blades