Reflections on Oscar Romero’s Centenary

Yesterday I attended a commemorative evensong at Westminster Abbey marking the centenary of the birth of Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, who was assassinated in 1980 while serving Mass in a hospital chapel. A relic of part of his blood stained robes was displayed on the Abbey’s High Altar. It was a particularly moving occasion for me, having covered the civil war in El Salvador briefly for the BBC at a time when death squads were still targetting anti-government activists, sometimes leaving corpses by the side of the road. I interviewed some of the mothers of the disappeared in the city, as well as coming face-to-face with tanks outside San Salvador’s cathedral.

Westminster Abbey yesterday was packed with an ecumenical crowd, including an impressive phalanx of Roman Catholic cardinals in their robes and red zucchetti. I was seated in the Quire right next to the Abbey Choir, whose magnificent rendering of music both ancient and modern helped stir the emotions of all present. Particularly moving was a specially commissioned anthem by the Scottish composer James MacMillan, using the words of Archbishop Romero’s appeal to soldiers in El Salvador’s dirty war: “I would like to make a special appeal to the men of the army. Brothers, each one of you is one of us. We are all the same people. Before any order to kill a man may give, God’s law must prevail — ‘Thou shalt not kill’.” A recording of part of Oscar Romero’s homily on the eve of his assassination was also played, his voice and his words ringing through the vast Abbey like a bell of sanity in a mad world. No wonder the Church is in the process of making him a Saint. Even I, as a Quaker, can understand that. The sermon yesterday was given by Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury — a tribute to Romero, of course, but also a call for everyone to follow his example and to be resolutely on the side of the poor and the oppressed. Not everyone has the courage and determination to stand up against tyranny and injustice, but all of us have the capacity to try.