This is the nun's story. She is a very short frail woman. She speaks softly.
We have come here to this garden on the grounds of the Divine Providence Hospital in San Salvador to hear her story
She is telling us the story about the life and death of this man.
His name is Oscar Romero, and he was the Roman Catholic Archbishop of El Salvador in 1979. The garden in which we are standing, listening to the nun's story, is the garden of the small 3-room apartment in which Bishop Romero lived on the grounds of this hospital for terminally ill cancer patients....having declined residence in the more ostentatious digs of the Bishop's Palace.
As the killings of people, including priests, mounted at the hands of an increasingly repressive resime, Bishop Romero began to speak out. In the last sermon he was ever to deliver, he pleaded with the military:
" I would like to make a special appeal to the men of the army, and specifically to the ranks of the National Guard, the police and the military. Brothers, you come from our own people. You are killing your own brother peasants when any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God which says, "Thou shalt not kill." No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you recovered your consciences and obeyed your consciences rather than a sinful order. The church, the defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of human dignity, of the person, cannot remain silent before such an abomination. We want the government to face the fact that reforms are valueless if they are to be carried out at the cost of so much blood. In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression."
To then President Jimmy Carter he wrote:
"You say that you are Christian. If you are really Christian, please stop sending military aid to the military here, because they use it only to kill my people."
On March 24, 1980....24 years ago....Bishop Romero was rewarded for this by being gunned down while saying mass at this altar in the chapel a few steps away from his apartment.
His blood ran across the clean marble floor beneath the altar and the chalice. Today, this memorial is written on the wall behind the altar.
On this altar Monsignor Oscar A. Romero offered his life to God for the people.
Bishop Romero had no illusions about his likely fate. Before his death he told a reporter:
"You can tell the people that if they succeed in killing me, that I forgive and bless those who do it. Hopefully, they will realize they are wasting their time. A bishop will die, but the church of God, which is the people, will never perish."
Bishop Romero's body was carried out by the worshippers. Later, at the funeral in the Cathedral in central San Salvador, thousands of mourners crowded the plaza between the Cathedral and the seat of government....the National Palace. Explosions and gun fire rang out....whether from soldiers stationed on the roof of the National Palace or not is still the subject of some debate. In the ensuing panic and gunfire, 40 mourners were shot to death or trampled. Bishop Romero's assassination was the last spark that set off the fires of civil war that were to engulf El Salvador for over a decade.
Standing here in the sunlight of the garden hearing the nun's story, my mind is reeling. Jimmy Carter?? This was still the height of the Cold War....long before Gorbachev, Perestrioka, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Communists were seen under every bed. We were still reeling from the loss in Vietnam and our diplomats were still held hostage in the Iranian Embassy. How many lies were we told? How many lies was Jimmy Carter told? How many lies are we being told now in order to stir up our fear and hatred of other peoples...other nations? Who tells the truth?
Standing here...it is easier to listen to the nun's story if I look at the flowers in Bishop Romero's garden
On the last day of our visit we return to the city of San Salvador to visit the tomb of Bishop Romero. It is a fine tomb really
Although it has been tucked away in the basement of the church, and the lights are only turned on two hours a day. Some days they are not turned on at all. Some say that this is because the current Bishop is a conservative....and wants to discourage too much attention for the "leftist" Bishop Romero. Quien sabe?
Leaving the tomb, I stand on the steps of the Cathedral. To my right is the National Palace.
In front of me is the plaza....scene of the mayhem during Bishop Romero's funeral. Other than the noise of traffic and street vendors it is quiet today.
A flag flutters in the breeze from a flagpole in the center of the plaza. It is a red flag. It bears the letters "FLMN" It is the flag of the Frente Farabundo Marti Liberacion Nacional....the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front...the former guerillas. Theirs is the party that governs city hall in San Salvador these days. It is a grimly comical irony.
Why does so much blood have to be shed to prevent people from being free? Why are possessions more important than people's lives? When is wealth and power worth killing for? What does Jesus say? What do we say? More important...what do we do...really?
