With this small group of young ladies we are doing some of the same things that we did while the group from Minnesota was here. I appreciated being able to visit some of the same places again, because I always learn something new, see something in a new way, or think of something different. Now I can also write about stuff that we are doing again that I didn´t have a chance to write about before.
Saturday morning we went to the University of Central American (UCA) again, but unfortunately we didn´t get to see Jon Sobrino again. There are usually students who give tours through the museum and explain the massacre of the Jesuit priests that happened at the UCA in addition to talking about other acts of violence that occurred during the war. However, since it was Saturday there weren´t any student guides there, so Julie and I gave the tour and told our little group what we knew about the things in the museum and about the massacre of the Jesuit priests.
Saturday after we went to the UCA we went to the place where Romero lived and where he was assassinated. Oscar Romero is someone that I look to as a spiritual guide. He was an incredible man and died fighting for justice. Romero was the Catholic archbishop of El Salvador from 1977-1980. He was appointed to be arch-bishop at a time when there was a lot of tension in the country. The Church hierarchy appointed Romero because he was a quiet man who they thought wouldn`t make any waves. However, Romero didn´t live up to these expectations. The priest Rutilio Grande was a friend of Romero and when Rutilio Grande was murdered, Romero began publicly speaking out against the violence in El Salvador. Each week in his homilies, Romero would talk about the violence of deaths, disappearances, repression, massacres, etc., that had occurred in the country. Practically everyone in El Salvador listened to his homilies either at the cathedral or on the radio. This was an important source of information for Salvadorans and most people highly respected him for what he was doing, but those who were carrying out the violence did not appreciate what Romero was doing.
Romero was a simple and humble man. Even though he could have lived in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, he decided to live in a cancer hospital run by nuns. At first he lived in a little room behind the chapel, but the nuns eventually had a little house built for him. Even this house was still very simple. He had a bedroom, a bathroom, and two little rooms for when visitors came. They have left much of his house as it was. The have added some displays of his things, pictures of his death and his funeral, and a display of the clothes he was wearing when he was killed.
On March 23, 1980, during Romero´s homily he directly addressed the men in the army. He told them that no one has to obey orders that go against the will of God. He was essentially telling the soldiers to disobey the orders of the military officials and to stop killing their fellow Salvadorans. He told them to stop the repression. This, of course, did not sit well with the military hierarchy. The next day when Romero was giving a mass at the cancer hospital, a car drove up outside the chapel and a man shot Romero. The bullet hit his aorta and exploded inside his body. We visited the chapel where he was killed.
Romero fully knew that he would probably be assassinated for speaking out against the violence and repression and yet he continued to do it. He once said that if he was killed he would rise again in the Salvadoran people. And this definitely happened. Even today 30 years later you see Romero everywhere in murals, on t-shirts, purses, key chains, etc. Today we went to the Catholic cathedral where Romero is buried. When he first died, his tomb was in the main part of the cathedral. After some years he was moved to the basement of the cathedral. Some say they moved him because there was more space down there and others argue that they moved him because the Church hierarchy wanted to move on from that period of speaking out and making waves. As Romero would have wanted it, his tomb in the basement was very simple. For the 25th anniversary of Romero´s death, a beautiful bronze sculpture was made where Romero is now entombed.
In my previous post about the UCA I didn´t tell you about the university´s chapel. The chapel is located very near to where the Jesuit priest lived and where they were murdered. This chapel is a very beautiful and moving space. The murdered priests are buried here in this space that speaks to death and suffering that occurred at the UCA as well as the violence that occurred and continues to occur across El Salvador. However, the chapel is also a space devoted to life. There are pieces of art that expose the violence and death, but at the same time provide a source of hope for life.
Above the altar there are three pieces painted in a traditional Salvadoran style in memory of Oscar Romero. There is much symbolism in these pieces that tells about the life, work, and theology of Romero.
On the back wall of the chapel are 14 drawings that represent the stations of the cross. Normally the stations of the cross depict Jesus journey to the cross and his death. In this case the drawings depict Salvadorans who had been tortured and murdered during the war. These drawings are graphic- naked, tortured, mutilated, suffering. Many have questioned why these graphic drawings are in the chapel, but they are they to expose the truth and to depict how Jesus was and continues to be present in the suffering of the Salvadoran people. Jesus suffered on the cross when he was crucified 2,000 years ago and he was crucified again with each of the 75,000 Salvadorans that were killed during the war. Jesus suffered with his people during the war and he continues to suffer with his people even now through the violence of all the injustices in El Salvador. We in the US tend to identify with the resurrected Jesus, but Salvadorans identify with the crucified Jesus because they can relate to the pain and suffering that Jesus experienced on the cross. I don´t really like thinking about Jesus´ pain and death on the cross because it makes me sad and uncomfortable. However, here in El Salvador death, pain, and suffering are so prevalent and I tend to think more about Jesus´ suffering as I see Jesus in the people here who are suffering.
