Archbishop Oscar Romero Assassinated

In 1980, Archbishop Óscar Romero of San Salvador was shot dead while celebrating Mass in a hospital chapel, silenced after years of denouncing the violence of El Salvador's military-backed government. His killing shocked Catholics around the world, helped push the country toward full-scale civil war, and turned him into one of the most widely venerated figures in modern Latin American Christianity.

Romero was appointed archbishop in 1977, and many expected the quiet, conservative-leaning cleric to avoid conflict with the ruling establishment. El Salvador at the time was marked by extreme inequality, a powerful landowning elite, and a military that suppressed peasant organizing and political opposition. Death squads and security forces were killing activists, labor leaders, and clergy. Within weeks of Romero's appointment, a Jesuit priest and friend, Rutilio Grande, who worked with poor farmworkers, was murdered. Historians often point to this event as a turning point in Romero's outlook, after which he began speaking more forcefully on behalf of the poor and the victims of state violence.

Through his weekly sermons, broadcast by radio across the country, Romero documented abuses, named the dead and disappeared, and called on soldiers to refuse orders to fire on their own people. He was influenced by the currents of Latin American Catholic thought that stressed the Church's concern for the poor, though he was cautious about aligning with any political faction. He also appealed internationally, including to the United States, to stop military aid to the Salvadoran government. His stance won admiration among many but made him an enemy of powerful interests, and he was criticized by some fellow bishops as well as by the government.

On the day of his death, he was celebrating Mass at a small chapel at a cancer hospital where he lived. A single gunman fired from the back of the chapel, and Romero was killed at the altar. No one was convicted at the time. A United Nations truth commission later concluded that the killing was ordered by Roberto D'Aubuisson, a former army officer and founder of the right-wing ARENA party, and that it was carried out by a death squad network. D'Aubuisson always denied involvement.

Romero's funeral drew huge crowds and was itself marred by violence. By the end of the year, El Salvador had slid into a civil war that lasted until peace accords in 1992 and cost tens of thousands of lives. Romero's reputation, meanwhile, grew. He was beatified in 2015 and canonized by Pope Francis in 2018, and he is honored by many Christians beyond the Catholic Church as a martyr for human rights.