The pope should make El Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero a saint, not Junipero Serra.
Pope Francis has declared that he plans to canonize Junipero Serra, a Franciscan Catholic priest who in the 1700s helped to establish multiple Catholic missions throughout California. One of them was Mission San Gabriel Arcangel, established in 1773 and now a historical site in the city of San Gabriel.
Much of the way of life of the Tongva and Gabrielino Native American communities were disrupted tremendously.
Canonizing Junipero Serra is indeed a controversial decision since many minority groups in California and the United States do not see Junipero Serra in the most positive manner — since many Native Americans were mistreated, enslaved, beaten, murdered and forced to convert to Catholicism.
It would be more appropriate to canonize Archbishop Romero, who close to 35 years ago was gunned down by Salvadoran death squads linked to that country’s military. He gave his life defending the rights of the poor and standing up to the brutality of the powerful.
He was murdered on March 24, 1980. The day before, he had publicly asked the Salvadoran military and National Guard to stop murdering their own brothers and sisters. After his murder came a deluge of more blood, as more than 80,000 Salvadorans were murdered — and tens of thousands tortured — during the following dozen years of civil war. Most of the deaths came at the hands of the Salvadoran military and paramilitary forces, which the U.S. government supported. Yes, the leftist guerrillas also participated in inhumane murders, but at a much lower rate as found by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
For many years, Romero served the wealthy families of El Salvador. He seemed to hide from the cruel injustices that were occurring in his country.
But he had a life-changing experience when he visited a poor village known as “Los Naranjos.” He realized that children were starving and farmworkers were essentially enslaved to work the lands. He saw that they were abused and mistreated. He understood they were not allowed to speak up or to denounce injustices. If they did, then torture, beatings or death would be their fate.
Another turning point for Romero came in 1977, when his friend and fellow priest Rutilio Grande was murdered in cold blood.
And so he started to speak out for the poor and the persecuted. And when the Salvadoran death squads brutally murdered labor advocates, peasant organizers, human rights workers and religious leaders, he denounced these horrors in no uncertain times.
“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,” he said in his last sermon. “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.’ … I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression.”
Almost 35 years have passed since Romero was murdered but his spirit and legacy are alive and well.
He had to endure many accusations and defamations. He was not a communist archbishop, as he was falsely labeled. At bottom, he was a true man of the cloth. Millions of Salvadorans revere Romero as a national hero.
The archbishop of San Salvador, José Luis Escobar Alas, announced that he had written to Rome to ask that Romero be canonized “as soon as possible” and that the pope declare him as “San Romero de las Americas.”
Archbishop Romero did not die in vain. Let’s keep his legacy alive by supporting the efforts to make him a saint. He deserves no less.
Come on Pope Francis, you can do better than that. Canonize Monsenor Oscar Romero. Not Junipero Serra.
Randy Jurado Ertll is the author of the newly released novel “The Lives and Times of El Cipitio.” He lives in Pasadena. www.randyjuradoertll.com