[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 110 (Friday, July 8, 2016)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1074-E1075]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           REMEMBERING ROMERO: GOD PASSED THROUGH EL SALVADOR

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. JAMES P. McGOVERN

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                          Friday, July 8, 2016

  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, in the Spring 2016 edition of ReVista 
Magazine, Gene Palumbo has written a beautiful remembrance of 
Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated in 1980 and 
recently beatified in May 2015 in a moving ceremony that I was 
privileged to attend.
  I have known Gene Palumbo for over three decades. He first began 
reporting on the war in El Salvador in 1980, when he moved to El 
Salvador to continue covering the civil war over the next twelve years. 
I remember speaking to him frequently when I traveled to El Salvador 
during those turbulent times, and I have always valued his insights and 
knowledge of the people, institutions and internal dynamics of that 
country. Gene has reported for the New York Times, National Public 
Radio, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, and most frequently, for the 
National Catholic Reporter. He teaches at the Casa de la Solidaridad, a 
semester-long study abroad program for U.S. university students in San 
Salvador.
  Gene's reporting continues to inform and inspire me. This moving 
tribute to Archbishop Romero reflects the hope Gene continues to have 
in El Salvador's future. I urge all my colleagues to read and reflect 
on the life of the martyred and blessed Oscar Romero and the dedication 
of Gene Palumbo, who continues to write about the challenges facing the 
Salvadoran people.


         Remembering Romero: ``God Passed Through El Salvador''

                           (By Gene Palumbo)

       San Salvador.--Fr. Paul Schindler remembers the day when 
     Oscar Romero sat beside him, trembling. Romero knew he wasn't 
     among friends. The scene was a clergy meeting in early 1977, 
     and many of the priests were furious: a man they'd clashed 
     with--Romero--had just been named as the new archbishop.
       As the meeting was ending, Romero--who hadn't yet been 
     installed--was asked if he'd like to say a few words. For all 
     Schindler knew, they would be the last words he'd ever hear 
     from Romero. Discouraged at the prospect of working under 
     someone he was unsure of, Schindler had told his bishop back 
     in Cleveland that he'd decided to return home after eight 
     years of parish work in El Salvador.
       ``He walked to the front of the room and began to speak,'' 
     said Schindler, ``and after a half hour, I said to myself, 
     `I'm not going anywhere.' ''
       It was Schindler's first glimpse of something that, until 
     then, had been unknown to him and many others: Romero had 
     begun to change. Earlier, in his years as an auxiliary bishop 
     in San Salvador, many had regarded him as too docile, too 
     accepting of a social order which, they felt, cried out for 
     change. Then, in 1974, he was named bishop of Santiago de 
     Maria, a rural diocese where government repression was 
     widespread, and where, while Romero was bishop, the first 
     massacres of peasants took place. His three years there 
     affected him deeply.
       Those were the years when Eva Menjivar came to know him. 
     She was one of many nuns who, in the 1960s, left their 
     convents in San Salvador and went to work in rural parishes 
     that had no priests.
       She was assigned to Ciudad Barrios, the small town in 
     eastern El Salvador where Romero was born and grew up. The 
     town was located in the Santiago de Maria diocese, and by the 
     time Romero was named bishop there, Menjivar and her fellow 
     sisters had catechetical and literacy programs underway, and 
     were offering job training in sewing and auto mechanics.
       Menjivar says that when people invited Romero to visit 
     their far-flung hamlets, he almost always accepted. She 
     recalls an occasion when residents of one of those hamlets 
     staged a play for him, a play they had written about several 
     Gospel parables. Afterward, they spoke about what the 
     parables meant to them.
       At the end they turned to Romero and--as one might ask an 
     expert--said, tell us what these parables really mean. His 
     reply, Menjivar recalls, was, ``I have nothing to add. I've 
     learned more about the Bible today than I did when I studied 
     it in the seminary in Rome.''
       ``We had never seen a bishop draw near to the people the 
     way he did,'' says Menjivar. ``He'd greet them all, try to 
     speak with them all, and when they had questions for him, he 
     was happy to try to answer them.''
       Schindler's experience was similar. ``Whenever I'd invite 
     him--and not just to the main church, but to the rural 
     villages--he would come. He was always there with the people. 
     That was his whole thing: to walk with them, to feel with 
     them, to inspire them.''
       Menjivar recalls the sisters' monthly retreats with Romero, 
     and the time in late 1976 when, informed that the National 
     Guard had arrested two teenage catechists in Ciudad Barrios, 
     he went there immediately to demand their release. To ensure 
     that they wouldn't be re-arrested, he took them back to 
     Santiago de Maria where he listened to their accounts of 
     being tortured.
       Menjivar was later transferred to a parish near the town of 
     Aguilares. There she worked with Jesuit Fr. Rutilio Grande, 
     whose sainthood process is now underway. On the evening of 
     March 12, 1977, she was at Mass when she was handed a note 
     saying that Grande had disappeared. She went straight to 
     Aguilares and, upon arriving, learned that he had been 
     murdered along with an elderly campesino and a teenager.
       Grande and Romero had become close friends in the late 
     1960s, when both were living at the seminary in San Salvador. 
     When Romero was named bishop in 1970, he asked Grande to 
     preside at his installation ceremony.
       In the following four years--up until the time he left for 
     Santiago de Maria--Romero had bitter disputes with priests in 
     the archdiocese, and when, to their dismay, he was named 
     archbishop in 1977, it was Grande who stood up for him.
       ``Rutilio said to us, `Yes, he's conservative. But he's 
     honest, and he's someone you can work with' '' said Fr. Pedro 
     Declercq, a Belgian missionary whose work with grass-roots 
     Christian communities led to the bombing of his parish.
       Declercq didn't have to wait long to see how much Romero 
     had changed. They'd had an ugly falling out in 1972, when his 
     parishioners invited Romero to visit them to say Mass and 
     explain why he had justified, on behalf of the bishops 
     conference, a military invasion of the National University.
       The army had wounded some people, arrested others, and 
     evicted people whose homes were on the university's campus. 
     The discussion between Romero and the parishioners began at 
     the homily, but quickly turned into a shouting match, with 
     Declercq finally tearing off his vestments and saying the 
     Mass was over.
       When Romero returned to San Salvador as archbishop, he 
     visited the parish again. As recounted by Sister Noemi Ortiz 
     in Maria Lopez Vigil's Monsenor Romero: Memories in Mosaic,
       [Romero] brought up [the earlier incident] as soon as he 
     got there. ``We couldn't even celebrate the Eucharist that 
     afternoon . . . We were insulting each other. . . . Do you 
     remember? I remember it well and today, as your pastor, I 
     want to say that I now understand what happened that day, and 
     here before you I recognize my error.
       ``I was wrong and you were right. That day you taught me 
     about faith and about the Church. Please forgive me for 
     everything that happened then.''
       Well, all of us, young and old, started crying . . . We 
     broke into applause, and our applause melted into the music 
     of the party. . . . All was forgiven.
       On the night of Grande's death, Menjivar was sitting beside 
     his corpse, using a towel to absorb the blood that was 
     trickling out, when Romero arrived at the parish. She said 
     Romero approached the corpse and, after standing in silence 
     for several moments, said, ``If we don't change now, we never 
     will.''
       Jesuit Fr. Jon Sobrino, a prominent liberation theologian, 
     was at the parish that night, and answered the door when 
     Romero knocked. Earlier Romero had criticized Sobrino's 
     writings on Christology; later, as archbishop, he would 
     consult Sobrino when preparing his pastoral letters.
       Sobrino says that after Romero himself was murdered, 
     ``people began speaking of him as an exceptional person and 
     Christian. In the funeral Mass we held for him at the UCA 
     (Central American University), Ignacio Ellacuria said, `In 
     Archbishop Romero, God passed through El Salvador' The people 
     spontaneously proclaimed him a saint'' (In 1989, Fr. 
     Ellacuria, along with five other Jesuits and two women, was 
     murdered at the UCA.)
       When Pope Francis ratified Romero's status as a martyr, 
     Schindler said, ``The people in the parish have been waiting 
     and waiting for this. They hold him as a saint, and they've 
     always held him as a saint, and now that the pronouncement 
     has been made, they're going to be overwhelmed.''
       Menjivar said that when she heard the news, ``I felt great 
     joy--and at the same time, I thought to myself, I hope this 
     will be the occasion for those who killed him to be 
     converted.''

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