24 March 1980

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador by paramilitary trained here at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) in Ft. Benning, GA. It's sickening. Having visited El Salvador a couple of times and having seen the chapel where Romero was shot dead while delivering mass (the Hollywood version doesn't exaggerate the gruesome reality), I feel connected to this modern martyr if by Catholic proximity only. The Jesuit institutions of my high school, undergraduate and graduate education have pumped Catholic social justice teaching into my veins for the past thirteen years. I found an excellent article on the National Catholic Reporter's website about the life of Romero and his influence in the Catholic Church and on the Christian imagination.

Lent opens on Ash Wednesday with the command that we are to remember that we are from dust and will again return to dust ... so, in the words of poet Mary Oliver,

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

RESOURCES:

Paulo Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 2000)

Marie Dennis, Renny Golden, Scott Wright, Oscar Romero: Reflections on His Life and Writings (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000)

Via Crucis

Walking the way of the cross (Via Crucis) is traditionally a Catholic devotional exercise that commemorates the passion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Embraced now by Christians of all denominations, the stations of the cross invite us to enter into the reality of Christ's life, death and resurrection, inspiring us to live kinder, different and more peaceful lives. Also called the way of sorrow (Via Dolorosa), the stations of the cross lead us on a spiritual pilgrimage of prayer during Lent.

The images I have chosen to include here hang in the chapel at the University of Central America, a Jesuit college in San Salvador, El Salvador. I first encountered these when I visited the chapel with my father in the summer of 2002. The university is the cite of the assassinations of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter on November 16, 1989 during the country's civil war. It has since been discovered that those responsible for for the massacre were trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) in Ft. Benning, GA. As an undergraduate at Boston College I attended the annual protest at Ft. Benning twice. The protest is a powerful, moving experience of both solidarity with the victims of the school's graduates as well as an acknowledgment of the U.S.'s violent role in Latin America. The graphic images portray the stations of the cross and are accompanied by text from the sermon Archbishop Oscar Romero gave the weekend before he was assassinated, in March 1980.

FIRST STATION: Jesus is Condemned to Death

Let no one be offended because we use the divine words read at our Mass to shed light on the social, political and economic situation of our people. Not to do so would be un-Christian. Christ desires to unite himself with humanity, so that the light he brings from God might become life for nations and individuals. I know many are shocked by this preaching and want to accuse us of forsaking the gospel for politics. But I reject this accusation.

RESOURCES:

Megan McKenna, The New Stations of the Cross: The Way of the Cross According to Scripture (USA: Image, 2003)