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People of God
Oscar Romero: Love Must Win Out
People of God is a brand new series of inspiring biographies for the general reader. Each volume offers a compelling and honest narrative of the life of an important twentieth or twenty-first century Catholic. Some living and some now deceased, each of these women and men have known challenges and weaknesses familiar to most of us, but responded to them in ways that call us to our own forms of heroism. Each of them offers a credible and concrete witness of faith, hope, and love to people of our own day.
With the cause for his beatification reportedly moving along rapidly now at the Vatican, this biography of a people’s saint traces the events leading up to the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero at a chapel altar in San Salvador and the reverberations of that day in El Salvador and beyond. This in-depth look at Archbishop Romero, the pastor-defender of the poor and great witness of the faith, offers a prism through which to view a Catholic understanding of liberation and how to be a church of the poor, for the poor, as Pope Francis calls us to be.
With the cause for his beatification reportedly moving along rapidly now at the Vatican, this biography of a people’s saint traces the events leading up to the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero at a chapel altar in San Salvador and the reverberations of that day in El Salvador and beyond. This in-depth look at Archbishop Romero, the pastor-defender of the poor and great witness of the faith, offers a prism through which to view a Catholic understanding of liberation and how to be a church of the poor, for the poor, as Pope Francis calls us to be.
- GenresCatholic
168 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2014
11 people are currently reading
61 people want to read
About the author
Kevin Clarke
29 booksLibrarian note:
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There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name
This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 15, 2015
It will have been only 35 years this March 30 that an assassin’s bullet through the heart ended the life of the archbishop of San Salvador as he celebrated Mass in 1980.
The late-20th-century martyr for peace and justice shouldn’t be forgotten by 21st-century Catholics, and author Kevin Clarke helps us all to remember that with his brief but powerfully written life of slain Archbishop Oscar Romero.
Clarke’s book, “Oscar Romero: Love Must Win Out,” is one of the newest in the series of biographies that Liturgical Press in Collegeville is publishing, “People of God: Remarkable Lives, Heroes of Faith.”
It captures the essence of Romero and the societal sins of upper-class Salvadorans and members of the military who, as Clarke writes, were either complicit or blindly implicit in the archbishop’s assassination.
A hard-line traditionalist as a priest, Romero was thought by his nation’s elites and by the bishops of El Salvador to be one of them when he was named to the archbishop’s chair by Pope Paul VI.
For Romero, Vatican II had been an earthquake and the liberation theology of the Latin American bishops’ at Medellin an aftershock, in Clarke’s words. His reputation was that of a strict conservative, but he had already begun to turn away from the status quo that made so few rich and left so many in his country’s in desperate poverty.
As bishop of the Diocese of Santiago de Maria in his native El Salvador, he visited Tres Calles, a village where six men and boys had just been buried. They had been dragged from their beds, tortured and murdered with bullets and machetes by the National Guard.
On the way home, Romero ran into another incident: The body of a boy was found in a roadside ditch. He too had been tortured and murdered.
He told a priest companion, “We have to find a way to evangelize the rich, so that they can change, so that they convert.”
Clarke noted: “What is telling about the Tres Calles moment for Romero is the beginning of his understanding that what was wanted from the wealthy to give to the poor was not mere material charity, but a conversion of the heart that would allow them to understand that what the poor of El Salvador need most was not a crumb from their table, but a seat at it; not charity, but justice.”
Romero protested the massacre to the local Guardia commander, and in what would turn out to be foreshadowing, the officer shrugged and advised the bishop, “Cassocks are not bulletproof.”
Romero saw that the so-called “political” work of the “liberation” clerics he had previously suspected was “a natural, spiritually sound and even required outgrowth of their pastoral work,” and was supported by recent Church teaching.
Then his friend Father Rutilio Grande was murdered in a hail of bullets. Clarke notes:
“The killing of this Jesuit priest was the signal of an abrupt rupture, for the old Romero was cast off completely and a new Romero emerged: empathetic, soulful and courageous.”
Romero took on the powers that be, using the archdiocesan radio station and newspaper to report the repression and violence, news that wasn’t available from the media controlled by the elites.
He refused to participate in government ceremonies or official events or to attend events in which he might be photographed socializing with El Salvador’s political or military leaders.
He went further, raising money to feed campesinos hiding in the mountains and arranging to hide victims of political violence at the national seminary.
Although he was accused of being a Marxist, he tried to convert both the powerful and those seeing change. He preached to elites, “Do not make idols of your riches; do not preserve them in a way that lets others die of hunger.”
He also met clandestinedly with guerrilla leaders to try to persuade them of the power of Christian nonviolence in the face of oppression.
Clarke explains well the geopolitical situation of the time — the fear of communism spreading in Latin America — that had both the United States and the Vatican supporting the status quo in El Salvador.
When, at the Vatican, Archbishop Romero tried to explain that his country’s revolutionaries were not communists but campesinos “defending their people against sometimes incomprehensible violence and the life-crushing force of economic and social oppression,” he was reprimanded. Clarke writes:
“After being battered by Cardinal Sebasiano Baggio, secretary of the Congregation of Bishops, he endured more admonishments from the secretary of state office, where a curial operative suggested Romero remember the ‘prudence’ with which Jesus Christs conducted his public life.’
“ ‘If he was so prudent, then why was he killed?’ Romero wanted to know.”
Killing Romero demonstrated how far some are willing to go to protect their status and privilege, and an important point Clarke brings out is how the man’s inhumanity to man kept escalating, with government-backing death squads not satisfied merely to kill. The viciousness turned from brutality to depravity, with, for example, a priest’s face being shot off.
In the end, Archbishop Romero’s death led to 12 years of civil war in El Salvador, ending only in 1992. Tens of thousands of Salvadorans were killed, primarily (85 percent) murdered by their own military, according to a UN Truth Comission.
As the slain archbishop’s cause for sainthood moves forward — finally — readers of this 164-page biography will understand why, and perhaps be perplexed as to why it has taken 35 years.
The late-20th-century martyr for peace and justice shouldn’t be forgotten by 21st-century Catholics, and author Kevin Clarke helps us all to remember that with his brief but powerfully written life of slain Archbishop Oscar Romero.
Clarke’s book, “Oscar Romero: Love Must Win Out,” is one of the newest in the series of biographies that Liturgical Press in Collegeville is publishing, “People of God: Remarkable Lives, Heroes of Faith.”
It captures the essence of Romero and the societal sins of upper-class Salvadorans and members of the military who, as Clarke writes, were either complicit or blindly implicit in the archbishop’s assassination.
A hard-line traditionalist as a priest, Romero was thought by his nation’s elites and by the bishops of El Salvador to be one of them when he was named to the archbishop’s chair by Pope Paul VI.
For Romero, Vatican II had been an earthquake and the liberation theology of the Latin American bishops’ at Medellin an aftershock, in Clarke’s words. His reputation was that of a strict conservative, but he had already begun to turn away from the status quo that made so few rich and left so many in his country’s in desperate poverty.
As bishop of the Diocese of Santiago de Maria in his native El Salvador, he visited Tres Calles, a village where six men and boys had just been buried. They had been dragged from their beds, tortured and murdered with bullets and machetes by the National Guard.
On the way home, Romero ran into another incident: The body of a boy was found in a roadside ditch. He too had been tortured and murdered.
He told a priest companion, “We have to find a way to evangelize the rich, so that they can change, so that they convert.”
Clarke noted: “What is telling about the Tres Calles moment for Romero is the beginning of his understanding that what was wanted from the wealthy to give to the poor was not mere material charity, but a conversion of the heart that would allow them to understand that what the poor of El Salvador need most was not a crumb from their table, but a seat at it; not charity, but justice.”
Romero protested the massacre to the local Guardia commander, and in what would turn out to be foreshadowing, the officer shrugged and advised the bishop, “Cassocks are not bulletproof.”
Romero saw that the so-called “political” work of the “liberation” clerics he had previously suspected was “a natural, spiritually sound and even required outgrowth of their pastoral work,” and was supported by recent Church teaching.
Then his friend Father Rutilio Grande was murdered in a hail of bullets. Clarke notes:
“The killing of this Jesuit priest was the signal of an abrupt rupture, for the old Romero was cast off completely and a new Romero emerged: empathetic, soulful and courageous.”
Romero took on the powers that be, using the archdiocesan radio station and newspaper to report the repression and violence, news that wasn’t available from the media controlled by the elites.
He refused to participate in government ceremonies or official events or to attend events in which he might be photographed socializing with El Salvador’s political or military leaders.
He went further, raising money to feed campesinos hiding in the mountains and arranging to hide victims of political violence at the national seminary.
Although he was accused of being a Marxist, he tried to convert both the powerful and those seeing change. He preached to elites, “Do not make idols of your riches; do not preserve them in a way that lets others die of hunger.”
He also met clandestinedly with guerrilla leaders to try to persuade them of the power of Christian nonviolence in the face of oppression.
Clarke explains well the geopolitical situation of the time — the fear of communism spreading in Latin America — that had both the United States and the Vatican supporting the status quo in El Salvador.
When, at the Vatican, Archbishop Romero tried to explain that his country’s revolutionaries were not communists but campesinos “defending their people against sometimes incomprehensible violence and the life-crushing force of economic and social oppression,” he was reprimanded. Clarke writes:
“After being battered by Cardinal Sebasiano Baggio, secretary of the Congregation of Bishops, he endured more admonishments from the secretary of state office, where a curial operative suggested Romero remember the ‘prudence’ with which Jesus Christs conducted his public life.’
“ ‘If he was so prudent, then why was he killed?’ Romero wanted to know.”
Killing Romero demonstrated how far some are willing to go to protect their status and privilege, and an important point Clarke brings out is how the man’s inhumanity to man kept escalating, with government-backing death squads not satisfied merely to kill. The viciousness turned from brutality to depravity, with, for example, a priest’s face being shot off.
In the end, Archbishop Romero’s death led to 12 years of civil war in El Salvador, ending only in 1992. Tens of thousands of Salvadorans were killed, primarily (85 percent) murdered by their own military, according to a UN Truth Comission.
As the slain archbishop’s cause for sainthood moves forward — finally — readers of this 164-page biography will understand why, and perhaps be perplexed as to why it has taken 35 years.
August 1, 2023
Two for the writing. Five for the story.
April 22, 2024
3.5
i read this for a research paper for a class i am in, but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I learned a lot about this time in El Salvador’s history and who Oscar Romero was as a person. I think even if you are not religious, you could get a lot out of the messages of fighting oppression and solidarity with the poor. I rated it below four stars because i thought the writing could have been better. The author would often repeat the same world or phrase multiple times. The best quotes are from Romero’s own words and writings. I also read in another Goodreads review that this book contains a few minor inaccuracies, which i don’t think should have been allowed to happen with how much research went into the book.
i read this for a research paper for a class i am in, but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I learned a lot about this time in El Salvador’s history and who Oscar Romero was as a person. I think even if you are not religious, you could get a lot out of the messages of fighting oppression and solidarity with the poor. I rated it below four stars because i thought the writing could have been better. The author would often repeat the same world or phrase multiple times. The best quotes are from Romero’s own words and writings. I also read in another Goodreads review that this book contains a few minor inaccuracies, which i don’t think should have been allowed to happen with how much research went into the book.
May 13, 2015
A disappointing book.
We need a good short introduction to Romero and I thought this might be such a work, but I found it lacking.
It does include a lot of quotations from Romero's homilies, diaries, and pastoral letters - which are rather well chosen.
But there are several problems, which a good editor should have caught.
First of all the author seems to repeat the myth that Monseñor Romero was killed during the consecration of the Mass. "Soon he would raise the host above the altar, and he would speak the words of transfiguration (sic)..." yet at two other places in the book he notes that the shot rang out at the end of the homily. Such ambiguity should have been noted by the editors.
Also, he says at several points that Romero was celebrating a requiem when he was killed. I understand Requiem as usually meaning a Mass for the Dead which accompanies the burial of someone. (I do recognize that Requiem was often used in the pre-Vatican II church as the Mass for the dead celebrated at any time.) Though the author later noted that this was a Mass for the one year anniversary of a death, calling it a Requiem is misleading.
In addition, he states that the call to the armed forces to not kill their campesino brothers and sisters was at an evening Mass on March 23. As far as I know, it was the morning Mass.
There are also several phrases which struck me as not quite right. Several times the author speaks of "the Monseñor," when he probably should have just written "Monseñor."
He also mentions the Salvadoran "jungle". I don't think this is an accurate description of El Salvador's forests.
He also writes of "rural bishops" when he means, I believe, bishops outside of the San Salvador archdiocese.
But one statement that troubled me was his statement that "Romero was one of the first bishops called upon to breathe life into the documents of Vatican II, Medellin and Pueblo."
I think this statement ignores the many bishops who did respond from the late sixties to Vatican II, Pueblo, and Medellin. Romero is one of scores of bishops who did breathe life into these documents throughout Latin America. Romero is the most visible - partly because of his martyrdom but he is hardly one of the first - many bishops in Brazil, Perú, Ecuador, and Chile were doing this before Romero became archbishop of San Salvador.
We need a good short introduction to Romero and I thought this might be such a work, but I found it lacking.
It does include a lot of quotations from Romero's homilies, diaries, and pastoral letters - which are rather well chosen.
But there are several problems, which a good editor should have caught.
First of all the author seems to repeat the myth that Monseñor Romero was killed during the consecration of the Mass. "Soon he would raise the host above the altar, and he would speak the words of transfiguration (sic)..." yet at two other places in the book he notes that the shot rang out at the end of the homily. Such ambiguity should have been noted by the editors.
Also, he says at several points that Romero was celebrating a requiem when he was killed. I understand Requiem as usually meaning a Mass for the Dead which accompanies the burial of someone. (I do recognize that Requiem was often used in the pre-Vatican II church as the Mass for the dead celebrated at any time.) Though the author later noted that this was a Mass for the one year anniversary of a death, calling it a Requiem is misleading.
In addition, he states that the call to the armed forces to not kill their campesino brothers and sisters was at an evening Mass on March 23. As far as I know, it was the morning Mass.
There are also several phrases which struck me as not quite right. Several times the author speaks of "the Monseñor," when he probably should have just written "Monseñor."
He also mentions the Salvadoran "jungle". I don't think this is an accurate description of El Salvador's forests.
He also writes of "rural bishops" when he means, I believe, bishops outside of the San Salvador archdiocese.
But one statement that troubled me was his statement that "Romero was one of the first bishops called upon to breathe life into the documents of Vatican II, Medellin and Pueblo."
I think this statement ignores the many bishops who did respond from the late sixties to Vatican II, Pueblo, and Medellin. Romero is one of scores of bishops who did breathe life into these documents throughout Latin America. Romero is the most visible - partly because of his martyrdom but he is hardly one of the first - many bishops in Brazil, Perú, Ecuador, and Chile were doing this before Romero became archbishop of San Salvador.
August 6, 2015
A nice summary of the life of Archbishop Romero. My only real critique is that the book could've used a final chapter; something like "The Legacy of Oscar Romero." Overall, a nice read and I recommend it to those who may be only peripherally aware of the life and times of this remarkable person - especially those who were not alive during those years of strife in Central America (1970s and 1980s).
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews