Letters to the editor
Romero Canonization – Pope Francis Ahead of Bishops
Ted Schmidt, Toronto
Volume 33 Issue 4, 5 & 6 | Posted: June 13, 2019
Twenty-nine years ago yesterday Paul Hansen, Redemptorist priest and I penned an article (March 23,1990) in the Globe and Mail. We pointed out that the Salvadoran bishop Oscar Romero who broke with the oligarchy and the rest of his brother bishops was also snubbed by the Bishop of Rome, John Paul II. It was reported that on the day of his as assassination 39 years ago today, Romero’s dismissal as archbishop was on John Paul II’s desk.
Romero now canonized, was humiliated by the then pope, a man of blinkered vision when it came to Latin America. Reputedly it was the one thing he regretted. Romero had come to Rome to plead his case and was made to wait outside the pontiff’s office. He never did get to see him.
Twenty-nine years ago yesterday Paul Hansen, Redemptorist priest and I penned an article (March 23,1990) in the Globe and Mail. We pointed out that the Salvadoran bishop Oscar Romero who broke with the oligarchy and the rest of his brother bishops was also snubbed by the Bishop of Rome, John Paul II. It was reported that on the day of his as assassination 39 years ago today, Romero’s dismissal as archbishop was on John Paul II’s desk.
Romero now canonized, was humiliated by the then pope, a man of blinkered vision when it came to Latin America. Reputedly it was the one thing he regretted. Romero had come to Rome to plead his case and was made to wait outside the pontiff’s office. He never did get to see him.
Today we give thanks for a Vatican II pope who sees the church like Romero as a field hospital after battle. rather than seeing Vatican II as a grave error that must be corrected. Francis like Romero sees the Church as committed to the poor. This is not Marx, it is Jesus.
The official Vaticanese language stated that Archbishop Oscar Romero’s sainthood cause has been “unblocked.”
Well who was blocking it in the first place?
The answer John Paul II, Benedict XVI and the whole curial apparatus who slavishly took their cues from the power centre. Much to their embarrassment these men never grasped the holiness of Romero or the reality of El Salvador. They listened to the wealthy landowning class “who preferred to dine with the military junta than break bread with the poor.”(David Yallop)
They kept repeating the cheap mantra that Romero was a dupe of the Marxists or Communists, a secret proponent of the feared liberation theology. The detractors of Romero inside the church used the canard that there were “theological errors” in his writings.
John Paul II was persuaded by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith under the Eastern European Cardinal Franjo Seper to reassign Romero. Previously the pope as mentioned above had humiliated Romero by making him wait four weeks for an audience. Later it was reported the pope regretted this.
After the Archbishop was murdered while saying mass, an Italian judge wrote to the paper Corriere della Sera:
“Why did the travelling pope not immediately set off for San Salvador to pick up the chalice that had been dropped from Romero’s hands and continue the mass which the murdered archbishop had begun?”
Well, popes do make mistakes and this was a major one for John Paul II.
For the people of Latin America, Romero had already been canonized for his prophetic stance against the cowboy capitalism of the USA.
“For decades Washington had supported local oligarchs Somoza of Nicaragua, Pinochet of Chile, Trujillo of the Dominican Republic all who had turned their backs on los pobres de la tierra. They had become mere satraps of the dominant centre.”
The Polish pope never understood why some of the better US bishops were critical of Reagan’s America. Once he queried Cardinal Bernadin asking, “Why do you not support your president.” At that time Rome and Washington were at war with the USSR. But Washington was making war on Latin America.
Earlier in the decade Cardinal Ratzinger had come out against liberation theology, suggesting it was pure Marxism. The great Latino bishops convinced JP II he was dead wrong and to the pope’s credit in 1985 when he was taken aside by the men closest to “smell of the sheep” he declared that liberation theology was not only useful but necessary.
We asked “Has the pope learned anything from this?” It was dubious given the brutal papal appointments through the southern cone, men who had little credibility but who adopted the harsh Roman line.
We pointed out that the Vatican “has closed seminaries which champion close association with communities, imposed traditionalist bishops with whom they could not work, denigrated the prophetic work of Dom Helder Camara and Paulo Evaristo Arns, towering churchmen and fierce defenders of the marginalized. As one prelate said, “for us the Vatican is but a sect within the church”.
We went on to state that “a parallel church was emerging which increasingly distances itself from the hopes and joys of the world which Vatican II encouraged us to serve. Instead of leaven in the dough the church was becoming a loaf unto itself, preoccupied with internal concerns, obsessed with power and discipline rather than love and service.” Brazilian bishop Mauro Morelli described the Vatican as “neurotics for orthodoxy.”
We went on to criticize the pope for “the heavy handed imposition of Romanized clerics as bishops who brook no dissent, his harassment of theologians and prophetic bishops made us ponder the words of the 1971 synod, “anyone who wishes to speak to people about justice must first be just in their eyes. Hence, we must undertake an examination of the modes of acting found within the church itself.”
We concluded that “the death of Oscar Romero was a watershed for the modern Catholic Church. It signifies the permanence of justice and peace as the church’s agenda. It speaks to us of the church as servant not master, as a sign of the kingdom yet not the kingdom. It reminds us that conversion is possible, that the final word, for the Christian is love not power.”
As believers in the sensus fidelium, the wisdom of the baptized, we understood that the base church was way ahead of the hierarchs. Now Pope Francis seems way ahead of his bishops.
Ted Schmidt, Toronto