In a world battered and bruised by injustice, where the cries of the oppressed so often fall on deaf ears, the witness of Oscar Romero still resounds with power.
A bishop who became a prophet.
A priest who became a martyr.
A man who, in the crucible of violence and oppression, found his voice and spoke with the authority of heaven.
Romero’s early years as a priest and bishop were marked by caution, by a concern for unity that at times leaned towards silence in the face of suffering.
But the crucifixion of his friend, the Jesuit priest Rutilio Grande, was a moment of epiphany.
The scales fell from his eyes, and he saw—really saw—the brutal reality of El Salvador’s dictatorship, the corruption that propped it up, and the complicity of a Church too comfortable to stand with the poor.
From that moment, Romero’s life became a living sermon. His pulpit was not only the cathedral
but the airwaves, his weekly radio broadcasts lifting the veil on the horrors of state violence and naming the sins of those in power.
He preached good news to the poor and woe to the oppressor. He called soldiers to lay down their arms, to refuse to kill their fellow citizens, to heed the gospel of peace rather than the commands of their superiors.
“Brothers, you are killing your own brothers. No soldier is obliged to obey an order that is against the law of God.”
He knew what this meant.
He knew what was coming.
And still, he spoke.
On 24 March 1980, as he stood at the altar lifting up the bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ, he himself became an offering. A single bullet, fired by those who feared the truth, tore through his body. But his words, his witness, his call to justice—these could not be silenced.
“If they kill me, I shall rise again in the Salvadoran people.”
Romero is not a figure of the past. His story is not locked in history. He speaks today. In a world where the rich still feast while the poor starve, where governments still cloak their violence in righteousness, where the Church is still tempted by safety over solidarity, his voice echoes.
He was canonised in 2018, but long before that, the poor of El Salvador had already named him a saint. Because holiness is not about statues and stained glass but about radical love, about a life poured out in the name of Christ.
“A church that does not unite itself to the poor is not truly the church of Jesus Christ.” - Oscar Romero
And so the question comes to us, as it came to him: in the face of suffering, will we remain silent? Or will we, like Romero, find our voices and speak with the authority of heaven?
“A church that does not provoke any crisis,
preach a gospel that does not unsettle,
proclaim a word of God that does not get under anyone’s skin
or a word of God that does not touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed: what kind of gospel is that?”- Oscars Romero
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A Gospel That Does Not Unsettle-
If the word of God does not disturb,
If it does not break open,
If it does not cry out,
What is this word?
If the gospel does not expose lies,
If it does not shatter idols,
If it does not bring down the proud,
What gospel is this?
A cross stripped of suffering.
A Christ without wounds.
A church without cost.
The word of God is fire.
It does not whisper.
It does not flatter.
It does not remain silent.
It burns in the streets.
It cries from the altars.
It will not be tamed.
If we preach a gospel that does not unsettle,
If we proclaim a word that does not wound,
If we stand with power and not the poor,
We do not stand with Christ.
But the fire is not only destruction.
It is the light in the darkness.
It is the warmth of a new dawn.
It is the spark that ignites justice.
The word of God calls forth life.
It raises up the lowly.
It brings sight to the blind.
It turns mourning into dancing.
The gospel unsettles,
But it also restores.
The fire burns,
But it also purifies.
And from the ashes,
The Kingdom rises.
- Rev’d Jon Swales
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