Archbishop Oscar Romero Quotes

There are many things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried

Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is duty.

Beautiful is the moment in which we understand that we are no more than an instrument of God; we live only as long as God wants us to live; we can only do as much as God makes us able to do; we are only as intelligent as God would have us be.

PEACE is generosity. It is right and it is duty.

We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest.

Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero said this shortly before his assassination: “I am going to speak to you simply as a pastor, as one who, together with his people, has been learning the beautiful but harsh truth that the Christian faith does not cut us off from the world but immerses us in it; the church is not a fortress set apart from the city. The church follows Jesus, who lived, worked, struggled and died in the midst of a city, in the polis.

U.S. missionaries became some of the most impassioned witnesses offering counter testimony to U.S. policies in Central America. Living among the poorest of the region, they saw the truth of what drove people to rebellion: generations of misery institutionalized by the greed and selfishness of the wealthy (as Archbishop Oscar Romero himself pointed out), the repression of all hope by means of the bluntest of instruments—torture, disappearance, and murder.

is made of the “conversion” of Oscar Romero to the poor upon the death of his friend, Father Rutilio Grande, who was assassinated on March 12, 1977. The word “conversion” is used to mean “a turning point” in Romero’s life. Jon Sobrino makes this point: “I think that, as Archbishop Romero stood gazing at the mortal remains of Rutilio Grande, the scales fell from his eyes.”91 Ignacio Martin-Baro, one of the six Jesuit martyrs, makes a similar point: “For Romero, the assassination of Father Grande…was the crucial moment in his conversion: the road to Aguilares was to be his road to Damascus.”92

Bishop Arturo Rivera y Damas, who succeeded Romero as Archbishop of San Salvador, also believes the death of Rutilio Grande was the key moment in Romero’s transformation: One martyr gave life to another martyr. Before the cadaver of Father Rutilio Grande, Monseñor Romero, in his twentieth day as archbishop, felt that call of Christ to overcome his natural human timidity and to be filled with the fortitude of the apostle. From that moment, Monseñor Romero left behind the pagan lands of Tyre and Sidon and marched with freedom toward Jerusalem.93

Justice is like a snake: it only bites the barefooted. —MONSIGNOR OSCAR ARNULFO ROMERO, ARCHBISHOP OF SAN SALVADOR, ASSASSINATED IN 1980