BEATIFICATION OF ARCHBISHOP ROMERO, MAY 23, 2015 |
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Continuing
our look at books that help us understand Blessed Oscar Romero, his ministry
and his recent beatification, we consider Scott Wright’s 2010 offering, Oscar Romero and the Communion of the Saints: A Biography (available as a paperback and as an
e-book) (Orbis Books, New York, January 15, 2010; featuring photographs of
Octavio Durán). A while back, I wrote a blogpost I called “Romero 101” or “Romero For
Dummies,” which sought to break down major themes into discrete modules. Scott Wright does that in book-length, telling
Romero’s story in bite-sized morsels that are easy to digest, with lots of
pictures (over a hundred photos permeate the 154-page book), making light
reading out of a dense subject matter.
Apart from
the appeal of an easy read, Wright’s book is remarkable because it seeks to
establish, as its title suggests, a theological framework for understanding
Romero. Wright was a pastoral worker in
El Salvador during the 1980s and he has since been a director and spiritual
guide to a number of activist organizations like the Ecumenical Program on
Central America and the Caribbean (EPICA) and the Religious Task Force on
Central America and Mexico (RTFCAM). It
was in that capacity that I met him in March 2000, when I had the opportunity
to engage with him and travel with him through El Salvador, visiting the now
well-known Romero sites, as well as other places of pilgrimage from the
Salvadoran conflict, including the site of the 1989 Jesuit massacre and El
Mozote, where a thousand peasants were killed by the army in 1981. I particularly remember one late-night
conversation with Wright, where he expounded at some length his view that Blessed
Romero’s life exceeded the mere realm of human action and was imbued with a
sense of the divine. Wright seems to make his own the Jesuit
Ignacio Ellacuría’s observation that, “Through
Archbishop Romero, God walked through El Salvador.”
In his book,
Wright notes the facial similarities between the story of Blessed Romero and
the life of Christ: both “were born into
conditions of poverty, in the province of a small and insignificant country.” Both Christ and Blessed Romero “lived a life of profound intimacy with God
and prayed by night.” Both “learned the trade of a carpenter.” Both had a forerunner who foreshadowed the
coming of a greater prophet—Jesus was preceded by John the Baptist and Romero
by Rutilio Grande. Both maintained a
public three year ministry, “proclaiming
the goodness of God and announcing the coming of the kingdom of God as a new
order of love among all people.”
Wright quotes an anonymous Salvadoran peasant refugee who states: “Monseñor Romero was like a Salvadoran Jesus
Christ … When they killed him, we were very sad because we thought that everything
had ended. But later we saw that his
spirit gave us strength to resist oppression.
For that reason we also believe more now in Jesus Christ.”
Wright has
picked up his insights in the field, living in the communities where Blessed
Romero lives on and rubbing shoulders with the peasants that Wright often
quotes, as well as from established Romero scholars. Not surprisingly, given its provenance in
Wright’s immersion among the poor communities, the book often has the feel of a
travel guide, providing the reader a guided whirlwind tour which covers a
significant expanse of territory. The
generous helping of photographs—most of them taken by Romero’s photographer,
Br. Octavio Durán—help the material come alive with stunningly candid insights
into Romero’s everyday life. Durán was a
seminarian who became Romero’s de facto photographer through an internship with
the diocesan paper, and he started accompanying Romero during his pastoral
visits, capturing some of the most memorable images of Blessed Romero available
today. In the book, Durán’s photographs
and Wright’s insights complement and complete one another to provide a
collaborative illustration of Blessed Oscar Romero’s ministry.
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| Wright (center) captured in the crowd at the recent beatification of Archbishop Romero. |
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