BEATIFICATION OF ARCHBISHOP ROMERO,
MAY 23, 2015
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At the Los
Angeles Archdiocese Fortnight for Freedom Mass with the relics of Sts. Thomas
More, John Fisher, Junipero Serra and Bl. Oscar Romero, the conversation among
some of the pilgrims attending the event turned to the Tyburn Martyrs. This designation refers to the priests,
monks, laymen and laywomen who were hanged at the King’s Gallows near modern
day Hyde Park in London for refusing to renounce the Catholic Church during the
Reformation. It made me think of the
parallels between the suffering of the English martyrs over the centuries, and
the modern day travails of the martyrs of El Salvador.
It may be no
coincidence, after all, that devotion to Blessed Oscar Romero has particularly
taken off in England. It was there that
Archbishop Romero found support, in life, from Cardinal Basil Hume, and English
Catholics who nominated Romero for the Nobel Peace Price in a bid to save his
life. It was in London that a statue of
Romero was placed at Westminster Abbey in 1998 in the presence of the
Queen. In 2013, the Roman Catholic
Cathedral in London set up Romero relics in a special Romero chapel. More recently, another Romero statue was
installed at St. Albans Cathedral in Hertfordshire, England. A British specialist preserved Romero’s
relics in San Salvador (the same specialist in charge of Sts. Thomas More and
John Fisher’s relics), and for several years, the Romero Trust promotes
devotion to Romero from its London base.
None of this
should be too surprising if we look at England’s unique history with martyrdom,
and the Tyburn Martyrs hold a special place in that sacred legacy. What most stands out to me of the Tyburn
story is the way a story of shame and infamy has been redeemed, and
transfigured into a precious and holy symbol, through popular devotion and what
we call in El Salvador “historic memory.”
The Tyburn Tree is a symbol nearly akin to the Cross, in the way that it
represented in its day, everything that was nearly pure dread. The “Tree” was a triangle-shaped gallows
where criminals were hanged. They were
paraded there from jail, and put up on a horse-drawn cart while the noose was
tied around their neck. Then, the
specially-built carriage would be withdrawn and the condemned left to die
before large gathered crowds.
Those led to
die there were mocked and reviled. They
included common criminals as well as traitors and conspirators of every
stripe. They also included bona fide
conscientious dissenters and martyrs of the faith, like Saint Edmund Campion, a Jesuit priest
who was hung at Tyburn in 1581. I cannot
read about Campion without thinking about another Jesuit, one killed in El
Salvador, Ignacio Ellacuria, killed during the Central American University
Massacre of 1989: “Edmund Campion, born in London in 1540, was soon recognized
as one of the most talented scholars of his generation” (source: Jesuits in
Britain). Saint Edmund died forgiving
his executioners: “I recommend your case
and mine to Almightie God, the Searcher of hearts, to the end that we may at
last be friends in heaven, when all injuries shall be forgotten.”
The Tyburn
Martyrs also included St Robert Southwell SJ, killed in 1595; Blessed Thomas
Maxfield who was dragged to the Tyburn Tree in 1616; Blessed Philip Powel who
was executed in 1646; and hundreds of others who faced the same cruel
fate. The location of their humiliation
and death was almost erased from history—but their memories were not. It did not matter that they died alongside
the guilty and the ignoble. It did not
matter that their executioners, who were trying to consolidate their grip on
power, had political as much as religious motives for their repressive
campaigns against priests, to say nothing about economic incentives (the Crown
appropriated all the Church’s property).
Above all, it did not matter that the Tyburn Tree had become a
disgraceful brand, a badge of shame.
Popular piety
knew how to discern the propaganda, the distortion, the lies, the defamation
that was spoken against the martyrs, to find the strands of holiness, and from
some fifty thousand suspected to have been killed in an over a period of six
centuries, be able to salvage the names of a few hundred holy martyrs who are
honored and cherished today—a few of them beatified and canonized saints. This is the same process that the faithful must
carry forward in so many other places in the world today. In El Salvador, that means honoring and
venerating the broken skeletons discarded in so many killing fields, in the
lava plain known as “El Playon,” in the bowels of the Guardia
Nacional barracks, and those whose ultimate resting places are known only to
God. As preached by the martyr Romero, “every assassinated man is a sacrificed
Christ whom the Church also venerates” (March 2, 1980 Sermon).
May the
example of the English faithful be an inspiration to us all to courageously
claim our martyrs.
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