JUBILEE YEAR for the CENTENNIAL of BLESSED
ROMERO, 2016 — 2017
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Blessed Oscar
Romero (right) shares a light moment with Mr. Jose Jorge “Pepe” Siman (left)
and Fr. Carlos Rafael Cabarrus, S.J. (center), in San Salvador in July 1978.
This photo, published in Siman’s book, “Un
Testimonio” (A Testimony) (San Salvador, 2007, 2015) (translation here), becomes part of our series on Romero
in images for the Romero Jubilee Year Declared by the Church for the centenary
of the Salvadoran martyr.
The film Life
is beautiful (La vita è bella
in Italian) by Roberto Benigni, about the attempts of a father to protect his
child from the cruelties of the Nazi world, stands out for the way it
incorporates tragic themes with comic elements. In a similar way, this photo
presents a light moment—of laughter and evident merry conviviality—with a more solemn
and somber aspect. The lightness is evident. Don Pepe tells Super Martyrio: “In this picture you can see one of the many
moments which we shared together with Archbishop Romero—moments of conversation
and laughter, during the meetings of the Seminar on Religious Sociology” at
the ‘Jose Simeon Canas’ Central American University.
In his book,
Don Pepe also captures some of the humor of Archbishop Romero: “he laughed and joked a lot” with the members
of the Siman household, when he visited. He liked to tell them funny stories,
such as, “the day, when he was a parish
priest in San Miguel, that a peasant came to see him and was invited to stay
for lunch. Monseñor served him some lettuce salad, upon which the peasant
turned to him and said: ‘Padre, look, I know I am a poor man but I don’t eat
grass.’ And my children would laugh and laugh.”
The photo also
captures a moment during a brief calm in the persecution of the Salvadoran
Church—a calm that would be broken with the murder of Fr. Barrera in November—but
on this day, Archbishop Romero was at ease, amongst friends and allies and
could take the luxury of a laugh. For one brief moment, “Life is Beautiful” for Oscar Romero. His biographies also tell us
that during this time, Archbishop Romero was busy preparing his third pastoral letter “The Church and political and popular
organizations”, which would come out in August. He had just returned from a
trip to Rome, his last meeting with Pope Paul VI, and he felt strongly invigorated
to carry on with his mission.
But there is
also a very poignant element in this photo. Have you picked up on it? It’s the
shirt. Archbishop Romero is wearing the shirt we all saw at the beatification
ceremony, now known simply as “the bloody
shirt,” because it was the garment that was drenched with blood during the
tragic and violent martyrial death of the Blessed. There are no other published photos of Romero wearing the shirt that show the shirt in its entirety.
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