HOMILY OF MSGR. JOSE LUIS ESCOBAR,
ARCHBISHOP OF SAN SALVADOR
IN THANKSGIVING FOR THE CANONIZATION OF
SAINT OSCAR ROMERO
Sunday,
October 28, 2018
Atrium of the Metropolitan Cathedral of
San Salvador
[ ES ]
Eminent Messrs. Cardinals, Rev.
Apostolic Nuncio, Lord Bishops, dear brother priests, religious sisters,
religious brothers and sisters, seminarians, beloved brothers and sisters in
Christ Jesus.
We celebrate our thanksgiving to God for
the Canonization of our beloved Archbishop Romero. Thanks also to Pope Francis
for his great love for him and for canonizing him. Thanks to the Bishops,
priests and lay people who have come from other countries to celebrate this
great event with us. Thank you, dear brothers and sisters, for being here in
this celebration. “The Lord has been great with us,” we have just proclaimed
with the Psalmist. (Ps 125:3.) This is a
phrase that has been fulfilled in our People: “The Lord has truly been great
with us” by granting us the Canonization of our Pastor, Bishop, Martyr, and now
Saint Oscar Arnulfo Romero.
In the midst of this joy, I wish to
carry out an act of justice: I publicly ask for forgiveness on behalf of that
part of the Church that mistreated Archbishop Romero and defamed him; among
them his brother bishops, priests and lay people who abandoned him and attacked
him in an anti-evangelical attitude. And not only in life, but even after his
martyrial death. We ask the holy people of God forgiveness for all the scandal
caused by that unjust attitude.
On the other hand, I publicly
acknowledge and express sincere gratitude to all those who did know how to
respond to that historic moment of salvation by giving a faithful testimony of
their faith alongside Archbishop Romero, they knew how to remain at the side of the
Saint, like the Apostle St. John. First among them, our martyrs, priests, religious
and laity who gave their lives for the faith. We also recognize and thank all
those who, although they did not have to shed their blood, still have witnessed
their faith with fidelity. They are true confessors of the faith as we said in our
second Pastoral Letter. Likewise, I also want to thank the Carmelite Sisters of
St. Thérèse; our beloved Archbishop Arturo Rivera Damas (of holy memory); our
beloved Cardinal Gregorio Rosa and all the priests; the Society of Jesus; the
Christian Base Communities; all the religious women and men, to the holy people
of God; to all the churches and diverse creeds of the whole world that have
witnessed the sainthood of Romero. We are immensely grateful to all of you. Now our longings are satisfied as we contemplate
our Saint on the altars. Blessed be God.
It is everyone’s task to learn more about Archbishop Romero and to
imitate him. I take advantage of the occasion to respectfully request the
Government of our country, to establish for the curriculum of the students of
the last year of primary school and in high school, the subject of “The Person
and the Teachings of Archbishop Romero.” I invite all of us to truly unite
around our saint, Archbishop Romero, and put his doctrine into practice. Like
the blind man of Jericho, let us ask Jesus to grant us the grace to see Him in
the poor, to see Him in each brother, to see Him with Romero’s eyes. I invite
all of us, following in the footsteps of our Saint, to fight for justice.
I wonder, dearest brothers and sisters, what Saint Oscar Romero would tell
Salvadorans in this historic moment in which we live; and it seems to my
imagination that we hear his strong, prophetic voice condemning:
·
The great desire to privatize water, the
murderous desire that some unfortunately exhibit and persists in them. Let us
make use of our citizen’s right, let’s all fight so that the human right to
water is respected for all Salvadorans.
·
I hear have the sensation of hearing Archbishop
Romero’s strong denunciation of the grave injustice in our pension system,
which perversely is designed so that workers, when they retire, live in poverty
and that the agencies managing the workers’ funds have millions in profits,
which is a very great injustice that cries out to God. That unjust system must
be replaced by one that is really in favor of the workers.
·
It also seems to me that the voice of Archbishop
Romero denounces the large amount of taxes in our country and that, with
respect to all of them, our poor citizenry is burdened by a regressive tax
system that obliges them the poor to pay more, without exceptions; leaving the
people who have more money exempt from certain taxes while allowing them to
evade and avoid others. In this way, the poor are condemned to be increasingly
poor.
·
It is easy in our imagination to “hear” to the
voice of Archbishop Romero at this moment defending with courage the rights of immigrants
from Central America and other parts of the world.
Our immigrant brothers are noble, honest and hard-working people. Their
only “crime”—if we can call it that—is to be poor; but the poor are God’s
favorites. They migrate because they are forced to do so by injustice, such as
the ones we have pointed out and others, as well. The mobility of the person is
an invulnerable human right. They have the right to migrate, they have the
right to refuge and they have the right to asylum. It is one of the duties of
humanity to protect and help the migrant. We thank those who are helping the
caravans of Central American migrants and we ask that the states not to
criminalize them, that their rights not be trampled upon, but instead be
respected and that they be helped.
As the People of God, we raise our prayer today to the Lord through the
intercession of Our Lady, Queen of Peace, Patroness of El Salvador, and through
the intercession of our beloved saint, Archbishop Romero. May God grant us the
grace to work together for the cessation of social exclusion, inequality,
impunity and violence; and allow us in the same way to obtain the social peace
we so long for.
So may it be.
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