Words to ponder

By Tony Staley
Compass Editor

Twenty-five years ago last March 24, Abp. Oscar Romero of San Salvador was shot and killed while celebrating Mass.

In honor of that tragic event, St. Anthony Messenger Press in Cincinnati, this year published Through the Year with Oscar Romero. The book is a series of 365 short meditations taken from homilies he delivered in the last three years of his life.

These meditations provide great insight into conditions in El Salvador and make it apparent why certain people believed they needed to kill Romero. The killers were graduates of the School of the Americas, where the annual protest to close the school at Fort Benning, Ga., will take place Nov. 18-20.

Consider this from Feb. 17, 1980: "The poor have marked the true path of the church. A church that doesn't join with the poor to denounce, from the poor, these injustices they are subject to, is not the true church of Jesus Christ."

This is an important book from a modern saint. It is worth our prayerful study to recall the conditions in El Salvador then, to appreciate the stance Romero took and to ponder the plight the poor still face everywhere and our role in that.