News

As the 30th anniversary of the martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero approaches in March, Carmelite religious and laity are among those actively preparing commemorative events.

On 24th March 1980 Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador in Central America, was shot dead whilst celebrating Mass in a Carmelite chapel. He paid the ultimate price for having preached the Christian Gospel, speaking out on behalf of the poor in his native El Salvador, a country then split by civil war and governed by a regime that clung to power through military force.

Thirty years after his martyrdom, Christians around the world will be marking Oscar Romero’s witness to Christ through his life and death. Here in Britain there will be two major ecumenical services, as well as special Masses in more than a dozen dioceses. Some of these liturgies have been organised by CAFOD, by the Carmelites, and the Archbishop Romero Trust established in 2006 to promote awareness of Romero’s life and to support social justice initiatives in Latin America which carry forward his legacy.

Meetings about "Carmel and Romero" will be held by the Carmelite Spirituality Groups in York on 6th March and in Leeds on 7th March. On 6th March the Carmel in the City Spirituality Group in London will watch a screening of the film Romero. (Click on the links for details of each event)

On Saturday 20th March the first major Ecumenical Service will take place in York Minster at 11.00am. This Liturgy of the Word will be led by two patrons of the Romero Trust, the Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh Cardinal Keith O’Brien, and the Archbishop of York John Sentamu. Also taking part will be the Roman Catholic Bishop of Middlesbrough, Terence Drainey, and the President of the Methodist Conference, David Gamble.

The second major ecumenical service will take place a week later on Sunday 28th March (Palm Sunday) at 6.30pm in Westminster Abbey. Again two patrons of the Trust will lead the service, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams who will preach, and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. They will be joined by the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, and the Superintendent Minister of Wesley’s Chapel, Revd. the Lord Leslie Griffiths. The service will include the laying of a wreath underneath Archbishop Romero’s statue over the Abbey’s West Door.

Full details of these and other events are available on the new website of the Archbishop Romero Trust: www.romerotrust.org.uk. The new website makes available various Romero-related resources including English translations of the Archbishop’s homilies and photographs of Romero's life and death.

The ground-swell of devotion to Archbishop Romero at grass-roots level, combined with the appreciation by his fellow bishops of Romero’s preaching of the Gospel message, is a hopeful sign that his beatification will soon take place.