Catholic Church beatifies priests killed by soldiers in El Salvador

The Salvadoran Jesuit priest Rutilio Grande and the Italian Franciscan Cosme Spessotto, assassinated by the military in the prelude to the civil war (1980-1992) in El Salvador, will be beatified this Saturday, together with two laymen, for his martyrdom in defense of the poor and persecuted of the country.

At least 6,000 faithful are expected in the Divino Salvador del Mundo square for the ceremony, which will be presided over by Salvadoran Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chávez, representing Pope Francis.

A large pavilion with a palm roof, as a symbol of simplicity, was erected for the ceremony in which all attendees were asked to wear a mask to prevent covid-19 infections.

“The fact that the church officially accepts them as martyrs is that their life was correct, they took risks to help the poor and were faithful to a call (of service) that cost them their lives,” Rosa Chavez told AFP.

In the midst of the Cold War, when El Salvador was experiencing social unrest repressed by the military, Grande maintained “an energetic and questioning word” and Spessotto the value of “burying” the dead that the military left as a warning in the streets, remembers the cardinal.

For Doris Yanira Barahona, 63, a fervent Catholic, the beatification of both It represents “the well-deserved recognition of two men who were greatly loved for their work in difficult times, and they were men who dedicated themselves to defending the most dispossessed.”

Grande was assassinated on March 12, 1977, while in his vehicle crossing a highway in El Paisnal, 40 km north of San Salvador. The sacristan Manuel Solórzano (72 years old) and Nelson Rutilio Lemus (16) also died, who will also be beatified and are buried next to him.

The fatal attack on Grande was the beginning of the persecution of the Salvadoran clergy who denounced the prevailing social injustice.

Fray Cosme Spessotto, meanwhile, was murdered on June 14, 1980 inside the church of San Juan Nonualco, 54 km southeast of the capital and where he was a parish priest for 27 years.

killers identified

In El Salvador, in addition to the Archbishop of San Salvador, Óscar Arnulfo Romero, canonized in 2018, the military bishop Joaquín Ramos, a score of priests and thousands of lay people were assassinated. The vast majority of crimes remain unpunished.

“In both cases they were state agents (the murderers); in the case of Father Cosme, the Treasury Police, and Rutilio, the National Guard. It was fully verified”, explains Rosa Chávez.

Óscar Arnulfo Romero, the priest who fought for freedom

“I had a letter from the guards who were murderers. When they were in Mariona (prison), they sent a letter asking for forgiveness, asking for mercy,” he recalls.

With the end of the civil war in 1992, the Guard and the Treasury Police were declared proscribed for multiple human rights violations.

“How is it possible that a country of Christian people has killed 20 priests?” asks the cardinal.

Double legacy of Grande

The Jesuit priest Rodolfo Cardenal, Rutilio Grande’s biographer, points out that he left a “double legacy”: on the one hand, he was a “defender of the poor and exploited peasants of the sugar cane plantation.”

While at the ecclesial level, “he promoted the reform of the church of El Salvador” from the point of view of bringing it closer to the people and that it adopt the commitment to improve the situation of the poor, denouncing situations that caused misery.

Grande’s murder moved Archbishop Romero to the point of pushing him to come out in defense of those oppressed by the state security forces and the fateful death squads.

Cardenal recalls that during a meeting with the Salvadoran Church in 2015, Pope Francis told him that “the great miracle of Rutilio Grande was Monsignor Romero.”

In that sense, “Monsignor Romero is not understood in the pastoral work in the Salvadoran church, in the archdiocese (in the capital) above all, without the work of Rutilio Grande and other martyr priests,” explains Cardenal. (I)