Shepherd Romero and Brigadier Saenz - San Salvador, El Salvador' martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero and Brigadier Archbishop Fernando Saenz Lacalle - Essay - Column

National Catholic Reporter, March 28, 1997 by Brian J. Pierce

On July 22, 1979, San Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero, in response to the military high command's offer to provide him with armed security, said in his Sunday homily, "I want to repeat to you what I said once before: The shepherd does not want security while they give no security to his flock."

It was that simple. No fancy wording of phrases, no excuses, no rationalizing the need to protect the office of the archbishop.

It really was not such a new way of speaking. Jesus, in fact, had made the same affirmation of life-giving solidarity almost 2,000 years earlier, when he commented on the attitude of those who watch over the flock just for the salary: "I am t;he good shepherd: The good shepherd is one who lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, since he is not the shepherd ... abandons the sheep and runs away."

Jesus and Romero both paid the price for their commitment to stand alongside their flocks. And we remember both shepherds as our paschal journey takes us to Good Friday and beyond.

One cannot help but hear the echo of these words as one reads the horror story of the present archbishop of San Salvador, Fernando Saenz Lacalle, accepting the rank of brigadier general in his country s armed forces. Brigadier generals direct wars. Shepherds tend and care for their flocks. A person cannot carry a weapon in one hand and a staff in the other. It is either God or mammon, either peace or war. It is that simple, that uncomplicated.

Archbishop Saenz Lacalle defends his decision by referring to a 1968 agreement between the Holy See and the Salvadoran government. Does he realize that there is another document that dates back much farther than the 1968 agreement, and that this document is called the gospel, the Good News of Jesus the Good Shepherd? Does he stop to think about the hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans and Christians all over the world for whom his action will be just one more slap in the face from the institutional church? What would he say if a poor campesino couple visited him at his office one day and told him that soldiers came to their house at night, beat their son and took him away?

On Dec. 5, 1977, when Archbishop Romero celebrated the sacrament of confirmation with a group of young people, he said: "Beginning with me, the bishop, may this morning be for us a renewal of the Holy Spirit ... and if necessary, may confirmation become for us a sacrament of martyrdom. May we too be ready to give our lives for Christ and not betray him with the cowardice of today's false Christians."

How would Archbishop Saenz Lacalle respond to those words if Romero spoke them to him today? What message will the new brigadier general-archbishop give when he preaches at the confirmation of a group o young Salvadorans this year? Will they hear in his voice the voice of the Good Shepherd?

Palm Sunday and the 17th anniversary of Archbishop Romero's martyrdom fell back to back this year. As a way of promoting his message of peace, Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey rather than a horse, which was used for making war. In all his preaching, Jesus has refused to play the role of the warrior Messiah that the people of Israel expected of the anointed one of God. Time and time again Jesus opts for a nonviolent response to the violence of his occupied Palestine. When the scribes and Pharisees showed up at the temple with a woman caught in adultery, seeking Jesus' approval for her death sentence by stoning, Jesus simply bends down, putting himself in the same vulnerable position as the woman, and leaves the choice to the angry mob: If you kill her, you kill me, too. "There is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends." "The shepherd is one who lays down his life for his friends."

Over his tomb in the Cathedral of San Salvador (before it was moved to the crypt for the building's remodeling), there was a plaque that carried these words: "Monsenor Oscar Romero: Pastor, profeta y martin" Pastor, prophet and martyr. He was surely all three -- the shepherd who spoke the truth and gave his life for speaking it. Romero was aware of the enormous burden of his office, the symbolic value of his fatherly accompaniment of the poor and oppressed. And he was aware that he did not always live up to the challenge. In moments of weakness, he would be shepherd by showing the way of humility, always seeking to be a more faithful pastor to his people.

In a Sept. 8, 1978, homily, in which Romero told those who torture and whose hands are "stained with murder" that he loved them and wanted them to be converted, he also said from the depths of his shepherd's heart: "I beg forgiveness from you, my community, that I have not been able to carry out as your servant my role of bishop. I am not a master, I am not a boss, I am not an authority that imposes itself. I want to be God's servant and yours." These are not the words of a brigadier general. How many of our bishops today fall to their knees and beg forgiveness of their people?

Holy Week is passing, and we know more than ever that we live in a sinful world, a world of violence, a world of hired shepherds who, in the words of the gospel, "have no concern for the sheep." And yet we also know that Easter Sunday beckons to us from beyond the hill of Calvary, and we hear our names called to walk on in faith. It is the voice of the shepherd, and we recognize it as the one they call "the voice of the voiceless."