reluctant conversion of Oscar Romero, The

DON'T BE MISTAKEN. ARCHBISHOP OSCAR ROMERO WAS AN ORDINARY MAN. when soldiers pointed guns at him or made crude threats, he sweated, he trembled, he looked for where he could hide.

Romero came to be known for his courageous and eloquent public denunciations of the atrocities and injustice committed by the military in the turbulent years before El Salvador's bitter civil war. But for much of his earlier career, he was politically cautious.

In 1968, the Latin American Catholic bishops gathered at Medellin, Colombia. They spoke of the "institutionalized sin" that afflicted and oppressed the majority of people in Latin America, and they called the whole church to a preferential option for the poor. For a long time Romero wanted nothing to do with this. He squelched community-based pastoral projects that he felt were too radical. He steadfastly protected the status quo.

Romero was named archbishop of the archdiocese of San Salvador on February 10, 1977. On February 28, a major protest of election fraud ended in bloodshed when a crowd of protesters were attacked by soldiers in the town square of the capital. Romero did not intervene or raise his voice.

Then, on March 12, 1977, a radical Jesuit priest, Rutilio Grande, was murdered along with a 72-yearold layman and a young boy. Romero had known Grande. He questioned why there was no official inquiry into the deaths. From that point forward Romero continued to ask questions which revealed that power in El Salvador lay in the hands of the wealthy-many of whom had supported him for archbishop-and that these same people tacitly sanctioned the violence that maintained their positions.

In May 1979, Romero presented the pope with seven dossiers filled with reports and documents describing assassinations, disappearances, and human rights abuses in El Salvador. On March 24, 1980, Romero was shot dead while celebrating mass in the chapel of the hospital where he lived.

Here are some glimpses of Romero, stories told by those who knew him.

-The Editors

'THE BISHOP IS COMING!'

CIUDAD BARRIOS AWOKE from its peasant slumber as soon as the sun raised its head above the horizon in the usual place.

"The bishop is coming!"

San Miguel's very first bishop, Juan Antonio Duenas y Argumedo, was coming to visit.

"Mama," said Oscar, who was still a little boy, "why don't you buy me a new shirt and a pair of pants so I can go see him?"

Nina Guadalupe de Jesus got the new clothes ready so her son would be neat and presentable. So the boy went about, here, there and everywhere, accompanying the bishop on all his rounds. The bishop was quite impressed with him.

"Oscar, come over here!" the bishop called to him in front of his townspeople.

"Yes, Monsenor?"

"Tell me, boy, what do you want to be when you grow up?"

"Well, I... I would like to be a priest!"

Then the bishop raised his hefty finger and pointed it straight at Oscar's forehead.

"You are going to be a bishop."

After marking the destiny of the boy, he went back to his mansion in San Miguel. And Ciudad Barrios went back to its drowsy sleep.

Fifty years later, Monsenor Romero touched that place on his forehead and told me, "I can still feel the touch of his finger right here."

-Carmen Chacon

BURIED IN HIS PAPERS.

I DIDN'T LIKE HIM. He was an insignificant being, a shadow that went by clinging to the walls. I don't know why, but when he arrived in San Salvador, Father Romero decided to stay in the San Jos6 de la Montania Seminary. I was part of a Jesuit community that lived there. But he never ate any of his meals with us. He would go down to the dining room at different times so that he wouldn't run into us. It was clear that he was avoiding us, and that he had arrived at the seminary laden with prejudices.

We never saw him attend anything that resembled a pastoral activity. He didn't have a parish. And he didn't go to the clergy meetings. If he did go, he would hide in some comer and never open his mouth. He was afraid of confronting the more active priests who were being radicalized by everything that was happening in the country-and there was a lot happening! But he preferred to stay in his office buried in his papers. Or to walk down the halls dressed in his black cassock, praying the breviary.

Soon after he arrived in San Salvador, we had a pastoral week that was a real shaker-upper! Everything went into high gear and became more radical. Plans, meetings, communities-a thousand things were getting under way! He stayed on the margins of all of that. Later he started to take sides, but against us. -Salvador Carranza

A PAIR OF UNDERWEAR FOR CHRISTMAS.

"THE TEACHING YOU DO is too participatory." That's what Monsenor Romero would say most often when we would talk about the work at the Los Naranjos Center. He had finally let us open it again. Sometimes he would come at me with another kind of argument:

"I've heard it said that the government is worried about this type of teaching, too."

"The government? But who should tell me what the correct teaching is? The government or my bishop? Because if it's the government, then I have no use for you. But if it's you, then I don't care what the government says!"