c. 2000 Religion News Service

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador _ Capping a week of somber remembrances and hopeful recommitments for social change, thousands marched by candlelight through the streets of San Salvador on Friday (March 24) to honor Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero on the 20th anniversary of his assassination.

Joined by hundreds of visitors from Latin America, the United States, Europe and Asia, Salvadorans carried banners and portraits of the man who had lost his life championing the poor and condemning human rights abuses and the excessive power of the Salvadoran military and political elite.

Many of the signs read: “Monsenor Romero Vive.” Monsignor Romero Lives.

“Through Oscar Romero, God passed through El Salvador,” said Rodolfo Hernandez, who heads the pastoral center of the Central America University in San Salvador. “There is an Oscar Romero every 100 years.”

The peaceful march was a potent reminder of how much has changed in El Salvador since Romero was killed by a single bullet to the chest on March 24, 1980, and since the end of a 12-year civil war that resulted in the deaths of more than 75,000 Salvadorans.

The mayor of San Salvador is a member of the FMLN, the former leftist guerrilla force-turned political party, and there were few armed police along the procession route. Many of those marching had not yet been born when Romero was assassinated, the victim of a hit squad aligned with the U.S.-backed Salvadoran military.

But the march also revealed that many of the problems Romero assailed _ poverty, violence, social and economic injustice _ remain unsettled issues for El Salvador. Members of the “popular” social movements marched behind banners calling for changes and reform and decrying an upturn in family violence, continued social inequities and human rights abuses.

Whether by accident or design, the march route itself seemed to evoke something of a theme of Romero’s life: the turn from a conservative, cautious priest to an emboldened advocate of El Salvador’s poor and forgotten.

The procession followed a public Mass celebrated by Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles at the Savior of the World plaza, located in an area of the city dominated by commercial banks, telecommunications headquarters and fast-food restaurants. By the end of the three-mile route to San Salvador’s central cathedral, the marchers had passed scores of homeless sleeping against the walls of abandoned and burned-out buildings.

“Romero Vive” was inscribed on those walls, too.

From there marchers passed San Salvador’s Civic Plaza _ the site of a military-led massacre following Romero’s 1980 funeral _ and then, finally, the cathedral where Romero is buried in a simple, unadorned corner tomb.

Through the night and into early Saturday morning, hundreds passed the site, placing flowers, lighting candles and touching the tomb.

Earlier that day, the cathedral hosted a solemn Mass presided by Archbishop Fernando Saenz Lacalle of San Salvador and attended by Catholic prelates from throughout Latin America, the United States, Australia, Canada, Haiti and Italy. Also attending were members of Anglican, Baptist, Lutheran Methodist and Presbyterian churches.

Those in the cathedral heard the archbishop commit the Salvadoran church again to the process of canonizing Romero, an initiative that began in 1993.

Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, who is heading efforts to have Romero named a saint, told Vatican Radio that day that he believed making Romero a saint would be “a significant gesture not only for El Salvador, but for all of Latin America and for the entire Church.”

The issue of canonization and Saenz Lacalle’s role in defining the official image of Romero was a controversial topic throughout the week, with many expressing unhappiness that the Spanish-born Saenz Lacalle, a member of the conservative Catholic order Opus Dei, had initially wanted a more quiet public commemoration of Romero, saying the process of canonization needed to take its proper course within the Vatican.

Saenz Lacalle’s public comments during the week constantly evoked Romero’s deep spirituality and suggested God had “acted through” Romero. But Saenz Lacalle did not dwell on the often angry, prophetic voice of Romero’s last years.

At a public reception welcoming the international visitors prior to the march and vigil, Saenz Lacalle acknowledged the differences, but said he hoped that all “could all work together to build peace and justice.”

Edin Martinez, executive director of the Romero Foundation, a private organization that helped organize the week’s commemoration, said public feelings for Romero were, and remain, quite strong and that not even the church could contain them.

“Oscar Romero is a symbol and a reality that transcends Salvadoran borders,” Martinez said. “He has become a universal figure.”

But if Romero is a beloved figure by many, he remains controversial and even hated by others, including some in the church, Martinez said.

“We don’t want Oscar Romero to be a distant figure in our lives, and we do run the risk of establishing a kind of `disembodied’ figure that doesn’t have anything to say to us today,” Martinez said. “We don’t want to make him a kind of distant saint, but rather to figure out what his relevance is for our lives today.”

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For many of the Savadorans and the visitors, the issue of canonization was less important _ even irrelevant _ than renewing their sense of commitment to Romero’s ideals, which they said is how Romero’s life and example will live on in them and in later generations.

“His message was simple,” said Carlos Colorado, a Salvadoran who now lives in California and returned to El Salvador for the commemoration as a member of an ecumenical delegation. “Tell the poor that they are invaluable.”

DEA END HERLINGER