📍Hospital Divina Providencia, Calle La Reforma, San Salvador, El Salvador
1917 – 1980“I was born in 1917 in Ciudad Barrios, El Salvador, and ordained as a Catholic priest in 1942. For most of my career I was a conservative parish priest. My conversion to the theology of the poor came slowly, accelerated by the assassination of my close friend Rutilio Grande in 1977. I became Archbishop of San Salvador that year and found myself in an impossibly dangerous position: the church was the only institution willing to speak for the poor, and speaking for the poor meant opposing the government and the military. I was shot while celebrating Mass on the 24th of March 1980. I had been warned. I had said publicly that a priest who does not risk death has not followed Jesus. The San Salvador cathedral and the hospital chapel where I died were the geography of a life that chose witness over safety.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons
Sources: Brockman, J. Romero: A Life (1989), Orbis Books; Romero, O. The Violence of Love (1988, translated James Brockman), Harper & Row