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Wednesday 20th April 2005 www.delyndemocracy.blogspot.com 'Popus Dei' 25 years ago: Oscar Romero assassinated whilst practicing liberation theology in El Salvador 'Darth Vader of the Vatican bureaucracy' becomes Pope On Monday, 24 March 1980, the Archbishop of San Salvador, Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdamez, was celebrating mass in the Chapel of the Hospital de la Divina Providencia when he was killed by a professional assassin who fired a single .22 or .223 calibre bullet from a red, four door Volkswagen vehicle. The bullet hit its mark, causing the Archbishop's death from severe bleeding. "I have often been threatened with death," Archbishop Oscar Romero (pictured above) told a Guatemalan reporter two weeks before his assassination. "If they kill me, I shall arise in the Salvadoran people. If the threats come to be fulfilled, from this moment I offer my blood to God for the redemption and resurrection of El Salvador. Let my blood be a seed of freedom and the sign that hope will soon be reality." The US government sponsored and trained such right-wing death squads and assassins in places like the School of the Americas. Romero, however, got no support from the old or the new pope despite his delegations to the Vatican. In fact, one of the first 'doctrinal' campaigns of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now known as Pope Benedict XVI) was actually against liberation theology, which had gained ground among priests such as Romero in Latin America and elsewhere as a means of involving the Church in social activism and human rights issues. Useful links: The UN Truth Commission on Romero's Murder Oscar Romero: Bishop of the Poor The Opus Dei Connection 'Oscar Romero: Memories in Mosaic' by Maria Lopez Vigil, Forward by Jon Sobrino. (Cafod) __________________________________ Delyn Democracy: The Political Watchdog www.delyndemocracy.blogspot.com