Episcopal-affiliated human rights organization hosts El Salvador pilgrimage in honor of Óscar Romero

[Episcopal News Service] During the 45th anniversary week of St. Óscar Romero’s March 24 martyrdom, Cristosal hosted an ecumenical group on a four-day pilgrimage in El Salvador to commemorate his life and teachings.

“San Romero is a martyr and a saint, but he is more than that. I feel like there are certain faiths or churches that want to put him on an altar far away from the people, but San Romero is among the people. He had a preferential treatment for the poor and he struggled for the people of El Salvador,” Fátima Placas, Cristosal’s former education director who now works in a crisis consulting role, told Episcopal News Service. Placas, who is Salvadoran, was the pilgrimage’s primary coordinator.

Cristosal is an Episcopal-affiliated independent nonprofit committed to defending human rights and promoting democratic rule of law in Central America. Its executive director, Noah Bullock, is also an Episcopal Church missionary.

Romero, the former archbishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of San Salvador, is widely recognized today as a champion of liberation theology. He was a vocal critic of social injustice and the violence between the Salvadoran government’s armed forces and leftist guerrillas that led to a 12-year civil war beginning in 1979. Romero brought global awareness to the killings, human rights abuses and disappearances of civilians in the early days of the war.

“Romero was very comfortable being around people who are poor or displaced or victims of violence, and that’s part of what Cristosal tries to be, too. Romero was about inviting the church to become involved with people who are suffering from human rights in a way that isn’t patronizing,” the Rev. Geoffrey Curtiss, a retired priest in the Diocese of Newark and a Cristosal board member, told ENS.

Romero’s outspokenness led to his assassination on March 24, 1980, when an unknown gunman shot him in the heart while he was celebrating Mass at the Hospital of the Divine Providence in San Salvador. Six days later, during Romero’s funeral at the Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador, more gunmen shot at the more than 250,000 mourners, causing a stampede and at least 31 fatalities.

Fourteen Americans traveled to El Salvador for the March 21-24 pilgrimage. They visited faith-based communities, attended worship services, processions, and vigils, and talked with Salvadorans who had firsthand memories of Romero.

On the first day, the pilgrims visited the Hospital of the Divine Providence, followed by the Museum of the Word and Image in San Salvador, a museum dedicated to collecting and preserving memories of El Salvador’s civil war. The pilgrims also visited a museum dedicated to Romero’s life, located inside Central American University, San Salvador, a Jesuit-operated private school. While there, they spoke with Sonia Suyapa Pérez Escapini, a theologian and director of the university’s theology department, and members of the Association for Promoting Human Rights of El Mozote.

The pilgrims spent the second day, March 22, visiting an organization that supports the development of communities in the El Bálsamo mountain range in Santa Tecla, La Libertad. While they were there, a community of families who were displaced during the civil war hosted a special family-friendly commemoration of the 45th anniversary of Romero’s martyrdom.

On day three, the pilgrims traveled to the northern part of El Salvador to visit the Episcopal-Anglican church in Carrizal, a growing congregation that celebrates and preserves its Indigenous ancestral culture and Nàhuatl language. They spent the afternoon engaged in conversation with members of a nearby Catholic parish who use music to promote faith and the fight for dignity and justice. The Anglican Episcopal Diocese of El Salvador is part of the Province of Central America and is led by Bishop Juan David Alvarado, who also serves as primate. 

March 24, Romero’s feast day, was a day of prayer, reflection and devotion. It included a morning Eucharist and walking the Stations of the Cross through San Salvador’s historic center. The procession towards the Catholic Cathedral of San Salvador culminated in an ecumenical Mass led by Alvarado and visiting Romero’s tomb. On the way, procession organizers delivered an anti-mining petition to the Supreme Court of Justice. The pilgrimage then met with human rights advocates who work with Cristosal and learned more about the organization’s year-round work. The pilgrimage concluded later that day.

“We’re most grateful for the people who have opened up their own spaces to share with us their reflections and how the legacy of San Romero drives them, and why he’s still a beacon of truth and justice and human dignity,” Tarrah Palm, Cristosal’s interim director of development, told ENS.

Founded in 2000 as a partnership between El Salvador and the United States, Cristosal, from its base in San Salvador, assists internally displaced people and provides legal and accompaniment services to individuals and families whose human rights have been violated by the state. It also has operations in Guatemala and Honduras.

Cristosal operated a humanitarian assistance program until February, when U.S. President Donald Trump ordered a 90-day pause on more than $60 billion in foreign aid to evaluate it against U.S. foreign policy goals. The foreign aid freeze forced Cristosal to cut most of its staff and terminate its humanitarian assistance program, which provided protection and reintegration services to 1,600 internally displaced people. 

Following the Trump administration’s cuts, Bullock, the executive director, told ENS the organization would continue its humanitarian assistance work through philanthropic support and individual donations.

“The program was so valuable to so many vulnerable people who still need help,” said Placas, whose position as Cristosal’s education director was eliminated amid the staff cuts.

Placas, Curtiss and Palm all said Romero’s teachings and emphasis on advocating for the poor and oppressed remain relevant today amid global humanitarian crises.

“His preaching is something that we can absolutely relate to right now, with the wars internationally, and with the disappearance of people in El Salvador, and with the people who have been incarcerated in El Salvador without due process, and with the silences of the hierarchies of the government,” Placas said. “What Monseñor Romero fought for is not something that’s in the past but is still in process now. That’s why his ideas are so powerful and still embraced by every generation.”

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.