Profeta

�En nombre de Dios, pues, y en nombre de este sufrido pueblo cuyos lamentos suben hasta el cielo cada d�a m�s tumultuosos, les suplico, les ruego, les ordeno en nombre de Dios: �cese la represi�n...!�

Mons. Romero, 23 March 1980, in his final homily before his assasination.

Back then, we believed that the Cold War was cold. We didn�t realize that the Cold War was being fought hot with blood and bullets in Central America.

The US and the Vatican backed the murderous government of El Salvador, equating the poor Marxist farmers to the godless enemy in the shadowy Soviet Kremlin. We didn't understand the situation in Latin America was different than it was in Eastern Europe. We didn't get that the capitalist government in El Salvador was evil, evil, evil. John Paul didn't get it until Romero himself took a bullet to the chest.

Mons. Romero called for his people to turn away from evil. He stood on the word and spoke truth to power. They killed him.

We know he was a martyr. We know he was a prophet. There's a movement to have him cannonized as a saint, but to the people of the Lempa River basin, the debate at the Vatican couldn't be more irrelevant. We already know.