Two Catholic priests, Rutilio Grande and Cosme Spessotto, as well as two lay people, murdered in El Salvador for having defended the poor at the dawn of the civil war which ravaged the country between 1980 and 1992, were beatified on Saturday in San Salvador in front of thousands of devotees.
A large oratory, built in palm leaves to recall the martyrdom and the simplicity of these victims of the civil war, was built on the place of the Divine Savior of the World, emblematic of the capital.
It was here that the four men were proclaimed “blessed” in front of 6,000 faithful, including priests and nuns, in an apostolic letter read by Salvadoran Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chavez, on behalf of Pope Francis.
“From now on they are called blessed and they are celebrated every year in the places and according to the rules established by law”, specifies the letter of the pope.
In this way, Grande, her sacristan Manuel Solorzano and Nelson Rutilio Lemus were assigned their feast day on March 12 to commemorate their martyrdom. The Spessotto party will be on June 10.
“The fact that the Church officially accepts them as martyrs is that their lives were correct, that they took risks to help the poor and that they were faithful to a call that cost them their lives” , Rosa Chavez told AFP.
For Doris Yanira Barahona, 63, a devout Catholic, this beatification represents “the well-deserved recognition of two men who were much loved for their work in difficult times, men who worked to defend the most deprived”.
The Jesuit Rutilio Grande, born in 1928 in El Paisnal, a locality located 40 kilometers from the capital San Salvador, was appointed in 1972 parish priest of Aguilares, a region of sugar cane plantations.
On the spot, he discovers the ill-treatment suffered by agricultural workers and denounces during his masses the injustices, the poverty wages and the interminable working days, testify to the faithful who knew him.
On March 12, 1977, while driving on a road in El Paisnal, the priest was shot and killed by members of the former National Guard, now disbanded.
Two peasants were also killed: his sacristan Manuel Solorzano, aged 72, and Nelson Rutilio Lemus, aged 16, who would accompany him in death as in recognition by the Church.
These assassinations mark the beginning of the repression launched in the middle of the Cold War by the military power and carried out by death squads against members of the Catholic Church who denounce social injustices.
Torch
After the death of his friend Rutilio, the Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Arnulfo Romero, took up the torch and became “the voice of the voiceless”. This commitment will also be worth to him to be assassinated in February 1980 whereas he celebrates a mass. He was canonized in 2018.
Another priest was beatified on Saturday in San Salvador, the Italian Cosme Spessotto.
The Franciscan arrived in the country in 1950 and was appointed a few years later parish priest of San Juan Nonualco, about fifty kilometers from the capital.
In the early 1980s, he received death threats. “He defended all those who were in danger,” recalls one of his followers, Miriam Marroquin. He was assassinated on June 14, 1980.
By these two beatifications, Pope Francis wishes to pay homage to the Latin American Church which is committed to the defense of the poor and against social injustices, recalls the Vatican.
During his trip to Panama in 2019, Francis told a group of Jesuits that at the entrance to his room he had a frame with a piece of cloth stained with Oscar Romero’s blood and the notes of a catechesis by Rutilio Grande.
“In both cases (the assassins) were agents of the State”, police officers, affirms Cardinal Rosa Chavez who says he received letters from them “asking for forgiveness” while they were in prison.