Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76Plough Quarterly • Winter 2015 65 human rights. Romero, it seems, underwent two conversions: first a personal conversion, characterized by his gradual decision in San- tiago de María to assume personal responsibility for the suffering of his people; and second, a socio-political conversion following the assassi- nation of Rutilio. After this second conversion, Romero began to publicly address the system- atic and ongoing violations of human rights in the country. Ellacuría, reflecting on this second conver- sion of his former opponent Romero, would later write that Rutilio Grande’s killing con- fronted the archbishop with three imperatives:16 1. A demand to grasp the reality of Father Grande’s priestly ministry with the peasant farm workers of Aguilares and why that min- istry led to his death; 2. An ethical demand to assume public respon- sibility as part of his mission as archbishop to accompany and defend the terrorized peasants of Aguilares and El Salvador whom Father Grande left behind; and 3. A praxis-related demand as archbishop to help those peasants, both within the church and in Salvadoran society. Archbishop Romero, Spiritual Leader of El Salvador Three months after Father Grande’s death, ­ Archbishop Romero drove to the deceased priest’s parish of Aguilares. The town had recently been subjected to a full-scale siege by the military in an action appropriately named Operation Rutilio. Soldiers had taken over the town, shot an elderly sacristan as he rang the church bells, arrested and deported the town’s three Jesuit priests, and assassinated about fifty people including campesino leaders. In coming to ­ Aguilares, Archbishop Romero’s mission was to install a new pastor and celebrate Mass with the terrorized community. 16 Ignacio Ellacuría, “Monseñor Romero, un enviado de Dios para salvar a su pueblo,” Escritos teológicos, III (UCA Editores, 2002), 93–100; reprinted from ECA 19 (1990): 5–10. and he was assigned as pastor to a parish church in the town of Aguilares. Over the next five years this parish was to become the site of a new Jesuit ministry among rural farm workers, the poorest Salvadorans. Father Grande had traded the com- fortable confines of the diocesan seminary for a dangerous new rural ministry among the coun- try’s increasingly restive farm workers. As a result of these and similar initiatives, Father Grande, Ignacio ­ Ellacuría, and other Jesuits were soon accused of being “communists in sheep’s clothing” by organizations like the Committee for the Defense of the Fatherland. This explosive rhetoric reaped its predictable harvest on March 12, 1977, when Father Grande was ambushed by the national police, taken from his jeep, and executed. Less than three weeks before Rutilio Grande’s killing, Romero had been appointed as arch- bishop of San Salvador, to the consternation of those priests who had been most active in advocating for the poor. Both they and the political conservatives who had applauded Romero’s appointment were in for a surprise. As Romero later put it, “Father Grande’s death and the death of other priests after his impelled me to take an energetic attitude before the government.”15 Despite the archbishop’s differ- ences with the Jesuits, he and Grande had been friends. “I remember that because of Father Grande’s death I made a statement that I would not attend any official acts until this situation [ascertaining who had killed Rutilio] was clari- fied.” Thus, “a rupture was produced, not by me with the government but [by] the government itself because of its attitude.” Here Romero differentiates his earlier “gradual evolution” toward a personal prefer- ential option for the poor from his decision following Rutilio’s death to “respond to the situation in the country as a pastor” by pub- licly denouncing the government’s abuse of 15 Interview of Archbishop Óscar Romero, December 14, 1979, Tommie Sue Mont- gomery, Revolution in El Salvador: From Civil Strife to Civil Peace (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), 95. Archbishop Óscar Romero (August 15, 1917– March 24, 1980) 1977–1980