A Pilgrimmage to El Salvador by Dick Heidkamp

 

A PILGRIMAGE TO EL SALVADOR

reflections on travel to El Salvador, March 2005
by Dick Heidkamp

 

            It   was a tired group of pilgrims that met at 4 A.M. Easter Monday at O'Hare.  We were a mixed bag of Chicagoans - old and young, Catholics and Protestants, priests and ministers -  some twenty-seven strong.  We were heading to El Salvador for the 25th anniversary commemoration of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero.

            My wife, Ann, and I were anxious to join our Salvadoran brothers and sisters for the special Mass and procession in honor of Archbishop Romero who was killed by a sniper's bullet as he was celebrating Mass on March 25, 1980.

            In addition to honoring Romero, we wanted to experience the ‘reality' of present day El Salvador.  Hosted by the Center for Interchange and Solidarity (CIS), we were able to meet with church groups, women's groups, political parties, business and union leaders, economists and faith based communities.  And learn we did!

            El Salvador is the smallest and most densely populated country in Latin America with a population of 6 million.  the illiteracy rate is 34% and 41% live in poverty.  Seventy five thousand Salvadorans were killed in the twelve year civil war which ended with the Peace Accords of 1992. In 2001 the country suffered two devastating earthquakes.  The $2.5 billion sent to the families in El Salvador by the more than 2 million Salvadorans living in the United States is what keeps the economy afloat.  The country has the greatest gap between the rich and the poor in all the Americas and forty cents out of every dollar of income must go to pay their debt.

                        The week began with outstanding presentations at the Jesuit University by by noted theologians Father Gustav Gutierrez and Father Jon Sobrino.  Father Gutierrez explained that the "preferential option for the poor" means standing in solidarity with the poor and rejecting poverty as immoral.  Poverty, he said, is deeply inhuman because an immense part of humanity is not respected or recognized as children of God.  The poor are seen as nonentities, as insignificant.  Father Gutierrez said that we must look at the world from the point of view of the poor and that the faces of the poor are the faces of Christ.

            Father Sobrino remarked that  "with Romero, God  passed through El Salvador".  Romero was priest, prophet, profoundly biblical and spiritual and God's instrument and he serves as an example of solidarity and true Christian values not only for his own people, but across the world.  Romero said shortly before he was killed that "if they kill me, I will rise again in the Salvadoran community". 

            Never were these words more true than when we gathered that Saturday evening for the liturgy of the Eucharist in the Savior of the World Plaza with tens of thousands of Salvadorans.  The air was alive with the spirit of Romero.  Chants of "Romero! Viva! rang out in the night as we processed the two mlles to the Cathedral.

            We knew then that  "Saint " Oscar Romero of the Americas was still defending the poor and walking with his people in their daily struggle for their fundamental economic and social rights.  We walked with our Salvadoran friends too, not to solve their problems or to ‘fix' their situation.  Quite the opposite.  We needed them more than they needed us.  Their stories might be all they had but they were powerful stories that taught us what church means - that we are all brothers and sisters,  and we are all loved sons and daughters of God.

Suggested reading:

            Oscar  Romero    Memories in Mosaic

                        by Maria Lopez Vigil        Epica Publishers

Suggested movie:

            Romero      starring the late Raul Julia.