Óscar Romero and Catholic Social Teaching explores the life, mission, and writings of martyred Salvadorian archbishop St. Óscar Romero in the light of contemporary work for justice and human development. Editor Todd Walatka brings together fourteen leading scholars on both Romero and Catholic social teaching, combining essays that contextualize Romero’s engagement historically and focus on the challenges facing Christian communities today.
It was a watershed moment for the Catholic Church in El Salvador. In June 1970, the Archdiocese of San Salvador sponsored a “National Pastoral Week.” Among this gathering of 123 laypeople, religious women, and diocesan and religious priests, were a cross-section of the emerging ecclesial leaders who had been engaged in the innovative pastoral initiatives of the previous decade. Ignacio Ellacuría, one of the leaders of the Jesuit community who would eventually become the rector (president) of the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas (UCA), gave one of the opening addresses. Edgard Beltrán was one of the organizers and initial presenters. He, along with José Marins, worked full-time giving courses on the Medellín pastoral model of CEB’s and represent a vital font for liberation theology throughout Latin America.
Many of those who had worked in the CEB’s attended. They ranged from members of international religious orders such as Bernardo Boulang, Plácido Erdozaín, Juan Ramón Vega, Lawrence Egan, and Juan Macho, to Salvadoran priests Chencho and Higinio Alas, Ricardo Urioste, and Rutilio Grande. Though led mostly by clerics, laymen Rosendo Manzanares and Hector Dada presented on matters relating to the nation’s reality. The national pastoral week signified both an affirmation of the projects that had begun in the 1960s and an impulse for greater cohesion and support for the work that would flourish in the 1970s.
Though much of it still operated under the general rubric of “development,” what differentiated the work connected to the Pastoral Week was how it was tied to empowering those at the grassroots in projects such as education initiatives, farming cooperatives, and the formation of base communities. In 1961, Archbishop Chávez had initiated the “escuelas radiofónicas,” which were approximately 400 schools in 62 parishes in San Salvador and San Vicente. The main objective of these schools was to provide education on primary subjects such as reading and math. In addition to the escuelas, the Archdiocese under Archbishop Chávez supported a vast cooperative movement. One outstanding example was the work of José Romero Maeda, who, in the 1960s, facilitated the creation of 12 cooperatives in Chalatenango with membership totaling 2,500 farmworkers. These cooperatives, part of a larger national movement supported by Chávez called the “Foundation for the Promotion of Cooperatives” (FUNPROCOOP), aimed at economic development for small landholding, but they also included cultivation of leadership, administrative skills, community organization, and more communication between farmworkers in the country’s other regions.
As the implementation of Medellín made itself felt in El Salvador, the pastoral work of empowerment and community-building among farmworkers and urban poor intensified and received greater theological support. Christian Smith has noted that the immense growth of liberation theology from 1968 to 1972 came in part because of the “aggressive educational work of CELAM.” CELAM’s most important educational instrument was the Pastoral Institute of Latin America (IPLA—Instituto Pastoral Latinoamericana) in Quito, Ecuador established and directed by bishops Marcos McGrath of Panama and Leonidas Proaño of Ecuador. Liberation theologians such as Juan Luis Segundo, José Comblin, Segundo Galilea and Gustavo Gutiérrez were instructors there. A key element that would permeate Salvadoran pastoral efforts was the adoption of the “see-judge-act” methodology. Developed in Belgium under Cardinal Cardijn, it was enshrined in Catholic social teaching in Pope John XXIII’s Mater et Magistra (1961). As part of the more than five hundred pastoral workers trained in Quito, Frs. Chencho Alas and Rutilio Grande represent two outstanding examples of the impact of the IPLA on El Salvador, particularly in applying its liberative education and ecclesial base community model and employing the see-judge-act method.
After returning from the IPLA, Chencho Alas became pastor of the Santa Lucía parish in Suchitoto in December 1968, where he worked with Frs. Rutilio Sánchez and Jorge Miranda. During these years, the team’s focus was the empowerment of lay people, and Paulo Freire’s method of conscientization (taught at the IPLA) was employed. Visiting the small villages throughout the region, Alas and the others would get groups to meet and nominate candidates for courses on the Bible, catechesis, leadership, and social topics geared to their lives. These leaders would then return to their communities and carry out pastoral work, including the distribution of the Eucharist. Shortly after 3,000 farmworkers in Suchitoto protested against the land speculation of Roberto Hill, Alas would be kidnapped and beaten on his way to El Salvador’s first agrarian reform congress in 1970. It was a double conscientization for Alas. As he became aware of the plight of Salvadoran farmworkers, he also realized the intransigence of the Salvadoran government and military that protected the interests of the elite.
Bengoechea and Boulang would take a leave from Suchitoto to prepare the way in Aguilares for Rutilio Grande, who, returning from the IPLA and a brief visit to the Panamanian pastoral work of Leo Mahon at San Miguelito, assumed responsibilities as pastor. There, with a team of Jesuits, Grande would start base communities with the same Freirean-inflected conscientization. The conscientization process that moved forward was mutual—just as farmworkers were empowered, so were the priests and pastoral workers who acquired a sharper analysis of Salvadoran reality. Grande would become one of the leading voices for the pastoral work inspired by Medellín, which included a stinging critique of the elites and a government that protected their interests.
(excerpted from chapter 2)