SAN SALVADOR (CNS): Last year, the Covid-19 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic put a damper on celebrations to mark the 40th anniversary of St. Oscar Romero’s martyrdom.
Symposiums, concerts, theatre pieces and even international pilgrimages to remember the saint came to a halt when the country abruptly shut down its airport on 17 March 2020, just days before the March 24 celebration. In an effort to keep out the Covid-19 coronavirus the president, Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez, put the country on lockdown, closing almost all buildings, including churches, in the predominantly Christian nation.
But this year, hundreds of devotees of the Salvadoran archbishop, martyred by a single bullet as he celebrated Mass in 1980, double-masked their faces—some wore face shields—and packed the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Holy Saviour in San Salvador, heading down to the crypt to touch the tomb where the saint is buried.
Some rubbed the mitre on the bronze work of art that covers his tomb, kneeled and cried in front of it as they asked for the saint’s intercession in liberating the world from the pandemic and El Salvador of the different social ills it faces today.
During a Mass commemorating the saint’s martyrdom on March 24, Archbishop Jose Luis Escobar Alas of San Salvador, said in a homily that if St. Oscar Romero were alive today, he would “advocate for an El Salvador free of impunity, corruption, one with true social justice, with opportunities for all to advance … a country free of violence and one of peace.”
