Romero Was Killed Mid-Mass. His Story Isn’t Over.
A bullet interrupted the consecration on March 24, 1980. Forty-six years later, the man who carried Romero’s relics is the Archbishop of New York.
Dear friends,
Letters from Leo is publishing daily Lenten reflections through Easter, available exclusively to paid subscribers.
This series is a forty-day journey of repentance, renewal, and resolve — a sustained encounter between the day’s scripture readings and the demands of the Gospel in our time.
Each reflection invites you into prayer, confronting the idols we carry and the mercy that waits on the other side.
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Thank you for reading.
“When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM.” — John 8:28
Forty-six years ago today, a priest stood at an altar in a hospital chapel in San Salvador and finished his homily. He had just told soldiers of the Salvadoran military that no one is obliged to obey an order that contradicts the law of God.
He had begged the killing to stop. He lifted the bread. He spoke the words of consecration. A single bullet tore through his chest.
St. Oscar Romero fell behind that altar on March 24, 1980. The blood of his body mingled with the blood of the Eucharist he had just consecrated. He died doing what today’s Gospel describes — being lifted up.
In the first reading from Numbers, the Israelites are dying in the desert. They have grumbled against God, and serpents are among them. Moses fashions a bronze serpent and mounts it on a pole. God tells the people: look at it, and you will live.
The remedy is strange — to gaze upon the image of the very thing that is killing you. In the Gospel, Jesus takes this image and makes it his own. “When you lift up the Son of Man,” he tells the Pharisees, “then you will realize that I AM.”
The lifting up that Jesus speaks of is the cross. The means of his execution becomes the means of the world’s salvation. God’s answer to death has always been to walk straight through it.
Oscar Romero understood this in his bones. But he had not always been a radical.
