Fr. Jon Sobrino, keeper of the flame for his Jesuit brothers and their two coworkers, murdered in 1989 on the campus of the University of Central America in San Salvador, offered these words on March 19 to a church in desperate need of a way forward. Conversion and hope were his keynote on the 30th anniversary of the death of Archbishop Oscar Romero, martyred in 1980 as he celebrated Mass.
Sobrino reminded his audience (all of us) that the seed for “another church” was planted almost 50 years ago by Pope John XXIII, whose dream of renewal began with an even more radical dream -- that the church be known as the “church of the poor.” Expressed before the Second Vatican Council began in 1963, the idea faded but then germinated in another radical phrase, “the people of God,” which gave notice to a monarchical church at war with the modern world that it was to be birthed from museum to mission, from fortress of faith to a “new Pentecost” for millions of startled Catholics.
“The church of the poor” emerged again in 1968 at the regional meeting of bishops with Pope Paul VI in Colombia. Medellín’s famous phrase, “God’s option for the poor,” stirred a revolution in thinking and acting for some bishops, theologians, ministers and grass-roots catechists struggling to confront the vast poverty and brutal violence of entrenched interests in Latin America. It was only an idea until it was embodied in Brazil, Bolivia, Peru and in tiny El Salvador, where 59-year-old Oscar Romero, in the twilight of his quiet ecclesial career, was appointed (not unlike Pope John) as placeholder prelate until Rome could find a real leader. The rest is history, a heartbreaking tale of missed opportunities and martyred dreams.
The church of the poor has always been a road less traveled, and this has also meant the tragic rejection of God’s invitation to recover the only church Jesus would ever recognize, needed now more than ever in a world so crucified by exploitation and genocide that even Jesus would have been staggered as he peered from his cross down the path his followers would so often choose in order to wield power and wealth in the name of God.
It is this church that is in serious trouble now, trapped like a silkworm in its pupal cloak and paralyzed by protocol from even acknowledging its predicament. Hope lies within reach but only on the other side of a rebirth, so late term only the Holy Spirit can midwife it. But recall there is precedent for this in Jesus’ words to his followers that death and rebirth are the rule and not the exception.
Sobrino has said it for us: “The church of Jesus is the one that God wants. It is both necessary and possible. We, the people of God, say, ‘Give us Jesus back!’ A great cloud of witnesses with Romero in their midst has returned him to us. We feel like being good.”
