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El Salvador overwhelmed in Ida’s aftermath

15 Nov 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

"A time unsurpassed in distress" is described in this Sunday's first reading. Days of torrential rains caused by Tropical Storm Ida are being blamed for at least 140 deaths in El Salvador. President Mauricio Funes declared a national emergency, describing the devastation as "incalculable." Thousands are living in shelters as a result of the disaster, and large parts of the country are without electricity and clean water, according to reports. The areas around the capital, San Salvador, and the central province of San Vicente were hit hardest. The rains washed away crops across the region, leaving thousands without a stable food supply, a representative of the U.N. World Food Program said. Access remains a major challenge as civil defense authorities said 18 bridges and many more roads had been destroyed. Funes, who has been in office only five months, blamed previous Salvadorian governments for failing to put in place the prevention measures that could have mitigated the worst effects of the floods. At least 49 of the dead were believed to be children. Source: An article by Will Grant for BBC News

rain flooding san vicente san salvador tropical storm ida mauricio funes el salvador
Commemorating Archbishop Romero’s assassination

04 Apr 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Every Good Friday Christ's suffering is heavy on Christians' hearts. For three decades Christians throughout the world have commemorated the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, murdered March 24, 1980 as he celebrated Mass during a time of bloody civil war that took the lives of at least 75,000 Salvadorans. This year, however, marked a major milestone. El Salvador's President Mauricio Funes issued an official condemnation of Romero's murder. Funes, the first left-leaning leader elected since the country's civil war ended in 1992, said the archbishop, revered by many as a martyr, was a "victim of illegal violence" at the hands of a paramilitary death squad. Source: News summaries by Ecumenical News International and World News Network

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Obama pays respects to slain archbishop Romero

03 Apr 2011 - Preaching the News for Sunday

After being anointed by the prophet Samuel, David was filled with the spirit of the Lord, the first reading tells us Sunday. Slain Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, who spoke out forcefully on behalf of the poor, is seen by many to have been a modern-day prophet filled with the Holy Spirit. At the end of his recent five-day swing through Latin America, Barack Obama became the first U.S. president to visit Romero’s crypt. Romero was gunned down while celebrating Mass on March 24, 1980 shortly after a radio broadcast in which he urged Salvadoran soldiers to stop turning their weapons on civilians in El Salvador’s civil war. The U.S. government supported the Salvadoran military with financial aid during the conflict, which took place at the height of the Cold War. Housed below the Metropolitan Cathedral, Romero's tomb is a frequent place of prayer and supplication for Salvadorans and other faithful from around the world. The case for his canonization is under consideration in Rome. The president visited the tomb while touring the national cathedral with Monsignor Jose Luis Escobar Alas, the current Salvadoran archbishop. Former guerrilla fighters who now make up the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, the rebel group-turned-political party, called the visit historic. Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes, who also accompanied Obama on the visit, is the first to be elected from the leftist party, breaking a 20-year hold by the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance in 2009. He has apologized for the Salvadoran government's role in Romero's assassination. Although many see Romero as a martyr deserving of canonization, detractors see him as a political figure manipulated by the Left. His legacy in many ways encapsulates still-simmering tensions of the civil war that was ended by United Nations-brokered peace accords 20 years ago. "How wonderful it is that President Obama comes to see our pastor!" said Marco Tulio Ramirez, 50, a clothes peddler who fought in the war and was one of several hundred people kept blocks away from the cathedral for security reasons but who still hoped to catch a glimpse of the president. "Msgr. Romero was never a communist. He was a man who died like a sheep among the wolves." Source: Articles by Tracy Wilkinson and Peter Nichols for the Los Angeles Times and Jim Kuhnhenn and Any Cabrera for the Associated Press and blog posts by Barb Fraze for Catholic News Service and Joel Schorn for SpiritCitings (VisionNetwork.org/blog/spiritcitings_blog)

barack obama mauricio funes el salvador oscar romero jose luis escobar alas
Spanish court indicts Salvadorans

12 Jun 2011 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Until the Spirit emboldened them at Pentecost, Jesus’ disciples huddled in an upper room in fear for their lives. Two decades ago, six Jesuit priests in war-torn El Salvador who spoke out fearlessly for justice had their compound broken into while they slept and were brutally murdered along with their housekeeper and her daughter. Now Spain's National Court has invoked a special law to order the arrest and trial of 20 former Salvadoran military officers for the murders. Five of the six Jesuits were naturalized Salvadorans of Spanish birth. In announcing the charges, the Spanish court cited its universal jurisdiction law, which says that some crimes are so grave they can be tried anywhere. In the indictment, Judge Eloy Velasco Nuñez said El Salvador's judicial mechanism "was a defective and widely criticized process that ended with two forced convictions and acquittals even of confessed killers." Among those indicted were a former Salvadoran defense minister. A 1993 United Nations Truth Commission report said high-ranking Salvadoran military officials were responsible for ordering the murders and their cover-up. The six priests and two women were murdered Nov. 16, 1989 at their residence on the campus of Central American University in San Salvador. The U.N. report concluded that units of the U.S.-trained Atlacatl battalion forced their way into the Jesuits' residence, ordered them into a garden, shot them, and did away with witnesses such as the housekeeper and her daughter. In San Salvador rights groups hailed the move as an important step towards justice. The judge's decision "gives us encouragement to continue the fight against impunity," said Miguel Montenegro, director of the Human Rights Commission of El Salvador. Shortly before he was killed, one of the slain Jesuits, Ignacio Martin Baro, spoke to CNN about the chilling effect of the long-running Salvadoran civil war. "We have become used to violence," said. "We have become used to living in a very dangerous world. We have learned to live, accepting death, extraordinary abnormal death, into our lives." Sources: Articles by Catholic News Service, Agence France Presse, and Al Goodman for CNN

spain el salvador jesuits ignacio martin baro eloy velasco nuñez miguel montenegro murders
El Salvador gangs up for peace

22 Jul 2012 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Christ “is our peace” and “broke down the dividing wall of enmity” the reading from the Letter to the Ephesians proclaims this Sunday. Warring gangs that caused El Salvador’s murder rate to skyrocket in recent years finally had enough of enmity and announced an improbable peace pact four months ago. Brokered in part by a Roman Catholic bishop, the agreement already has cut the nation’s murder rate by half. Relentless tit-for-tat murders between El Salvador's two largest street gangs—"Calle 18" and "Mara Salvatrucha"—made the country the most murderous in the world last year after neighboring Honduras, also ravaged by gang violence. But that changed when Victor Garcia, from the Calle 18 gang, along with elders from Mara Salvatrucha, declared an unprecedented truce four months ago. "We've been through things that have changed us. It is a waste of life, those who have died in this conflict," said Garcia, 39 and one of the gang’s longest surviving members. Garcia and Aristides Umanzor from Mara Salvatrucha, each backed by 15 of their top lieutenants, asked Msgr. Fabio Colindres, a Catholic bishop in the capital city of San Salvador, to serve as a mediator. In March the gangs surprised the country by releasing a joint statement declaring an end to violence and pledging to freeze recruitment of new adolescent members, especially in poor neighborhoods and around schools. Since then, the change has been dramatic. According to government reports, an estimated 800 lives have been saved as a result of the peace, and communities feel significantly safer. "We aren't demobilizing, we'll always be gangsters," Garcia said from a prison in Quezaltepeque where he is serving out a 28-year sentence. "But we are quitting crime little by little as long as we can find jobs and a chance to reenter society." Sources: Articles by Hilary Hurd for Foreign Policy and Nelson Renteria for Reuters

Violence el salvador calle 18 gangs