An Archbishop Without Fear

Romero fights for the peasants

Even by Central American standards, El Salvador is a vastly overpopulated, poverty-ridden feudal society. The elite 1.9% of the population, which owns 57.5% of the land, sells cash crops abroad while at home hunger and malnutrition are endemic. The oligarchy's prosperity depends upon plentiful cheap labor from landless, job-hungry campesinos, and, fearing bloody rebellion, it will do almost anything to prevent the peasantry from organizing. To eliminate political dissent, a sweeping new law decrees prison for anyone who perturbs the "tranquillity or security of the country" or "the stability of public values."

The people are left with one powerful ally who is not intimidated: Oscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdames, 60, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Salvador. Typically, high-ranking Latin churchmen mute their protests; some are merely props of their regimes. Though many priests and some bishops have made brave stands, Romero, since he took office early last year, has been the most outspoken archbishop in Latin America.

Just back home from a meeting with Pope Paul last fortnight, Romero ascended the pulpit of his still unfinished cathedral and unleashed one of his regular hour-long sermons about the tyranny and terror all around him. He is a small man and his voice is low-keyed, but it is strong and steady. Newspapers almost daily vilify him as corrupt, insane, as a Communist, as a man who "sells his soul to the Devil." They never print the news his sermons contain.

Mothers of political prisoners are continuing then-hunger strike at the Salvadorean Red Cross, he reports, and two laymen who appeared to support them have disappeared. Two peasants have been beaten to death. Two priests on pastoral missions and a professor of medicine have been seized by the police, the latter also denied necessary medical treatment. On and on goes his litany of outrage.

Romero, a telegraph operator's son who entered seminary at 13, was known as a conservative but also as a man of the people. He started speaking out as soon as he became archbishop--and had reason to. Within weeks a priest and two companions were machine-gunned, their bodies riddled with the type of bullets used by the police. The right-wing "White Warriors' Union," a pro-government vigilante group with ties to business, killed another priest to avenge an assassination by left-wing terrorists. Next, the White Warriors vowed to execute the 47 Jesuits in El Salvador unless they left the country in 30 days. The Jesuits stayed, and so far none have been murdered, but it is clear that they, indeed all active Catholics, face harassment, torture and death at the hands of the vigilantes, the national police and the dreaded 50,000-member "Orden" militia. This past Easter at least 29 people were killed in a vicious raid on an area where the Christian Peasants' Federation was active.

"The archbishop is at war with the government," complains an affluent auto dealer. Romero denies this, although a year ago he boycotted the inauguration of President General Carlos Humberto Romero (no kin) and has yet to meet him. As the archbishop explained it to TIME's Bernard Diederich: "The conflict is between the state and the people. The church is simply trying to defend the people." Wealthy Salvadoreans, Mass-going Catholics all, are "afraid of losing their privileges" and "confused about what is right and wrong," the archbishop explains. Behind him on an office wall were huge photos of the two priests who were murdered last year and a banner reading: HE WHO GIVES HIS LIFE FOR ME IS SAVED.

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