Diocese of San Cristóbal de Las Casas denounces context of violence, risk and harassment of those who defend life and Mother Earth

349

This March 24 we commemorate 43 years of the assassination of the pastor and friend of the Salvadoran people, of the people of America and of our people.

Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero, a simple man who deepened his faith in the closeness of the poor, oppressed, mistreated, and suffering people. Friend and brother of those who fight for justice. Committed to the project of the Kingdom of God until he gave his life and rose again in the town of San Salvador. Reasons enough for the Church to proclaim him San Romero de América. The solidity of his testimony has touched us and he is, for our peoples, Shepherd and Friend, companion in our struggles and our hopes, Romero stated:

“Nothing matters as much to me as human life”

One of the fundamental thoughts in his preaching as bishop was human life in the face of the tragedy with which it was hit in El Salvador, the same human life that we continue to see at risk today in our families, communities, and towns.

Power, impunity, greed, easy triumphs, undue gains, pleasures against dignity, vanity, pride, complicit silences are the weapons with which threats are made and we can notice those gaps that cause agony in the people of our town, who have disappeared, lifted, threatened, displaced and forgotten in Sister Mother Earth, bathed in mourning. Faced with this, nothing can matter as much as human life also to us and we who call ourselves Christians. Faced with easy temptations, we are called by baptism to take care of life, to save it, to defend it from all threats, courageously supporting God’s dream.

“It is God’s will that all his children be happy”

Romero said in his homily on September 10, 1978. We are sons and daughters of God, that is our condition as human beings, no one escapes that dignity, in it is our freedom and the beginning of true happiness.

Christ, beloved Son, shows us the way to triumph over evil projects, clings to God’s ideals: fraternity, solidarity, sharing, placing the smallest, women, the center of life, the poor, fragile and sick, Jesus overcomes temptations on behalf of all men without escaping from the path of the cross, offering his own life so that ours may be saved.

Salvation then means becoming Christs in Christ, loving life itself, taking up the cross of responsibility, simple work, love for Mother Earth, respect for children, youth, women and men of all ages and nationalities because we share with everyone the Common Home.

With the same love of Christ who loved us first, each person must assume the freedom of the gifts received and of the functions that correspond to him so that he contributes his job, without pretensions to dominate anyone, earning and eating with justice the bread that need your family.

“There are the powerful… when it comes to torturing, killing, massacring…offering to God power, to God money, so many victims, so much blood…Jesus defeats evil and recovers paradise when all men are faithful servants of the project of God”

(Homily of Saint Oscar Romero, March 16, 1980)

Christ is present history, source of freedom and human dignity, in every woman and man who embodies God’s dream, working for life, promoting solidarity, hospitality and fraternity, awakening human rights, proclaiming what is fair without leave nothing and no one out.

God fulfills his promises, God does not abandon his people. In what we are living today, through his daughters and sons who work for peace and fight for justice, God is making our history of salvation new, no other empire has a place in our people.

As Saint Romero teaches us with his testimony “Christ is Lord, only before Christ must one kneel, only aspire to Christ. Say it with your lips and with your life. Do not adore anyone else, only on your knees before Christ, never before men “

Stop the persecution and harassment against those who promote and defend life!

Enough of violent and murdered women! No one should be treated as a foreigner, we are all brothers, there are no borders for humanity!

Disappear bars, canteens and all kinds of drugs that narcotize the conscience!

We demand the responsibility of the State to locate our brothers and so that there are no more disappearances! We demand security in our territory so that the forced displacement! Impunity is not a condition of dignity!

The Earth is the sacred space that we inhabit, stop the mistreatment, sale and destruction of our Sister and Mother Earth! We demand a territory free of megaprojects!

Source: Fray Bartolome de las Casas