Romero

The Role of Church During the Salvadoran Civil: Monsignor Romero and his Relation to Theology of Liberation.
The Salvadoran Civil War was one of the bloodiest and longest events in the history of Latin America after the Guatemalan Civil War. The conflict lasted from 1979 to 1992, left a number of casualties of approximately 75,000 people, and a country in ashes. The war was the conflict betweenthe armed forces of the government and the guerrilla forces of the Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional (FMLN). It started after the fraudulent elections of the Coronel Arturo Armando Molina (1972). When his term started, he focused on repressing the communist political parties that wanted to work for a social reform. This aroused the anger of people, who started to organize groupsand demonstrations that demanded fair election and improvement in the social conditions of the popular classes. The government responded to their demands with savage violence, focusing primarily in the oppression of campesinos –peasants- because they were the ones who supported the revolutionary forces of the FMLN. During this time, the agricultures of El Salvador were facing terrible economicinequity. The government tried to solve it with the Land Reform of 1976 but it was not enough to alleviate the situation. After they failed with the reform, the government did not launch any other program. They instead, replied to the consequent political unrest with the suspension of constitutional rights, and the formation of the paramilitary death squads, who were in charge of assassinating the“subversives” in order to discourage them from doing any anti-government manifestations. These actions alienated the Salvadoran population even more and caused many people in the Catholic Church to start denouncing the government’s actions. The church, up until the end of the 1960s had never taken an active role in the politics of the country, neither had spoke clearly to defend the rights of itspeople. However, when the Civil War started to take over in the late 1970s, priests and members of the Salvadoran Catholic Church started to spoke up for the people and against the government actions. The Salvadoran Church went from being a conservative institution to become the refugee of those without voices. One of its most fervent advocates was Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero, who during his shorttime as the Bishop of San Salvador manifested his deep discontent with the situation and his support to the theology of liberation and the people. This essay will discuss the role of church and its politicization during the Salvadoran Civil War, and the work of Monsignor Romero in Catholic Church of El Salvador.
From 1962 to 1968, the Roman Catholic Church went through a time of massiveself-reflection that reshaped its mission in society. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), also known as the Vatican II, provided the church with guidelines for change. The Vatican II created a constitution (Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World) which stated that the church’s responsibility is to act in pro of the poor and the weak; and that “ poor individuals and poor nations havethe right to have political equality” this statement was particularly directed to the Church in Latin America, and called them to seek for “ecclesiastical forms that could embody the church’s concern for social justice.” In 1968, the Latin American Church met in Medellin, Colombia to discuss the ideas of the Vatican II and the reality of Latin America. The outcome of Medellin was the agreement ofthe Bishops that the Church must take “a preferential option for the poor”. They also announced their support to “base ecclesiastic communities” and the “Liberation Theology” and “acknowledged the Catholic Church’s culpability in supporting unjust social structures in the past and affirmed the Church’s present responsibility to work for socioeconomic justice.”Those were the events that served...