Thirty-five years ago this week, a little-known cleric in a country few of us had heard of, sent a letter to the president of the United States. On Feb. 17, 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero called on President Jimmy Carter to stop sending weapons to his country, arguing that to do so would only bring more repression to his long-suffering people.
Romero’s words turned painfully prophetic little more than a month later, when he himself was gunned down at the altar while saying Mass in a hospital chapel.
A day earlier, as the once-timid Romero delivered what was to be his final sermon, Kip Hargrave was one of the millions in El Salvador who tuned in to the broadcast. As the archbishop calmly spoke against the injustice in his country, the former Marine turned missionary, who now resides on Scott Avenue in Syracuse, listened intently.
As was his weekly custom, the archbishop named case after case of people who had disappeared or been murdered by the armed forces or the death squads allied with them. At the end, Romero called out to the army, begging the soldiers to stop killing their own countrymen and women, obeying their conscience even if they had to defy a direct order. It was as if he had crossed a line – many felt that he had signed his own death warrant.
Hours after the archbishop’s killing, Hargrave found himself amid a crowd of thousands carrying Romero’s body through the streets of San Salvador to the National Cathedral. For the next five days, almost by accident, Kip Hargrave had a front-row seat at some of the most dramatic moments leading up to El Salvador’s civil war.
Between Romero’s murder and his burial a week later, Hargrave, by virtue of his nationality and his position as a Maryknoll seminarian, was pressed into service to assist in keeping order as hundreds of thousands came through the Cathedral to pay their respects. He barely slept, finding ways to be of service as a grief-struck populace struggled to honor their fallen leader and at the same time advance his legacy.
The week ended as it began, with tragic violence. At the archbishop’s funeral, soldiers opened fire, panicking the crowd, and dozens of people died, most of them crushed against the Cathedral’s iron gates as they fled the gunfire.
Kip Hargrave found himself amid a crowd of thousands carrying Romero’s body through the streets of San Salvador to the National Cathedral.
