Saturday, March 28, 2015

Freedom to change one's religion is fundamental right, says Vice President Hamid Ansari


Freedom to change one's religion is fundamental right, says Vice President Hamid Ansari

Monday, 23 March 2015 - 9:32pm IST | Place: New Delhi | Agency: PTI

    Amid row over conversions, Vice President Hamid Ansari on Monday said the freedom to change one's religion or belief is a fundamental right and asserted that no religion should be given an official status.
    • File Photo
    Amid row over conversions, Vice President Hamid Ansari on Monday said the freedom to change one's religion or belief is a fundamental right and asserted that no religion should be given an official status.
    Lauding the Indian approach of secularism "which does not erect a wall of separation of religion and state but proposes a 'principled distance' between them", he said there is also a gap between commitment and practice in the approach.
    "It (Indian secularism) does not, must not, give official status to any religion or accept its hegemonic position. Instead, 'it is an ethically sensitive negotiated settlement between diverse groups and divergent values'. It is in consonance with Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 which stipulates that everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance," Ansari said.
    He was addressing the 'Annual International Studies Convention' on the theme 'Some Thoughts on the Sacred and Secular in International Relations'. His comments assume significance as these come amid a row over religious conversions.
    Ansari said secularism in some Western countries, which is premised on homogenous, single-religion, are facing challenges from emigrant communities of other faiths, which is resulting into a "new multi-religiosity" that is threatening to "throw western secularism into turmoil".
    He opined that in these circumstances, the Indian approach of securlarism could be an alternate model, which does not create a barrier of separation of religion and state, but proposes a 'principled distance' between them.
    Ansari said since the Indian context of secularism took shape in a multi-religious society, it also addresses the issues of intra-religious oppression and inter-religious domination.
    "Different societies have developed their own versions of it in theory and practice. Some of these in the Western world premised on homogenous, single-religion, citizen bodies are today facing challenges from emigrant communities of other faiths; as a result, this new multi-religiosity is threatening to throw western secularism into turmoil. It is here that the distinctive feature of the Indian approach to secularism needs to be explored for an alternate model. It does not, as Rajeev Bhargava (JNU scholar) has pointed out, erect a strict wall of separation between religion and state but, instead, proposes a principled distance between them," Ansari said.

    Wednesday, March 25, 2015

    SOME THOUGHTS from Robert Blair Kaiser

    SOME THOUGHTS.....


    "We loved Vatican II for its efforts to create a Church of love rather than a Church of laws. We loved the Council for striking a new attitude toward "the world"-- no longer seen as evil, but good, because it was redeemed by Christ and destined to become better when we followers of Jesus set to work creating a reign of  justice and peace.

    Then, after the Council, we were dismayed and discouraged by the efforts of Rome to turn the clock on Vatican II, set the Church against the world, and deepen the divide between the clerics and the people.
    Some have even left the Church to find Jesus elsewhere. Imagine our joy, then, when we got a new pope telling us Jesus was more important than the Church. Imbued with the spirit of the Council, he asked us to help him "light a fire in the heart of the world."

    We set to work immediately, enlisting supporters from over 60 nations, and deciding on a set of long range goals
    * To give the people of God an opportunity to speak with one voice.
    * To educate ourselves to recognize the primacy of our conscience, to think independently and to know we have a duty by virtue of our baptism to speak out on matters that concern the good of our Church.
    * To transform our belief that we are the Church into action steps reached in consensus.
    * To bring our Church back to the following of Christ in the spirit of Vatican II.
    Over 21 months, we have established our identity by taking some action steps, so that everyone can see what we stand for. What we do is more important than what we say. Let’s move beyond the small issues that divide us and move toward the big issues that unite us.

    Robert Blair Kaiser
    1403 W Bluefield
    Phoenix, AZ 85023
    (602) 859-0688
    rbkaiser@justgoodcompany.com
    SKYPE: roberkai@outlook.com




    (I thought I would circulate this note from Bob Kaiser, a former Jesuit, I understand, and an activist in global church reforms. He was in the CCRI Advisory group

    This is a good set of guidelines for the Laity, and for  those in leadership in the Church.

    God bless

    John Dayal
    -- 
    John Dayal

     

    Monday, March 23, 2015

    MARCH 24th United Nations International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims

     

    International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims
    24 March

    "Let us recommit to working to help victims, their relatives and society as a whole to realize the right to truth – and to protecting those who fight to see the truth prevail."
    UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
    Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero
    Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero
    Photo: © Carlos Reyes Manzo/APA
    On 21 December 2010, the United Nations General Assemblyproclaimed 24 March as the International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims.
    The purpose of the Day is to:
    • Honour the memory of victims of gross and systematic human rights violations and promote the importance of the right to truth and justice;
    • Pay tribute to those who have devoted their lives to, and lost their lives in, the struggle to promote and protect human rights for all;
    • Recognize, in particular, the important work and values of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, of El Salvador, who was assasinated on 24 March 1980, after denouncing violations of the human rights of the most vulnerable populations and defending the principles of protecting lives, promoting human dignity and opposition to all forms of violence.
    The UN General Assembly, in its resolution, invites all Member States, international organizations and civil society organizations and individuals, to observe the International Day in an appropriate manner.
    UN Web Services Section, Department of Public Information, © United Nations

    Friday, March 20, 2015







    A memorable event indeed ! We were surely not expecting such massive crowds but they came in from all over Gujarat from every walk of society from every religious tradition and ideology ! The speakers were all terrific ! They were able to motivate the massive crowds ! "ENOUGH is ENOUGH" WE ARE CITIZENS OF INDIA AND WE DEMAND THAT OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS ARE RESPECTED ! WE WILL CONTINUE TO TAKE A STAND FOR THE WOMEN, THE POOR, THE DEPRIVED AND THE MARGINALIZED OF OUR COUNTRY....now for the next steps !

    Thursday, March 19, 2015

    Public Dharna in Ahmedabad on March 20th 2015


    We invite all concerned citizens to be with us in prayer and in spirit for this event ! Of course we will be delighted with your physical presence too ! 
    We have to come out to let all know that "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH". 
    We are citizens of India and we are proud of this. However, we will always defend the rights of others and ours too !

    Monday, March 16, 2015

    India's favourite cop Julio Ribeiro protests Hindutva: 'Reduced to a stranger in my own country'

    India's favourite cop Julio Ribeiro protests Hindutva: 'Reduced to a stranger in my own country'

    by FP Staff  Mar 16, 2015 13:47 IST
    #christian   #Emergency   #gang rape   #ghar wapsi   #India   #Julio Ribeiro   #News   #Nun   #RSS  
    In the wake of a series of assaults targeting the Christian community,  retired Indian police officer and civil servant Julio Ribeiro has written a deeply personal op-ed for the Indian Express expressing his anguish as an Indian Christian who feels alienated in his own country.
    "I am not an Indian anymore, at least in the eyes of the proponents of the Hindu Rashtra," he writes, adding, "is it coincidence or a well-thought-out plan that the systematic targeting of a small and peaceful community should begin only after the BJP government of Narendra Modi came to power last May?"
    Julio
    Julio Ribeiro. Image from IBN live.
    The op-ed is a response to the series of events/attacks targeting the Christian community, be it the saffron parivar's Ghar Wapsi campaign, the decision to observe 25 December as Good Governance day, the RSS attack on Mother Teresa, a series of church vandalizations in Delhi, along with a school in Vasant Vihar, Delhi, and most recently the vandalisation of a church in Hisar, Haryana.
    "Many schools, colleges, related establishments that teach skills for jobs have been set up and run by Christians. They are much in demand. Even diehard Hindus have sought admission in such centres of learning and benefited from the commitment and sincerity of Christian teachers," said Ribeiro, speaking about the various contributions of the Christian community.
    "Should they desist from doing such humanitarian work for fear of being so admired and loved that a stray beneficiary converts of his or her own accord? Should only Hindus be permitted to do work that could sway the sentiments of stricken people in need of human love and care?" he added.
    The op-ed is particularly damning as it is penned by one of the famous and beloved police chiefs in the country. Ribeiro is most famous for leading the Punjab police during the Khalistan insurgency in the eighties. He also won a Padma Bhushan award in 1987 for the same. "The country’s defence forces have countless men and women in uniform who are Christians. How can they be declared non-Indians by Parivar hotheads out to create a pure Hindu Rashtra?" he writes.
    Speaking about his experience as a Christian police officer during the Emergency, he recalls, "When 25 RSS men on parade were shot dead in cold blood one morning, then Punjab Governor S.S. Ray and I rushed to the spot to console the stricken families. The governor visited 12 homes, I visited the rest. The governor’s experience was different from mine. He was heckled and abused. I was welcomed."
    Ribeiro's op-ed comes in the midst of increased alarm over what is perceived as a resurgent saffron fringe which has been openly asserting its muscle. For instance, in Uttar Pradesh, Dharm Jagran Samiti leader Rajeshwar Singh organised a reconversion programme across a Protestant Church, where he reportedly thundered, “We will cleanse our Hindu society. We will not let the conspiracy of church or mosque succeed in Bharat.”
    The latest gang-rape of a missionary nun in Bengal has added fuel to the fear of rising communalisation, specifically targeting Christians (though it is not clear whether this was a communal incident). The Modi government has been under pressure to keep the radical right in check, and Ribiero's op-ed is only likely to turn up the heat.

    As a Christian, suddenly I am a stranger in my own country, writes Julio Ribeiro

    As a Christian, suddenly I am a stranger in my own country, writes Julio Ribeiro

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    Narendra Modi, Church attack, Ghar wapsi, Religious conversion, BJP, Mohan Bhagwat, RSS, Christmas, Good Governance Day,  Christian churches,  Christian churches attack, churches attack, indian Express column, IE column
    Is it coincidence or a well-thought-out plan that the systematic targeting of a small and peaceful community should begin only after the BJP government of Narendra Modi came to power last May?
    Written by Julio Ribeiro | Updated: March 16, 2015 2:44 pm
    There was a time, not very long ago — one year short of 30, to be precise — when only a Christian was chosen to go to Punjab to fight what then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi termed “the nation’s battle” against separatists. I had accepted a “demotion” from secretary in the Union home ministry to DGP of the state of Punjab at the personal request of the prime minister.
    Then home secretary, Ram Pradhan, and my dear friend, B.G. Deshmukh, then chief secretary to the government of Maharashtra, were flabbergasted. “Why did you accept this assignment?” they asked. The same question was put to me over the phone by then President Zail Singh. But Arjun Singh, the cabinet minister who personally escorted me by special aircraft from Delhi to Chandigarh, remarked that when my appointment was announced the next morning, the Hindus of Punjab would breathe more freely and rejoice. I presume Hindus would include RSS cadres who had been pinned into a corner by the separatists.
    When 25 RSS men on parade were shot dead in cold blood one morning, then Punjab Governor S.S. Ray and I rushed to the spot to console the stricken families. The governor visited 12 homes, I visited the rest. The governor’s experience was different from mine. He was heckled and abused. I was welcomed.
    Today, in my 86th year, I feel threatened, not wanted, reduced to a stranger in my own country.  The same category of citizens who had put their trust in me to rescue them from a force they could not comprehend have now come out of the woodwork to condemn me for practising a religion that is different from theirs. I am not an Indian anymore, at least in the eyes of the proponents of the Hindu Rashtra.
    Is it coincidence or a well-thought-out plan that the systematic targeting of a small and peaceful community should begin only after the BJP government of Narendra Modi came to power last May? “Ghar wapsi”, the declaration of Christmas as “Good Governance Day”, the attack on Christian churches and schools in Delhi, all added to a sense of siege that now afflicts these peaceful people.
    Christians have consistently punched above their weight — not as much as the tiny Parsi community, but just as noticeably. Education, in particular, has been their forte. Many schools, colleges, related establishments that teach skills for jobs have been set up and run by Christians. They are much in demand. Even diehard Hindus have sought admission in such centres of learning and benefited from the commitment and sincerity of Christian teachers. Incidentally, no one seems to have been converted to Christianity, though many, many have imbibed Christian values and turned “pseudo-secularist”.
    Hospitals, nursing homes, hospices for dying cancer patients needing palliative care — many of these are run by Christian religious orders or Christian laymen devoted to the service of humanity. Should they desist from doing such humanitarian work for fear of being so admired and loved that a stray beneficiary converts of his or her own accord? Should only Hindus be permitted to do work that could sway the sentiments of stricken people in need of human love and care?
    The Indian army was headed by a Christian general, the navy more than once, and same with the air force. The country’s defence forces have countless men and women in uniform who are Christians. How can they be declared non-Indians by Parivar hotheads out to create a pure Hindu Rashtra?
    It is tragic that these extremists have been emboldened beyond permissible limits by an atmosphere of hate and distrust. The Christian population, a mere 2 per cent of the total populace, has been subjected to a series of well-directed body blows. If these extremists later turn their attention to Muslims, which seems to be their goal, they will invite consequences that this writer dreads to imagine.
    I was somewhat relieved when our prime minister finally spoke up at a Christian function in Delhi a few days ago. But the outburst of Mohan Bhagwat against Mother Teresa, an acknowledged saint — acknowledged by all communities and peoples — has put me back on the hit list. Even more so because BJP leaders, like Meenakshi Lekhi, chose to justify their chief’s remarks.
    What should I do? What can I do to restore my confidence? I was born in this country. So were my ancestors, some 5,000 or more years ago. If my DNA is tested, it will not differ markedly from Bhagwat’s. It will certainly be the same as the country’s defence minister’s as our ancestors arrived in Goa with the sage Parshuram at the same time. Perhaps we share a common ancestor somewhere down the line. It is an accident of history that my forefathers converted and his did not. I do not and never shall know the circumstances that made it so.
    What does reassure me in these twilight years, though, is that there are those of the predominant Hindu faith who still remember my small contribution to the welfare of the country of our birth. During a recent trip to Rajgurunagar in the Khed taluka of Pune district to visit schools that my NGO, The Bombay Mothers and Children Welfare Society, had adopted, I stopped at Lonavla for idli and tea. A group of middle-aged Maharashtrians sitting on the next table recognised me and stopped to greet and talk. A Brahmin couple returning from Kuwait (as I later learnt) also came up to inquire if I was who I was and then took a photograph with me.
    It warmed the cockles of my heart that ordinary Hindus, not known to me, still thought well of me and would like to be friends 25 years after my retirement, when I could not directly serve them. It makes me hope that ordinary Hindu men and women will not be swayed by an ideology that seeks to spread distrust and hate with consequences that must be avoided at all cost.
    The writer, a retired IPS officer,was Mumbai police commissioner,DGP Gujarat and DGP Punjab,and is a former Indian ambassador to Romania
    express@expressindia.com
    First Published on: March 16, 201512:40 am

    Sunday, March 15, 2015

    Death Comes For the Archbishop from AMERICA (March 23rd 2015)

    The Martyrdom of Oscar Romero
    Thousands gather outside the Metropolitan Cathedral in San Salvador March 30, 1980, as the casket of slain Archbishop Oscar Romero is carried inside for a funeral Mass.
    No one may have noticed the red Volkswagen Passat as it glided slowly to a stop near the modest chapel of Divine Providence Hospital. Two other cars haunted the streets outside the small church: one filled with armed men working as “security” for the assassin and, in the other car, two men who loosely supervised the operation waited to assess its outcome.
    A thin, bearded man, the Passat’s passenger and a stranger to its driver Amado Garay, told Garay to crouch down and pretend to repair something.
    On another typically hot evening in San Salvador, the Carmelite sisters had kindly left the wing-shaped chapel doors open, hoping for a breath of air to cool the congregants inside. Through the open doors of the Divine Providence chapel the assassin had a clear view of Archbishop Oscar Romero at the altar as he made his way through the homily he had prepared for this requiem Mass, one he agreed to celebrate for the mother of a friend.
    “My dear sisters and brothers,” the archbishop was saying, his homily gathering steam. “I think we should not only pray this evening for the eternal rest of our dear Doña Sarita, but above all we should take to ourselves her message...that every Christian ought to want to live intensely. Many do not understand; they think Christianity should not be involved in such things,” Archbishop Romero said, referring to the “things” of the physical world, the problems of the times in which we live. “But, to the contrary,” he continued, “you have just heard in Christ’s Gospel that one must not love oneself so much as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us and that those who try to fend off the danger will lose their lives, while those who out of love for Christ give themselves to the service of others will live, live like the grain of wheat that dies, but only apparently. If it did not die, it would remain alone.” He was wrapping up yet another memorable homily for those gathered in the church and those who would listen to his words later on the radio. “The harvest comes about,” he said, “only because it dies, allowing itself to be sacrificed in the earth and destroyed. Only by undoing itself does it produce the harvest.”
    Soon he would elevate the host above the altar, and he would speak the words of consecration; his eyes, as so many hundreds of times before, would be on the host held high before him. If for a second then he had glanced through the open doors of the chapel, would he have seen the young man taking aim? Would he have been afraid? Would he have been tempted to flee? It hardly matters.
    We know Archbishop Romero was focused on prayer at the moment of his death, preparing for that prayer said during the Eucharist at Masses each day all over the world. We know also that as he spoke his last homily the archbishop knew that death was seeking him out; he knew his words were pulling death closer to him. He surely knew, too, that if he were only to remain silent, to stop speaking out about the killing and the oppression and the poverty, death just might lose interest in him. There were so many others on death lists in El Salvador in those days on whom it could slake its thirst. But he would not be silent.
    “Dear brothers and sisters,” he said in this final homily, his final moments, “let us all view these matters at this historic moment with [hope], that spirit of giving and of sacrifice. Let us all do what we can...because all those longings for justice, peace and well-being that we experience on earth become realized for us if we enlighten them with Christian hope.”
    Outside in the red Passat, Garay heard a shot, turned around and saw his anonymous passenger “holding a gun with both hands pointing towards the right side of the rear right window of the vehicle.” Garay could smell gunpowder. The bearded man turned to him and calmly told him, “Drive slowly, take it easy.” He did as he was asked; no one interfered with the assassins as they departed. The two men drove in silence to meet with the supervisors of the operation. “Mission accomplished,” the thin, bearded man told them.
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    The Power of the Word

    Everyone in El Salvador who could reach a radio or visit with the Monseñor in person at Mass listened to his homilies. His words brought hope and courage to thousands. But to some who listened—just as intently—they provoked only a cold, seething hatred. The archbishop’s homily was “the little morsel for the day all over,” as one of the conspirators in the murder would remember later. Everyone tuned in for them: the poor, the workers, the revolutionaries, surely, but also the leaders of the death squads and the members of the business and landowning class alarmed by the growing social consciousness of El Salvador’s peasants.
    On the night he was murdered, there was much celebrating among the military and members of El Salvador’s patron class, those who had ordered the killing of the archbishop and those who were merely cheered to discover it had taken place. There was much contentment on a farm in Santa Tecla, where the Salvadoran anti-Communist leader Roberto D’Aubuisson had been waiting with a group of his followers to hear the outcome of the operation. But 30 years later, few of those directly responsible would feel like celebrating. D’Aubuisson was dead—killed by throat cancer—as were many of those directly involved in the assassination of the archbishop, some under highly suspicious circumstances. Perhaps there remain a few who are happy to have their role in Archbishop Romero’s death whispered only to the grave. The man who pulled the trigger, in fact, has never been caught.
    Captain Álvaro Rafael Saravia was among those who celebrated the night of March 24, 1980, but his delight was to be short-lived. One of the few direct conspirators today still among the living, his experience since the Salvadoran peace sputtered into life in 1992 has been one of exile and diminishment. But back then, as one of D’Aubuisson’s most trusted lieutenants, he could only have been gratified about how well the “operation” had turned out, how professionally it had been conducted.
    He had long been suspected of being the man in the Passat, the man who pulled the trigger. But, tracked down after years hiding in the United States and Central America in flight from a civil judgment against him for the killing of the archbishop, Saravia is finally ready to come clean, to tell what happened that night.
    After running for so long from the assassination, Saravia is happy to set the record straight when he is brought to ground by Carlos Dada, a founding editor and investigative reporter from El Salvador’s El Faro, a digital newspaper.
    “You wrote this, right?” Saravia says, referring to an article that speculated that Saravia himself had pulled the trigger that felled the archbishop. “Well it’s wrong.... It says here, ‘several years after murdering archbishop Romero.’ And I didn’t kill him.”
    “Who killed him then? Someone from outside El Salvador?” Dada questioned. “No,” said Saravia. “An ‘indio,’ one of our own. He’s still out there somewhere.” Was Saravia denying that he had a role in the murder?
    “Thirty years and this is going to persecute me until I die,” Saravia mutters to the journalist. “Of course I participated. That’s why we’re here talking.”
    The man he helped kill can be said to have unknowingly begun to walk the path to martyrdom on Feb. 17, 1980, when he addressed a letter to President Jimmy Carter pleading that the American president not send military aid to the Salvadoran government. Archbishop Romero warned President Carter that whatever material support the United States provided would quickly be turned against the people of El Salvador themselves. That gesture was provocative enough, but the archbishop would soon generate even deeper animus among the men who held his life and death in their hands.

    ‘Cease the Repression’

    The night before his murder, the archbishop made a personal appeal in a desperate attempt to place some sort of moral obstacle before the escalating pace of the killing in El Salvador. He spoke directly to those soldiers of the night who were most responsible for the growing horror. “I would like to appeal in a special way to the men of the army,” he said, “and in particular to the troops of the National Guard, the police and the garrisons. Brothers, you belong to our own people. You kill your own brother peasants; and in the face of an order to kill that is given by a man, the law of God that says ‘Do not kill!’ should prevail. No soldier is obliged to obey an order counter to the law of God. No one has to comply with an immoral law. It is time now that you recover your conscience and obey its dictates rather than the command of sin.... Therefore, in the name of God, and in the name of this long-suffering people, whose laments rise to heaven every day more tumultuous, I beseech you, I beg you, I command you! In the name of God: ‘Cease the repression!’”
    The applause was so thunderous the radio station’s beleaguered audio technicians at first took it for some sort of short circuit or feedback in the system that had knocked the good archbishop off the air.
    For Archbishop Romero to have said such words after receiving so many warnings and direct threats is a testament to his faith and his courage. As far as the men who were directing the violence against the “leftists” in El Salvador were concerned, he was speaking the purest blasphemy to the soldiers.
    Salvadoran newspapers had already essentially called for assassination. They had condemned him as “a demagogic and violent archbishop” who “preached terrorism from his cathedral.” One menaced, “The armed forces should begin to oil their weapons.”
    And just two weeks before he was shot through the heart, a briefcase containing an unexploded bomb was found behind the pulpit of the church where, the day before, he had said Mass for a murdered government official.
    He must have known they were coming for him and that it was too late to turn back. He certainly knew that death was stalking him. Since the killing of his dear friend, the Jesuit Rutilio Grande, Archbishop Romero understood where the path that he was following would lead.
    Though he dismissed the concerns of others, he was acutely aware that he could be preparing the ground for his own martyrdom, and he knew in all likelihood that his death would be violent. He had already seen what had become of many who had threatened the political order in El Salvador, and that specter of his own fate filled him with dread as it would any person. He loved life; he loved his people. He was not eager to leave either behind.
    In his last retreat, he made a note of one of his final discussions with his spiritual director. “It is not easy to accept a violent death, which is very possible in these circumstances, and the apostolic nuncio to Costa Rica warned me of imminent danger just this week. You have encouraged me, reminding me that my attitude should be to hand my life over to God regardless of the end to which that life might come; that unknown circumstances can be faced with God’s grace; that God assisted the martyrs, and that if it comes to this I shall feel God very close as I draw my last breath; but that more valiant than surrender in death is the surrender of one’s whole life—a life lived for God.”
    Certainly there were men in El Salvador the night before who heard the assassination of Archbishop Romero’s imploring words to the soldiers in the streets of her cities and the hills of her countryside who knew exactly what he was doing with those last words. He was signing his own death warrant. The men of the death squads had long ago gotten over whatever superstitions they might have had about killing a priest. Now they were ready to kill a bishop, even one standing before an altar.
    At the Mass for Doña Sarita, Archbishop Romero was finishing the homily. “In this chalice the wine is transformed into the blood that was the price of salvation,” he told the assembly before him. “May this body immolated and this blood sacrificed for [humanity] nourish us also, so that we may give our body and our blood to suffering and to pain—like Christ, not for self, but to bring about justice and peace for our people.”
    The instant when a shot cracked the quiet of the church has been captured for eternity on audiotape. The assassin found his target, and Óscar Romero, mortally wounded, tumbled to the floor behind the altar. Some sisters and others at Mass quickly reached his side, indifferent to the possible threat to their own lives as pandemonium erupted in the chapel. But the archbishop was already dead, and the red Passat, with the young man inside, was drifting away into the streets of San Salvador.
    Kevin Clarke is senior editor and chief correspondent of America and the author of Oscar Romero: Love Must Win Out (Liturgical Press), from which this article is excerpted.