Late archbishop seen as guide to reorienting church, world to poor

Published: 2006-02-14

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Both the church and the world should learn from the late Archbishop Oscar A. Romero of San Salvador to put the poor first, a theology professor at the Central American University told a Washington audience Feb. 13. Jesuit Father Dean Brackley, a U.S. priest who volunteered to teach at the university in El Salvador after six of his fellow Jesuits were killed there in 1989 along with their housekeeper and her daughter, was strongly critical of the U.S. government in his evening talk at St. Aloysius Church near Capitol Hill. He called current U.S. policy at home and abroad "a national failure" and accused the Bush administration of abdicating its "responsibility to care for the common good." But he said the example of Archbishop Romero, who was assassinated by Salvadoran soldiers while celebrating Mass in 1980, offered guidance on reorienting public policies and church priorities. "Where do the victims stand in our picture of the world?" he asked. "The poor are not something we can leave to someone else, or make a secondary issue. They must be at the top of the list." The poor are also "our best professors," he said. "They are experts in ... making do and finding a way."

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