Cover Photo: A nun kisses Monsignor Romero on the forehead, who was assassinated in San Salvador on March 24, 1980. Photo: AP Photo/Eduardo Vazquez Becker
By Eduardo Vázquez Bécker.- Forty-four years after the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, his sheep still clamor for not knowing for sure who killed their shepherd.
Monsignor Romero was assassinated on Monday, March 24, 1980, with a shot that pierced his heart when he was celebrating mass in the chapel of the La Divina Providencia hospital for cancer patients, in the northeast of the Salvadoran capital.
Just like the one that Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, England, only many years later, found his death at the foot of the altar while celebrating the sacrament of reconciliation, the bullet that the assassin fired shattered his heart, a heart whose crime it was passionately believing in justice, in love among men.
44 years have passed since then and it has not yet been clarified with judicial certainty who killed the pastor.
The first versions of how the events occurred are based on the comments of the nun Socorro Iraheta made to the then Archbishop of Panama and according to which she was having dinner inside the facilities intended for the general dining room, kitchen and laundry rooms, when she heard another religious yelled “they are shooting at the Monsignor” so she stopped eating and rushed into the street in the direction of the Church to see what was happening. She never said if the nun that she was at the window and that she gave the alert voice also went out into the street, if she did it before or after.
“I ran out and as I passed through the steps of the church I saw a man there who was next to a vehicle and who was a white, skinny, thin man of whom the image was lost (despite the fact that he passed quickly and that her intention was not to see anyone who was in that place) The witness assures that her intention was only to go to the aid of Monsignor Romero, however, she had time to notice particular details of the person who, according to her, was in the place to conclude with a statement that to date remains debatable: “that man was Major Dábuisson gave the nun to the archbishop of Panama. These statements were made by the nun in 1984, that is, four years later, assuring that she had not done so before “because no one had asked me before.”
Another interesting version is the one offered by the correspondent for ABC de España then based in New York, who on March 25, 1980 took up versions of supposed witnesses and wrote that Monsignor Romero had been assassinated by a single person at the very moment he was giving communion. “An individual armed with a pistol fitted with a silencer fired a single shot at him, hitting him right in the heart.” “While the murderer began his escape towards the street, someone fired two shots to scare people, who fell to the ground. The murderers fled without problems in a vehicle that was waiting at the hospital gate ”he added in his note.
The most contradictory of the versions and possibly the one that has most confused judges and investigators is that of the Salvadoran photographer Eulalio Pérez who was at the scene of the events to cover a novena mass for the mother of Jorge Pinto, a well-known opposition journalist of the then regime and identified with the groups that supported the leftist armed struggle in the country. Perez occasionally collaborated with a local newspaper and with the correspondent of the agency United Press International UPI, the Panamanian Demetrio Olacireguí who entrusted Pérez with covering the mass, knowing that the person who would officiate would be Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero.
Monsignor Romero was assassinated one month and two days after celebrating his third anniversary of taking office as archbishop of the capital of El Salvador and one month twenty-four days after being honored by the University of Leuven with the doctorate Honorary for his defense of human rights.
From there to date, the versions of the sectors linked to the left have maintained the conspiracy theory headed by the late Major Dabuissón; however there is still a lot of fabric to cut
The now Saint Monsignor Óscar Romero was a good shepherd, a good man, a bishop who had radically taken seriously his duty to shepherd -and, therefore, defend- his faithful. Forty-four years after his martyrdom, his sheep still clamor for not knowing for sure who killed his shepherd.
We recently wrote that the attorney general of the republic is an exceptional functionary due to the powers conferred on him by the State. This would be an opportunity for the current head of the public ministry, Rodolfo Delgado, exceptionally, to reopen the investigations into the case and go down in history as the prosecutor who cleared up the historical mystery of who killed the now Saint Oscar Arnulfo Romero and left him without a pastor. to his sheep