Pope Francis has recognised the martyrdom of Fr Stanley Rother of the
Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, making him the first martyr born in the
United States.
The Vatican made the announcement on December 2.
The recognition of his martyrdom clears the way for his beatification.
Fr Rother, born on March 27, 1935, on his family’s farm near Okarche,
Oklahoma, was brutally murdered on July 28, 1981, in a Guatemalan
village where he ministered to the poor.
He went to Santiago Atitlan in 1968 on assignment from the
Archdiocese of Oklahoma City.
He helped the people there build a small
hospital, school and its first Catholic radio station.
He was beloved by
the locals, who called him “Padre Francisco.”
Many priests and religious in Guatemala became targets during the
country’s 1960-1996 civil war as government forces cracked down on
leftist rebels supported by the rural poor.
The bodies of some of Fr Rother’s deacons and parishioners were left
in front of his church and soon he received numerous death threats over
his opposition to the presence of the Guatemalan military in the area.
Though he returned to Oklahoma for a brief period, he returned to the
Guatemalan village to remain with the people he had grown to love
during the more than dozen years he lived there.
He was shot dead the age of 46 in the rectory of his church in
Santiago Atitlan. Government officials there put the blame on the
Catholic Church for the unrest in the country that they said led to his
death. On the day he died, troops also killed 13 townspeople and wounded
24 others in Santiago Atitlan, an isolated village 50 miles west of
Guatemala City.
Many priests and religious lost their lives and thousands of
civilians were kidnapped and killed during the years of state-sponsored
oppression in the country.
While his body was returned to Oklahoma, his family gave permission
for his heart and some of his blood to be enshrined in the church of the
people he loved and served.
A memorial plaque marks the place.
Fr Rother was considered a martyr by the Church in Guatemala and his
name was included on a list of 78 martyrs for the faith killed during
Guatemala’s 36-year-long civil war.
The list of names to be considered
for canonisation was submitted by Guatemala’s bishops to St John Paul II
during a pastoral visit to Guatemala in 1996.
Because Fr Rother was killed in Guatemala, his Cause should have been
undertaken there.
But the local Church lacked the resources for such an
effort.
The Guatemalan bishops’ conference agreed to a transfer of
jurisdiction to the Oklahoma City archdiocese.