Father Oscar Romero, recently ordained. (photo credit, Zolia Aurora Asturias and Eva del Carmen Asturias)
On Holy Saturday 1942, April 4, having reached the required age of twenty-four, Oscar realized his lifelong dream. He was ordained a priest in the colegio’s chapel. Overcome with emotion, he noted:
My Saturday of glory! On this day the Lord made, my goal is crowned as I express my hallelujahs: I am now a priest! . . . The fragrance of the holy oil spilled on priestly hands was the love of Christ lavished on the chosen. With the Lord’s yoke on our shoulders, at one with the Pope, our voice, now omnipotent with the divine omnipotence of priesthood, we repeated on the altar the wonder of the Cenacle [Upper Room]: This is My Body . . . ! And surprised by the power of our lips, the Pope kneeling with us, all of us silent, we glorify the presence of the one who came to tell us: “I no longer call you servants, but friends.”62
Two years later, Romero would share his exalted notions of priesthood in the diocesan paper, and it became a theme he revisited occasionally. He felt inspired, and perhaps comforted, by the idea that, no matter what might happen, a priest was a priest for time without end:
All manner of disaster may thunder over the world. They can strip [the priest] of everything he has, his flesh can succumb to illness, and even his soul can exchange Peter’s fervor for Judas’s betrayal . . . but always, with courage or cowardice, loyal or traitorous—the priestly character will be written at the bottom of his soul: For eternity!63
Thirty years out, however, during a spiritual retreat, the matured Father Romero journaled about some of the doubts and mixed motives that had assailed him at the time. Like many seminarians who near ordination, he questioned whether he was suited to a life of celibacy. Yet he feared what people would think if he backed out of taking his vows at such a late date. He also worried about what he would do as a vocation after years of preparing for the priesthood.64
Homeward Bound
Before Romero could finish his doctorate, the new bishop of San Miguel diocese, Miguel Angel Machado, called both Romero and Valladares to return to El Salvador, either because he feared for their safety in a city under siege or, as one Salvadoran priest believed, he desperately needed clergy at home.65
“Well, Oscar, let’s hope they don’t shoot us down.” Rafael tried to make light of their situation as they boarded a plane on August 16, 1943. Oscar had turned twenty-six the day before and Valladares was thirty. “Hopefully God will spare two young priests,” Rafael added with a laugh.
The pair had an uneventful flight to Barcelona, Spain, where they boarded a ship to Cuba. During the two weeks it took to cross the Atlantic, they relished the idea that they’d soon be back in warm, sunny weather and reunited with their families. Their final war worry, they thought, were German submarines torpedoing ships in the Caribbean.
When the ship weighed anchor in the Havana harbor, Cuban officials asked to see the papers of those disembarking.
“What’s this? You’re coming from Rome,” a severe official asked the priests, who were dressed in their black cassocks.
“We studied for the priesthood in Rome, and we’re headed home to El Salvador.” Valladares spoke for both of them.
“You’re arriving from Italy, an enemy country,” the official said. “Here in Cuba we detain all passengers coming from Germany and Italy.” Authorities arrested the young priests and took them to an internment camp.66
“Our plane wasn’t shot down and our ship wasn’t torpedoed,” Valladares commented to Romero. “But it looks like we still won’t get home any time soon.”
“Think of the Apostle Paul,” Romero said. “He was shipwrecked three times, spent a night and a day in the open sea, and imprisoned at least once.”
“And don’t forget how he was whipped thirty-nine lashes on five occasions, beaten with rods three times, and once pelted with stones.” Valladares smiled. “Let’s hope God doesn’t favor us quite so generously.”
The two priests weren’t flogged, beaten, or stoned during their four-month internment, but, like Paul, they experienced hunger and hardship. Already undernourished, the hard labor assigned them at the camp exhausted them to the point they became ill. Valladares might have died had not Redemptorist priests in Havana heard of their plight, worked for their release, and got them admitted to a Havana hospital. With their identities and travel purposes verified, Cuban officials allowed them to leave.
Once more they boarded a ship, in U-boat infested waters, destined for Mexico. From there, they traveled by land to El Salvador.67 Though skinny and drained, they arrived safely in San Miguel on New Year’s Eve 1943. The diocesan newspaper and its citizens heralded their arrival as “a Christmas gift.”68
From San Miguel city, Romero headed to his hometown of Ciudad Barrios, where the townspeople turned out to give him a grand reception, proud of their native son who had studied in Rome.
He said his first mass there on January 11, 1944, undoubtedly recalling Father Monroy’s first mass in the same church some thirteen years earlier, when Oscar had confided in officials his interest in the priesthood.
The eight years between Romero’s 1935 graduation from minor seminary and his 1943 return to El Salvador furnished a turbulent stage on which he grew to adulthood and was ordained a priest. His reunion with his family was tinged with sadness, for the family had experienced upheaval while Oscar was faraway and correspondence nearly impossible. While Romero studied in Rome, his younger brother Rómulo died of appendicitis at age seventeen. The family lost its farmland, and the older children left town to seek their fortunes elsewhere. His mother would eventually move to San Miguel to live with her daughter and two grandsons, and Oscar helped his youngest brother, Gaspar, study in a San Miguel high school.
Valladares’s uncle, Bishop Dueñas, Oscar’s beloved mentor, had also died while the young men were in Rome.69
What Romero later said of Valladares was most certainly true for himself as well: “War’s austerities strengthened his resolve to become a dedicated priest.”70
25. Romero would later learn that Father Aguadé had been imprisoned by one of the factions upon his return to Spain. He survived the civil war, and eventually settled in Mexico City. Romero stayed in contact with him throughout the years.
26. The San José de la Montaña Seminary.
27. Some family members were outraged that it was a close friend and Arnoldo’s godfather, Claudio Portillo, who seized the property as payment for the 2,500 colóns (US $1,000) Don Santos owed him. This left Niña Jésus and her children without a means of livelihood. Gaspar recalled that when he reached the legal age of adulthood, he confronted Portilla and demanded that he explain himself and return the land. When Portilla refused to do so, Gaspar showed