Romero & Ray

Happy Feast Day guys!

I was on the debate team in high school. Try to hide your shock. In our senior year, the topic was on arms sales to other countries, and my partner and I argued that we should stop selling arms to El Salvador. Because, atrocities.

What I didn’t know at the time was that someone who would become a personal hero of mine was the Archbishop of San Salvador. St. Oscar Romero. By the time I was in high school, he had already been assassinated, in a chapel, while saying Mass. The anniversary of his death, or what Catholics like to call his feast day, is today, March 24.

36 years after Archbishop Romero was assassinated, my dad died, also on March 24. It was Holy Thursday. He was also a personal hero of mine. Like St. Oscar Romero, Dad devoted himself to lifting up vulnerable people.

Archbishop Romero wasn’t an advocate of the poor from the beginning of his ministry. It took personal experience of how the rebels were treating El Salvadorans, and the eventual murder of his dear friend, to snap him into advocacy. Once he did, he spoke prophetically to the powerful, urging them to end the violence. They didn’t, so he got louder. As a follower of Jesus, he could not stand by while innocent people were being disappeared, killed, and raped, so he put his gifts into standing up for them. Those gifts were his reputation, his voice, and the Sacraments. He took risks to serve Jesus among the poor in El Salvador because we are called to be bold in our faith. They killed him for it, and his killers were never arrested.

Nobody murdered my dad. One could argue that cigarettes and sawdust did that. He, too, was always engaged in caring for others. As a child protection social worker, he spent his entire career supporting children and families, both at the individual and structural levels. He fought for policies and funding that supported families in crisis, and he personally supported them as well. It was not unusual for us to see someone we didn’t know run up to Dad and hug him. Also like Romero, Dad went out on a limb, risking his reputation and others’ esteem to advocate for families. He was an AFSCME guy who taught us about worker justice, and a DFLer who put us kids to work at rallies, conventions, and fundraisers.

We won’t ever be able to count the number of lives improved by these two men, but we can strive to do the same. Dang it, Dad. I miss you so much.