SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — A Salvadoran cardinal with a front-row seat to the country’s violent past said many have forgotten the country’s trials and tribulations, including its “fratricidal war,” but it’s necessary to remember the past if El Salvador is ever to attain peace.
Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chávez, during a Jan. 22 beatification Mass for the country’s four new blesseds, challenged Salvadorans to learn about the past through its martyrs.
“We are a martyrial church, but we are quite passive: We are not fully aware of the treasures that we carry in our earthen vessels,” said Cardinal Rosa Chávez, comparing the four new blesseds to the gifts God provides, a reference from the second letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians.
Those treasures can be found in the lives of the new blesseds, he said in the homily for the beatification of Jesuit Father Rutilio Grande; his sacristan, Manuel Solórzano; lay companion Nelson Rutilio Lemus; and Franciscan Father Cosme Spessotto.
The four were beatified in an outdoor evening ceremony in the capital city of San Salvador.
Cardinal Rosa Chávez recalled El Salvador’s “time of tribulation,” the period during and leading up to the country’s 1980-1992 civil war, which produced violent killings and other suffering.
“How thousands of families suffered in the face of slander, defamation and undeserved discredit that made their pain even stronger!” he said.
The 79-year-old cardinal, who is the auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of San Salvador, was a contemporary of St. Oscar Romero, who headed the archdiocese from 1977 to 1980. He also knew Blessed Grande, and once met Blessed Spessotto.
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