For three years, Oscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdamez served as archbishop of El Salvador. During this time, he went from an apolitical individual to a renowned campaigner for social justice. Every Sunday, his homilies were heard throughout the Central American nation via radio, making him one of the most influential people in El Salvador from 1977 until 1980, when an assassin’s bullet ended his life. He leaves behind a legacy of nonviolence and self-sacrifice, as well as many statements on life, spirituality, and Christian morality:

“The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence of love, of brotherhood, the violence that wills to beat weapons into sickles for work.”

“We will be firm in defending our rights—but with a great love in our hearts, because when we defend ourselves with love we are also seeking the sinners’ conversion. That is the Christian’s vengeance.”

“New shepherds will come, but always the same gospel.”

“The Christian must work to exclude sin and establish God’s reign. To struggle for this is not communism. To struggle for this is not to mix in politics.”

“And to those who suffer the scourges and do not understand the why of the injustices and abuses: Have faith. Give yourselves, will and mind and heart, entire…Our missing ones are not missing to God’s eyes, and those who have taken them away are present also to God’s justice.”

“There is no dichotomy between man and God’s image. Whoever tortures a human being, whoever abuses a human being, whoever outrages a human being abuses God’s image, and the church takes as its own that cross, that martyrdom.”

“I am glad that a serious examination of living the gospel is being made among Protestants.”

“Christ said, ‘Man is not for the Sabbath, the Sabbath is for man.’ He puts human beings as the objective of all laws and institutions. Humans are not for the state, the state is for them.”

“The world says: blessed are the rich. You are worth as much as you have. But Christ says: wrong. Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, because they do not put their trust in what is so transitory.”

“A church that doesn’t provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn’t touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed—what gospel is that?”

“Those marvelous media of communication—the newspapers, the radio, television, the movies—where ideas are communicated to large masses of people, are often means of confusion.”

“Let us not be afraid, brothers and sisters. We are living through difficult and uncertain days. We do not know if this very evening we will be prisoners or murder victims. We do not know what the forces of evil will do with us. But one thing I do know: even those who have disappeared from arrest, even those who are mourned in the mystery of abduction, are known and loved by God.”

“Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, especially those of you who hate me, you dear brothers and sisters who think I am preaching violence, who defame me and know it isn’t true, you that have hands stained with murder, with torture, with atrocity, with injustice—be converted. I love you deeply. I am sorry for you because you go on the way to ruin.”

“The church will always exist as long as there is one baptized person.”

Translated quotations are from James R. Brockman, S.J., The Violence of Love(2nd ed.) (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books) 2004.