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A mural in El Paisnal, El Salvador features Saint Oscar Romero and town native Jesuit Father Rutilio Grande. The Jesuit priest's life's work was devoted to getting people to engage with the world "through the prism of the Gospel." (CNS photo/Rhina Guidos)
March 6, 2020
Nicholas Wolfram Smith
Salvadoran Jesuit Father Rutilio Grande and two of his lay companions were declared martyrs by Pope Francis on Feb. 21, in a long-awaited decision that clears the way for his beatification.
Father Grande, a close friend of St. Oscar Romero, who spoke incisively about the dignity of the poor and the injustice in El Salvador’s government and society was assassinated March 12, 1977, as he drove to his hometown to say Mass.
“His commitment to the poor and his death was such a symbol of Christian commitment for so many people, and we get to finally acknowledge that Rutilio Grande’s life and death merits beatification,” Mercy Sister Ana Maria Pineda said.
Sister Ana Maria is a theologian and professor at Santa Clara University and serves on the leadership team of the Mercy Sisters’ West Midwest province. In 2016, her book “Romero & Grande: Companions on the Journey,” was published by Lectio Publishing.
A native of El Salvador, Sister Ana Maria grew up in San Francisco and attended St. Peter’s Academy. Her book on the two martyrs came out of years of research and trips to El Salvador, conducting personal interviews and examining journals. She met personally with St. Romero in her youth, and her family is related through marriage to Father Grande.
Sister Ana Maria said the inclusion of the other men gunned down with him, Manuel Solorzano and Nelson Lemus, in the declaration of martyrdom was also richly symbolic. His life, she said, “was entirely committed to the poor, to justice on their behalf and to help them develop their potential. It seems so right that he’s going to be beatified along with two people from the pueblo, because that’s what his life is all about.”
Born into poverty in the Salvadoran countryside, Father Grande was educated as a member of the Society of Jesus, mostly in Spain and Belgium and other parts of Latin America, and later returned to work among his native country's poor and rural masses. The mission teams he organized taught peasants to read using the Bible, but also helped rural workers to organize so they could speak against a rich and powerful minority that paid them meager salaries and confront the social maladies that befell them because they were poor.
With a team of Jesuit missionaries and lay pastoral agents, Father Grande, who was the pastor of a church in the town of Aguilares, evangelized a wide rural area in El Salvador from 1972 until his assassination by death squads. As was the case with the assassination of St. Oscar Romero and tens of thousands of other Salvadorans, no one was ever charged with his death or that of his parishioners.
Beatifying Father Grande elevates the example he set of commitment to the poor and love of the church and also acts as a reminder that every person is responsible for doing good to others and changing the unjust aspects of society, she said.
El Salvador had a long history of colonialism and exploitation of the poor, with an entrenched network of wealthy land and coffee magnates dominating national life. In that political context, Father Grande understood that as a priest he had to bring the Gospel to people and ground his ministry in the everyday issues experienced by his flock: hunger, inequality, the need for stable family life, among others.
“He needed politics to be attentive to those needs, but it wasn’t his job to tell people who to vote for. They just needed to know Christians need to work to make the Gospel concrete in the lives of the people,” Sister Ana Maria said.
The responsibility of Christians to engage the world “through the prism of the Gospel” was an important theme of Father Grande’s. He “would often give homilies telling people to understand their rights as committed Christians. He would say, I do not belong to this party, or that, but I’m here to tell you the Gospel is telling us who we are and that should be our compass, telling us what we need to do,” she said.
His personal example in tenaciously carrying out God’s will in the midst of his private struggles can also be an important lesson for Catholics, she said.
Sister Ana Maria explained that Father Grande was born into severe poverty in a rural hamlet that offered him no opportunities. As a child, he was “shy and timid,” and a nervous breakdown in adulthood left him physically fragile.
His physical, mental and emotional challenges required him to have “courage, and a sense of resilience and determination” in order to carry out his ministry, she said.
“He loved the people, but he himself had a lot of doubts. He often found himself second guessing what he was about to do. Just because this person was recognized as a martyr, does not mean it was easy. It required a lot of effort on his part, a lot of determination, a lot of help for himself and for others,” Sister Ana Maria said.
That aspect of Father Grande’s life is part of the “untold story,” she continued. “It’s important to understand he did not walk on water: he was a good man, and he was fragile. He had to deal with his own challenges, and he did not let that hold him back, he worked with it. He’s conscious of his limitations, but in his case he tries really hard to do something about it, which I hope many of us do as well.”
Catholic News Service contributed to this report.