Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador was a friend of a Jesuit priest named Rutilio Grande who worked among the country's campesinos (peasants).
The two met while they lived together in the seminary. A proponent of liberation theology, Fr. Grande was master of ceremonies when Fr. Romero became a bishop in 1970.
Born in 1928, Rutilio Grande was ordained in 1959, and was sent to study in Spain and Belgium. In 1965, he returned to El Salvador to work among the poor. He frequently targeted the government in his talks, particularly when a Colombian priest was kidnapped and expelled from the country. F. Grande's activism came at a cost. On this day in 1977, he and two other people were machine-gunned to death on their way to Mass in the village of Aguilares by Salvadoran paramilitary soldiers.
Shaken by his friend's murder, Archbishop Romero asked the government to investigate the crime. He was ignored. Media coverage of Fr. Grande's murder was minimal.
Fr. Grande's death led the archbishop to become a critic of the government and an advocate for the poor.
Archbishop Oscar Romero himself was assassinated on March 24, 1980.
In 2014, a diocesan inquiry into the the life of Fr. Grande was announced, the first step toward his possible canonization.
- Little Black Book, Diocese of Saginaw