The beatification ceremony of four religious and lay people murdered in 1977 and 1980 during the cruel civil war took place this Saturday in El Salvador. Considered martyrs of the Church, their beatification was approved by the Vatican in 2020.
It was under the sun and in religious fervor that hundreds of people attended the beatification ceremony organized in the historic Place des Amériques in the Salvadoran capital, reports our regional correspondent, Eric Samson.
In the public, many peasants who have not forgotten the sacrifice of Rutilio Grande, Nelson Rutilio and Manuel Solórzano.
” With Rutilio and Romero, the poor come first “, reminded of the placards in homage to the victims and in memory of Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero, the first Salvadoran to be beatified after his assassination in 1980 and to whom Rutilio Grande was close. Four Latin American presidents, six cardinals and more than 100 archbishops and bishops as well as delegations from 57 countries and an impressive crowd of faithful attended the beatification ceremony in May 2015.
Known for publicly denouncing the injustices suffered by peasants, the father Rutilio and his two assistants were killed on March 12, 1977 when their vehicle was targeted. Nelson Rutilio was only 16 years old. Often threatened with death, Cosmo Spessotto he was assassinated in June 1980 by members of death squads protected by the authorities of the time. He had been ministering in El Salvador for over twenty years. Both dates of their assassinations are now part of the calendar of the Salvadoran Catholic Church.
Relics belonging to the victims were placed under the main altar of the cathedral after the mass celebrated by the auxiliary bishop of the capital. Monsignor Gregorio Rosa Chavez asked the crowd not to forget the reasons that brought hatred, pain, destruction and terror during the civil war (1980-1992). Tens of thousands of people, many of them religious, have been killed during these twelve years and most crimes have gone unpunished.