Archbishop Oscar Romero. Emily Wade Will
and neither Zaída nor his brothers resented him for this extra opportunity.
Oscar owed a debt of gratitude to the mayor, who went out of his way to speak on his behalf, as did the priests who served his town.
It seemed as if God’s hand brought these people together so he might take the next steps to priesthood; as a Bible verse says: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”16 Now Oscar looked forward to God’s future plans for him.
4. Chapter 2 is based on 1998 interviews the author had in El Salvador with Oscar’s surviving siblings—Zaída, Mamerto, Arnoldo, and Gaspar—as well as with one of his half sisters; a first cousin on his mother’s side; a woman who as a young teen had worked for Niña Jesus in the household; and a preseminary classmate who later served for two periods as parish priest of Ciudad Barrios, where he came to know the people who had known Oscar in his youth.
Many details come from Don Santos’s “little black book,” then in Tiberio Arnoldo Romero’s possession. In the notebook, Santos jotted births and deaths, the towns and years in which he had served as telegrapher, various recipes for herbal medicines, amounts of money owed and paid, dates of major purchases, and similar details. Information was also gleaned from Jiménez and Navarrete, Reseña; Brockman, A Life; and Delgado, Biografía.
5. Brockman says the church official who visited Ciudad Barrios in 1930 for Father Monroy’s first hometown mass was the vicar-general of the San Miguel diocese (A Life, 35). Jiménez and Navarrete identify him as Monseñor Daniel Ventura Cruz, who “upon learning of Oscar Arnulfo’s calling, was interested in his studies and became the primary advocate of his vocation” (Reseña, 8). Almost two decades later, in a funeral oration for Ventura Cruz, Romero apologized for his failure to say anything at the earlier burial; he had been too torn up, mourning the loss of this prelate who had counseled and helped mold him as a young priest (Chaparrastique, no. 1715, April 10, 1948).
6. Father Benito Calvo Quinto, a Claretian brother from Spain, had been trekking to the town every so often to offer mass following the death of Father Cecilio Morales, the parish priest who had baptized Oscar on May 11, 1919, when Oscar was going on two years old.
7. The author speculates the name may have been Vallena, a wordplay on she goes full (as in milk) or the homonym Ballena, meaning whale, or it may have had no meaning. Oscar’s father named the cow; the surviving offspring did not know its meaning.
8. Names and birth dates of Oscar’s siblings are: Roque Gustavo, October 19, 1911; Aminta Isabel, September 11, 1913 (died as an infant); Oscar Arnulfo, August 15, 1917; Zaída Emerita, October 5, 1919; Rómulo Plutarco, December 2, 1921; Mamerto Obdulio, May 15, 1924; Tiberio Arnoldo, September 13, 1926; Santos Gaspar, September 15, 1929. The children also had three natural, or half sisters, in town by their father and two other women. The sisters were, according to Oscar’s brother Mamerto: Rubia de La O de Esperanza, Rosa Portillo Esperanza, and Candelaria Portillo. Natural, or out-of-wedlock, children were common and accepted. “We got along well and we visited one another. We didn’t have any problems,” Mamerto Romero said of relationships between Santos Romero’s legitimate and natural children.
Father Carlos L. Villacorta, one of the seminarians Romero mentored, explained in an August 5, 1999, phone conversation with the author that churchmen didn’t speak out against natural children because “75 to 80 percent of Salvadoran families have illegitimate children.”
9. In addition to the concert flute, according to Tiberio Arnoldo Romero, his father owned two other fine possessions: a pocket watch and a steelyard weighing scale.
10. Tiberio Arnoldo Romero believed his mother had taught school locally for a period before her marriage.
11. At the end of the nineteenth century, Oscar’s maternal grandfather, José Ángel Galdámez, purchased fertile but unused farmland ringing the base of the nearby volcano that the mayor’s office of Ciudad Barrios had put up for sale. Upon Oscar’s grandfather’s death, he divided the land, giving his son-in-law Santos Romero some 104 acres of it (Valencia and Arias, “Plática”).
12. The word pulgo has no meaning. Mamerto Romero described his father as quirky, a trait he said showed in his naming of his children, farm animals, and farm. At one point Don Santos had two kid goats, named Canario and Orión, whom he turned over to a local woman for two years so she could train them to pull carts. Much to his son Romulo’s chagrin, who hoped to use the goats to transport firewood to sell, Don Santos sold them to buy the cow.
13. Although several biographies describe Oscar as a weak, sickly child, the author’s interviews did not confirm this. Oscar suffered at least one serious early childhood illness, but he was not sickly in general. The confusion may come from the word débil, frequently used in Spanish to describe him as a child. While débil often means physical weakness, another meaning is akin to nerdy or brainiac—a difference cleared up for me when Mamerto Romero used débil to describe young Oscar in our interview, but went on to explain what he meant by it. By all accounts, Oscar was shy and introverted, but he had no difficulty with the farm or other physical chores, nor in walking the distances involved to do so. “He was timid, that’s the word. But for [physical] work he never had problems. He was strong,” Mamerto said.
14. Mamerto Obdulio Romero said about his father: “He was very strict. He didn’t let us get away with anything. Therefore, we were raised in an atmosphere so immersed in fear that we didn’t dare do anything disorderly in the house. And if we told him we were going out to play, he’d say, ‘One hour, from seven to eight.’ If we went over that time, we were punished.”
15. Gaspar Romero told the author that his mother did not scold or yell at her children for misbehavior, but rather talked with and counseled them. She often did not disclose her children’s misdeeds to her husband so they would avoid Papá’s punishment.
16. Rom 8:28 NIV
3. A Time to Blossom
(1931–1935)
In January 1931, after Oscar arrived at San Miguel’s minor or preseminary—it also housed a small major seminary—it didn’t take long for his classmates to learn he played the concert flute.17 His father had allowed him to bring along the valuable silver instrument.
“Play it for us!” some of the boys insisted one afternoon as they chatted in the dorm room.
Just then Father Benito Calvo, the priest who had accompanied Oscar on the arduous trek to the city, passed the doorway. He served as one of their teachers.
“What’s the excitement about?”
After the boys told him, he also encouraged Oscar to play a tune.
Feeling shy and awkward, Oscar opened the small leather case and assembled the instrument. He decided on one of his favorite