Saint Oscar Romero on The Violence of Love.

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 —Archbishop Oscar Romero, November 27, 1977 [1].

We follow the nun down a narrow street as her habit, a shimmering, heavenly white, flutters in the breeze.  She opens what appears to be a large, old, wooden door. Inside is a small courtyard.  She gestures to a wall covered with numerous plaques dedicated to the late Archbishop, Oscar Romero. “These plaques were on his grave because people asked for favours from God through Monsenor,” she says. She leads us to a library, where his homilies are kept, as well as four pastoral letters, and his identification cards.

The Carmelite nun is demure but her smile, as well as her voice, is fixed with a resolve and a gentle confidence as she describes the home of the Archbishop. “Here is his bedroom,” she says. We enter and the camera pans right and reveals a small bed, a cot, really, against the wall. “He would offer this little bed to visitors to stay the night. He would tell them ‘Stay the night, don’t leave this late! The neighbourhood is a bit dangerous. You could get mugged. I will sleep in the other room. I have my hammock.’”

In another corner, under a window, there is a tiny desk with a washed-out green IBM Executive typewriter, a cassette recorder that resembles a portable radio, and a telephone. “On that typewriter he wrote all his documents, his homilies…and he recorded his diary every night on that tape recorder.”

Continue reading Saint Romero: The Violence of Love →