Blessed Oscar Romero, Pray for Us!

Today is the anniversary of the martyrdom in 1980 of Blessed Oscar Arnulfo Romero, who gave his life as as a defender and advocate of the poor of El Salvador, whose oppression and suffering cried out to heaven itself.

On his feast day, I find myself reflecting on these words that he preached:

"For the Church the many abuses of human life, liberty and dignity are a heartfelt suffering.  The Church, entrusted with the earth's glory, believes that each person is the Creator's image and that everyone who tramples it offends God.  As the holy defender of God's rights and of God's images, the Church must cry out.  It takes as spittle in its face, as lashes on its back, as the Cross in its passion, all that human beings suffer, even though they be unbelievers.

The suffer as God's images.  There is no dichotomy between  humans and God's image.  Whoever tortures a human being, whoever abuses a human being, whoever outrages a human being, abuses God's image, and the Church takes as its own that Cross, that martyrdom."

Blessed Oscar Romero, Pray for Us!

Liu Xiaobo, Rest in Peace

Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo died today of liver cancer . Chinese authorities denied him permission to seek treatment for his advanced cancer in Germany and the United States.  Instead, he was confined to a hospital room in the city of Shenyang and kept incommunicado and under constant guard.  

He is the first Nobel Peace Prize laureate to die in custody since 1938, when the German anti-Nazi and pacifist writer and journalist  Karl von Ossietsky died of tuberculosis while in police custody in Berlin. 

In 2010 I published this post (on an earlier blog) about him.


Liu Xiaobo is serving his fourth prison sentence for the non-violent expression of his conscientiously held beliefs in free expression, democracy and government accountability.  He is the author of Charter O8, which calls on the Chinese government to move towards democratic freedoms and to end the repression of citizens with dissenting viewpoints.

 On December 10th, 2010 in Oslo, Norway, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in absentia. 

Below is the preamble to Charter O8.

This year is the 100th year of China's Constitution, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 30th anniversary of the birth of the Democracy Wall, and the 10th year since China signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. After experiencing a prolonged period of human rights disasters and a tortuous struggle and resistance, the awakening Chinese citizens are increasingly and more clearly recognizing that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal common values shared by all humankind, and that democracy, a republic, and constitutionalism constitute the basic structural framework of modern governance. 

A "modernization" bereft of these universal values and this basic political framework is a disastrous process that deprives humans of their rights, corrodes human nature, and destroys human dignity. Where will China head in the 21st century? Continue a "modernization" under this kind of authoritarian rule? Or recognize universal values, assimilate into the mainstream civilization, and build a democratic political system? This is a major decision that cannot be avoided.