"Romero Days" Address Teaching Catholic Social Thought

The 32nd anniversary of the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero will be commemorated at Notre Dame and Saint Mary's College with the events of "Romero Days" on March 27 and 28.

The 16th annual Romero Days celebration, sponsored by Latin American/North American Church Concerns (LANACC) in the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, will include a screening of the new film, "Monsenor: The Last Journey of Oscar Romero," and a preview discussion tying Romero's life to the teaching of Catholic social doctrine.

The film begins at 7 pm in the auditorium of the Hesburgh Ccenter, which houses the Kellogg and Kroc Institutes. The discussion on teaching Catholic social doctrine starts at 4:15 in the same location. It will be led by Margaret Pfeil, assistant professor of theology at Notre Dame, and by Michael Amodei, executive director of adolescent catechesis for Ave Maria Press. Admission to the discussion is free, but requires registration with Amodei at mamodei@nd.edu.

Romero Days continue on March 28. Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenberg, South Africa, will speak on "Archbishop Romero: An Icon for South Africa," at 7:30 pm Wednesday in the Carroll Auditorium of Madeleva Hall at Saint Mary's College.

Romero was assassinated by a right-wing death squad while presiding at Mass on March 24, 1980, in a hospital in San Salvador. His outspoken advocacy of human rights, his denunciations of U.S. military aid to El Salvador, his call for Salvadoran military personnel to disobey immoral orders, and his insistence that the Church be inseparable from the poor all made him a figure of some controversy before and after his death.

Romero has been officially recommended for canonization by the Catholic Church in El Salvador, and he is already widely venerated as a martyr in his native country, throughout Latin America and in the United States.