Jesuits marked the beatifications of four martyrs in El Salvador with a Mass of thanksgiving at the Sacred Heart Church in Lauriston, Edinburgh.
The Jesuit church has a shrine dedicated to St Oscar Romero and now to Jesuit Father Rutilio Grande as well, including a relic of the new Blessed – Fr Grande’s diary.
Archbishop Leo Cushley of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh, one of the patrons of the Archbishop Romero Trust, led the liturgy with Jesuit priests concelebrating.
The four martyrs beatified were Fr Rutilio Grande SJ, alongside his parish workers Nelson Lemus and Manuel Solorzano, who were gunned down by a death squad in 1977, and Italian friar Father Cosma Spessotto, who was killed in El Salvador in 1980. Fr Grande’s assassination is said to have sparked then Archbishop Romero’s bold stance against El Salvador’s government, military and wealthy elites, which led to his own death in 1980.
The Mass was the initiative of Fr David Stewart SJ, supported by the Jesuits in Scotland, Justice and Peace Scotland and the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh. “This is Edinburgh’s Jesuit church and Rutilio the latest in a long line of Jesuit martyrs so I wanted to celebrate it and give thanks,” said Fr Stewart.
He told The Tablet that the Jesuits worldwide, after a major exercise of discernment, “recently adopted a new set of guidelines for our ministries, four “Universal Apostolic Norms”, approved by the Pope.” He explained that, “one of these is to walk with the marginalised and I saw this celebration in this context, foregrounding the absolute need to rediscover the option for the poor for a new era.”
In his homily he said: “Let us meet Rutilio the Jesuit, secondly Rutilio the pastor, then Rutilio the friend and inspiration of St Oscar Romero.”
Pope Francis, he recalled, had said that “great miracle of Rutilio Grande was Archbishop Romero”. Fr Stewart told the story how, only two weeks after Oscar became Archbishop of San Salvador, Fr Grande, Nelson and Manuel were driving to a novena in El Paisnal, Rutilio’s birthplace. Intercepted by state security forces, they met a hail of bullets. Archbishop Oscar came to the spot as soon as he heard. He later said that, when he saw the bullet-ridden corpses of his friend and the two parishioners, he knew that if they had done this to Rutilio, it would be his path too.
Parishioners and members of Justice and Peace Scotland were well represented and the liturgy was live-streamed by Sancta Familia Media. At the Offertory the hymn Lord, you have come to the seashore, a popular hymn in Latin America was sung, giving a flavour of the beatification ceremony in San Salvador.
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