The archbishop averted his eyes from the pornographic photos under the glass sheet covering the desktop. He read a framed message on the wall next to the Salvadoran flag: “Nothing that is said, done or heard here, leaves this room!” A gleaming machete rested upon a table. Now Romero understood why others secretly called the colonel “the machete man.”
A few minutes later, they heard shuffling feet.
“Here he is,” the colonel said.
Romero and Jerez turned to see Father Sarsanedas enter. The young priest blinked as though adjusting to light. Bruised and gaunt, he groaned in pain as he lowered himself into a chair.
“You can see he’s not hurt,” the colonel said. “We haven’t laid a finger on him so don’t go around claiming otherwise.”
Romero looked from the colonel to Sarsanedas. “How have they treated you, Father?”
“They fed me only twice in five days,” Sarsanedas croaked in a parched voice. “They blindfolded me, threw me on a cement floor, and kicked me for so long I thought I’d die. At night, they cuffed both my hands and one foot to a bed frame.” The dazed priest spoke in a hoarse whisper. “They pulled me out for interrogation at all times of day and night. They haven’t yet even told me why I’m here and why they’re treating me like this.”
“Well, Monseñor, you know how subordinates can get a little carried away,” the colonel harrumphed.
Sign False Document?
A soldier entered and served coffee to the colonel and two visitors. Romero stood and offered his to Sarsanedas, who downed it in a single gulp.
“Now, Monseñor, read this statement the priest has made,” the colonel said. “Then sign it if you want us to turn him over to you.”
Romero skimmed the paper. “This says Father Sarsanedas has been in El Salvador for sixteen years organizing subversive activities. That he was detained for inciting people to violence during the May 1 Labor Day demonstrations.” Romero’s voice rose in disbelief and he looked to Sarsanedas for an explanation.
“I was saying mass in a village ten miles east of the capital on Sunday morning when those demonstrations took place,” the priest said. “I’ve not written anything. That paper contains pure lies.”
Romero locked his gaze on the official. “You’ll have to decide what you’re going to do, Colonel, but I’m not signing this.”
The colonel hesitated. “Not going to sign it?”
“I’ll not put my name to a false document,” Romero asserted.
The officer thought for a moment. “We’re not turning him over to you, Monseñor.”
Romero’s heart thumped so hard he put a hand to his chest to quiet it. Do not keep this priest here, he prayed in silence.
The colonel turned to Sarsanedas. “Jesuit trouble-makers are not welcome in our country. We’re sending you back to Panama.”
Romero and Jerez heaved inward sighs of relief. Sarsanedas would not remain in prison. But to be sure the colonel kept his word, they followed the National Guard vehicle that drove Father Sarsanedas to the Ilopango International Airport on the city’s east side. They watched as Guardsmen put the priest on a Panama-bound plane.
As they left the airport, Romero turned to Jerez. “Did you notice, Father, when earlier this morning we arrived at the Guard’s headquarters, a soldier jotted down your license plate number?”
“Can’t say I did. I was too worried about Padre Jorge.”
“You may want to trade in this car for a new one.”
Jerez considered. Romero’s suggestion reminded him that priests’ cars had been bombed this year.
“Good idea,” he said. “A different car with different plates.”1
Romero ruminated during the return ride from the airport. When had it become acceptable for officials to target priests? To bomb their cars and parish homes? Just yesterday government agents bombed the archdiocese’s newspaper office. How and when had they come to believe they’d get off scot-free with murdering his personal friend, Father Rutilio Grande? Did they imagine they could act with impunity with him as archbishop?
Worse, now it looked as though the perpetrators might indeed go unpunished for Father Grande’s murder. Seven weeks had passed since Romero urged El Salvador’s president to fully investigate, and the government had done nothing. Romero never dreamed his country’s powerful minority would carry out such a profane and dastardly act.
Falling Out
Romero now found himself at loggerheads with the government’s highest officials—and the wealthy elite who controlled them. This was a problem: the Vatican had named him archbishop precisely because the privileged backed him.
Although some two hundred fifty families comprised the oligarchy, Salvadorans referred to the ruling group as “The Fourteen Families,” a term rooted in the nation’s history. After the wealthy class won independence from Spain in the early 1800s, prominent landowners became governors of each of the country’s fourteen departments.2 The pattern had persisted.
The elite believed Archbishop Romero would not challenge their power. He had not done so during his previous thirty-five years as priest and bishop. Some were personal friends. He had chimed in with them to oppose the “communist” progressive priests—many of them Jesuits—who preached a new doctrine. Called “liberation theology,” it put the church on the side of the poor and oppressed. Liberation theology is based on the belief that Jesus did not call merely for charity to the poor but also desired a just society in which wealth and power were shared by all.
Before he became archbishop, Romero agreed with the elite who claimed liberation theology contributed to the country’s ballooning unrest. Indeed, he helped rein in this new creed until governmental persecution took one of the country’s best and most devoted adherents, the beloved Father Rutilio Grande. With Grande’s murder, Romero began to understand why his nation’s long-suffering people—now numbering almost five million—were beginning to proclaim “no more!” to those in power.
That evening, with Father Sarsanedas safe in Panama, Romero wrote to El Salvador’s president. His letter reflected his growing impatience and anger:
I remind you, Mr. President, that there exists between us an agreement that any accusation or complaint against a priest who works in our country will be communicated to and discussed with the bishop responsible before coercive measures are taken. Once again, this agreement has not been honored.
As I write this letter I hear on the radio and read in the press a statement of the Interior Ministry that basically affirms that Father Sarsanedas was expelled from the country for being found engaged in subversive activities, along with other Central American Jesuits and Salvadoran priests. . . . Mr. President, this report confirms me in the impression that facts are willfully distorted and a campaign of arbitrary persecution is being followed against priests, native and foreign. I greatly lament this . . .3
