Oklahoma priest martyred in Guatemala to be beatified

The Tablet

Oklahoma priest Father Stanley Rother will be beatified on September 23rd of this year. Fr. Rother was murdered in Guatemala in 1981.

The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City sent Father Rother to its mission in Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala, in 1968 and while stationed there, he helped build a small hospital, a school and its first Catholic radio station.

In 1981, as Guatemala was in the middle of a decades-long conflict, Father Rother, who lived in an indigenous rural area that had been accused by the government of sympathizing with rebels, suffered the same fate as many of his parishioners and native Guatemalans and was gunned down in the rectory. Like many deaths at that time, his assassins were never identified, nor prosecuted. His body was returned to the United States.

Thousands of people of faith, religious and lay, were murdered in Central America during the Cold War. One list identifies 78 martyrs for the faith from Guatemala's civil war years, including Fr. Rother. The Church has not always acted as a force for good in the region and the world which is why I greatly appreciate the sacrifices made by so many people of faith in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and elsewhere in Latin America.