Rutilio Grande García was a Jesuit

Society of Jesus

The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...

 priest

Priest

A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...

 in El Salvador

El Salvador

El Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...

 and a promoter of liberation theology

Liberation theology

Liberation theology is a Christian movement in political theology which interprets the teachings of Jesus Christ in terms of a liberation from unjust economic, political, or social conditions...

. He was assassinated in 1977, along with two other Salvadorans. He was a close friend of Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero

Óscar Romero

Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez was a bishop of the Catholic Church in El Salvador. He became the fourth Archbishop of San Salvador, succeeding Luis Chávez. He was assassinated on 24 March 1980....

. After his death, the Archbishop changed his stance toward the government and urged the government to investigate the murder.

Life and work

Grande was recruited into the priesthood by Archbishop Luis Chávez y González

Luis Chávez y González

Luis Chávez y González was the seventh Bishop and third Archbishop of San Salvador, El Salvador, and immediate predecessor of Archbishop Óscar Romero. Unlike Romero, who served for three years before being assassinated in 1980, Msgr. Chávez had an archbishopric that was long and low key...

. Grande was trained at the seminary

Seminary

A seminary, theological college, or divinity school is an institution of secondary or post-secondary education for educating students in theology, generally to prepare them for ordination as clergy or for other ministry...

 of San José de la Montaña, where he became friends with Romero, a fellow student. Grande was ordained a priest in 1959, and went on to study abroad, mainly in Spain. He returned to El Salvador in 1965 and was appointed director of social action projects at the seminary in San Salvador

San Salvador

The city of San Salvador the capital and largest city of El Salvador, which has been designated a Gamma World City. Its complete name is La Ciudad de Gran San Salvador...

, a position he held for nine years. From 1965 to 1970 he was also prefect of discipline and professor of pastoral theology in the diocesan seminary. Grande was master of ceremonies at Romero’s installation as bishop of Santiago de María in 1975.

He began to serve in the parish of Aguilares

Aguilares

Aguilares is a municipality in the San Salvador department of El Salvador, located 33 km away from the city of San Salvador. The municipality measures 33.72 km² and as of 2006, had an estimated population of 73,300...

 in 1972. Grande was responsible, along with many other Jesuits, for establishing Christian base communities

Christian base communities

Christian Base communities are autonomous religious groups often associated with Liberation Theology. The 1968 Medellín, Colombia meeting of Latin American Council of Bishops played a major role in popularizing them....

 (CEBs, in Spanish) and training Delegates of the Word to lead them. Local landowners saw the organization of the peasants as a threat to their power.

Father Grande also challenged the government in its response to actions he saw as attempts to harass and silence Salvadoran priests. Father Mario Bernal Londono, a Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

n priest serving in El Salvador, had been kidnapped January 28, 1977 — allegedly by guerrillas — in front of the Apopa church near San Salvador, together with a parishioner who was safely released. He later was cast out of the country by the Salvadoran government. On February 13, 1977, Grande preached a sermon that came to be called "the Apopa sermon," denouncing the government's expulsion of Father Bernal, an action that some later believed helped to provoke Grande's murder:

I am fully aware that very soon the Bible and the Gospels will not be allowed to cross the border. All that will reach us will be the covers, since all the pages are subversive—against sin, it is said. So that if Jesus crosses the border at Chalatenango, they will not allow him to enter. They would accuse him, the man-God ... of being an agitator, of being a Jewish foreigner, who confuses the people with exotic and foreign ideas, anti-democratic ideas, and i.e., against the minorities. Ideas against God, because this is a clan of Cain’s. Brothers, they would undoubtedly crucify him again. And they have said so.

Death and aftermath

On Saturday, March 12, 1977, the priest, accompanied by Manuel Solorzano, 72, and Nelson Rutilio Lemus, 16, was driving through the sugar fields near the village of El Paisnal

El Paisnal

El Paisnal is a municipality in the San Salvador department of El Salvador....

 in the Aguilares

Aguilares

Aguilares is a municipality in the San Salvador department of El Salvador, located 33 km away from the city of San Salvador. The municipality measures 33.72 km² and as of 2006, had an estimated population of 73,300...

 parish on their way to evening Mass, when all three were slaughtered by machine gun

Machine gun

A machine gun is a fully automatic mounted or portable firearm, usually designed to fire rounds in quick succession from an ammunition belt or large-capacity magazine, typically at a rate of several hundred rounds per minute....

 fire.

Upon learning of the murders, the archbishop went to the church where the three bodies had been laid and celebrated Mass. Afterward, he spent hours listening to stories of suffering local peasant farmers, and hours in prayer. The next morning, after meeting with his priests and advisers, Romero announced that he would not attend any state occasions nor meet with the president — both traditional activities for his longtime predecessor — until the death was investigated. As no investigation ever was conducted, this decision meant that Romero attended no state occasions whatsoever in his three years as Archbishop.

On Monday, March 14, 1977, the Archbishop's office published a bulletin specifically directed at refuting claims made in the two major national newspapers, El Diario de Hoy

El Diario de Hoy

El Diario de Hoy is a national newspaper published in San Salvador, El Salvador, one of the two dailies of highest circulation in the Central American country...

and La Prensa Gráfica

La Prensa Gráfica

La Prensa Gráfica commonly known as La Prensa is a daily newspaper published in El Salvador by Grupo Dutriz. La Prensa is a mainstream metropolitan newspaper, and became one of the first newspapers to print in color in Central America.-History:...

. The bulletin denied assertions in the papers repeating official claims by a medical examiner as to the bodies of the three men, and also put forth a detailed account of Romero's views on the murders:

The true reason for [Grande's] death was his prophetic and pastoral efforts to raise the consciousness of the people throughout his parish. Father Grande, without offending and forcing himself upon his flock in the practice of their religion, was only slowly forming a genuine community of faith, hope and love among them, he was making them aware of their dignity as individuals, of their basic rights as words, his was an effort toward comprehensive human development. This post-Vatican Council ecclesiastical effort is certainly not agreeable to everyone, because it awakens the consciousness of the people. It is work that disturbs many; and to end it, it was necessary to liquidate its proponent. In our case, Father Rutilio Grande.

The following Sunday, in protest of the killings of Grande and his companions, newly-appointed Archbishop Romero canceled Masses throughout the archdiocese, in favor of one single Mass in the cathedral in San Salvador. The move drew criticism from church officials, but more than 150 priests joined the Mass as celebrants and over 100,000 people came to the cathedral to hear Romero's address, which called for an end to the violence.

The film biography Romero

Romero (film)

Romero is a film depicting the life of assassinated Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero, played by Raúl Juliá. Richard Jordan played the role of Romero's close friend and fellow martyred priest Rutilio Grande, and actors Ana Alicia and Harold Gould also appeared in the film.Romero was the first...

(1989) depicts Grande's friendship with Romero, his community work and activism, and his assassination. (Grande was played by American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 actor Richard Jordan

Richard Jordan

Richard Jordan was an American stage, screen and film actor. A long-time member of the New York Shakespeare Festival, he performed in many Off Broadway and Broadway plays...

.) In the film, Grande's death becomes a major motivation in Romero's shift toward an activist role within the church and the nation. This view is supported in various biographies of Romero.

Since 1977

• On March 15, 1991, a group of Salvadorans returning from Nicaragua after 11 years of being refugees founded Comunidad Rutilio Grande. Among the group's many projects is "Radio Rutilio," a radio station featuring local youth as broadcasters of community news and announcements. The community also participates in a partnership with a Lutheran congregation in the United States to provide secondary education to children in the Rutilio Grande community. In addition, the community has also maintained a sister city relationship with the town of Davis, California
  Davis, California
  Davis is a city in Yolo County, California, United States. It is part of the Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville Metropolitan Statistical Area...
  
   since 1996.

• As of 2005, Grande's nephew Orlando Erazo was the parish priest in El Paisnal.

External links

• Remembrances and Discussion of Rutilio Grande, CRISPAZ (Christians for Peace in El Salvador), SalvaNet, May/June 1997 (pp. 8–11)
• Carta a las Iglesias (Letter to the Churches), Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas", Year 17, No. 371, February 1–15, 1997 (in Spanish - full edition devoted to Rutilio Grande and his legacy, includes text of the February, 1977 sermon)