March 24, 2005 - was the 25th anniversary of the martyrdom of the great prophet of the Americas, Archbishop Oscar Romero, murdered by an assassin's bullet in 1980.

Romero's life bears much relevance for each of us today. It reveals how God can use us and bring about change beyond our wildest imagination in the society that we live in, when we are willing and ready to embark on the narrow road that he invites us on.

When Romero was installed the Archbishop of El Salvador in 1977 he was no hero. He was then a compromise candidate, a conservative, and a comfortable mouthpiece. He was also predictable, a pious bookworm, politically cautious and one expected to protect the status quo. No one, for sure, would have called him a prophet in his early days.

A Jesuit, Salvador Carranza, called him (in Mara Lpez Vigil's book Oscar Romero: Memories in Mosaic) "an insignificant being. A shadow that went by clinging to the walls".

Carranza added that Romero was the one who "stayed on the margins of all" that was happening in the country. He remained timid in the midst of the "terrorism" committed by the military.

The Latin American Catholic bishops had gathered at Medelln, Colombia in 1968 to speak of "institutionalised sin" and to call on the whole church to a "preferential option for the poor".

Romero preferred none of that or of the community-based pastoral projects, nor did he support the progressive liberation theology clergy aligned with the poor.

He remained "buried in his books" when a major protest of election fraud ended in bloodshed when a crowd of protesters were attacked by soldiers in the town square of the capital.

Humble prophet

The hinge that turned Romero from a "harmless priest" into a "humble prophet" was the murder of his friend, Rutilio Grande, a Jesuit priest, together with a 72-year-old layman and a young boy. He was on the way with them to celebrate Mass.

Grande was particularly outspoken in denouncing the injustices against the 30,000 peasants working on 35 sugar-cane farms in his area, and in helping them towards self-determination.

Romero questioned why there was no official inquiry into the deaths - and he never stopped questioning since then. What had brought about the growing unrest, great social injustices and gross human rights violations in his country?

He discovered that it had very much to do with the ruling oligarchy of 14 families who were so powerful as to control most of the wealth in that poor country and who wanted, by whatever means, to maintain and protect their interests.

He was also confronted by the disturbing fact that the wealthy and powerful few who had supported him in being the archbishop - were the very same people who tacitly sanctioned the violence that preserved their positions.

Summoned by the authorities to view the remains of the three - a clear lesson on what happens to meddlesome priests - he in turn summoned the whole of the Archdiocese to the funeral mass the following Sunday, by prohibiting the celebration of mass everywhere except in his cathedral.

More than 100,000 people were there - they "were applauding him, and you could see him grow stronger. It was then that he crossed the threshold. He went through the door. Because, you know, there is baptism by water, and there is baptism by blood. But there is also baptism by the people," related Inocencio Alas in Oscar Romero: Memories in Mosaic.

Romero learned, as has been aptly put by Renny Golden, a co-author of his life, that "the church is more than the hierarchy, Rome, theologians or clerics - more than an institution - but that night he experienced the people as church."

"God needs the people themselves," he said, "to save the world ... The world of the poor teaches us that liberation will arrive only when the poor are not simply on the receiving end of hand-outs from governments or from the churches, but when they themselves are the masters and protagonists of their own struggle for liberation."

On another occasion he would declare: "If some day they take away the radio station from us ... if they don't let us speak, if they kill all the priests and the bishop too, and you are left a people without priests, each one of you must become God's microphone, each one of you must become a prophet."

In the three short years of his life as archbishop, (which was often likened to the three years of Jesus' public ministry) he became their Good Shepherd. They heard and recognised his voice when they became convinced that he was ready and willing to lay down his life for them.

All Romero could do was speak the truth and that he did fearlessly and freely: "The criterion that will guide the church will be neither the approval of, nor the fear of, men and women, no matter how powerful or threatening they may be. It is the church's duty in history to lend its voice to Christ so that he may speak, its feet so that he may walk today's world, its hands to build the reign of God... " ( Aug 6, 1977).

He was very clear about his role: "To try to preach without referring to the history one preaches in is not to preach the gospel. Many would like a preaching so spiritualistic that it leaves sinners unbothered and does not term idolaters those who kneel before money and power. A preaching that says nothing of the sinful environment in which the gospel is reflected upon is not the gospel" (Feb 18, 1979).

In an audience in May 1979, Romero presented the pope with seven dossiers which documented deaths, disappearances, and damning evidence of human rights abuses in El Salvador. It made a lot of powerful people at home furious and he received increasing threats to finish him off.

The following year, Romero wrote to US President Jimmy Carter: "You say that you are Christian. If you are really Christian, please stop sending military aid to the military here, because they use it only to kill my people."

Romero's letter went unheeded. Two months later, he would a victim of the violence he had denounced. (In spite of the UN Truth Commission having called the violence in El Salvador "genocidal", the US sent US$1.5 million in aid every day for 12 years.)

Dying and rising

Oscar Romero's martyrdom was not something that he had personally, carelessly or egoistically sought after. This was confirmed in his conversation with Jorge Lara-Braud, a Presbyterian friend and a leader among Latin American theologians:

"I'll tell you the truth, doctor, I don't want to die. At least not now. I've never had so much love for life! And honestly, I don't think I am meant to be a martyr. I don't feel that calling. Of course, if that's what God asks of me, then there's nothing I can do. I only ask that the circumstances of my death not leave any doubt as to what my true vocation is: to serve God and to serve the people. But I don't want to die now. I want a little more time..."

As we celebrate the great event of Easter, may God grant us the same grace He gave to Oscar Romero - to "die" to our comfortable Christianity and/or our comfortable middle-class lifestyles and to rise to a new life for others.

May we be a voice to the voiceless - the communities (whatever their race, creed or culture) in Malaysia who are displaced, deprived, dispossessed and disempowered.

May we dare to risk speaking up for those disillusioned by the empty and broken promises of politicians, demoralised by the slow grinding wheels of justice, and drowned in a vicious cycle of poverty and violence, and who end up with their young, dysfunctional - and subject matter to be documented and eventually damned into oblivion!

May we be courageous enough not take the path of compromise or convenience laid out by the powerful but be on the side of those who have no cash, credit, clout, "cables" or connection.

May we die to our fears and rise in boldness to denounce unjust laws such as th Internal Security Act, which (retired) Archbishop Soter Fernandez had so rightly, in 1987, called "an immoral" law.