‘The Shepherd Cannot Run’

The story of Father Stanley Rother is one of quiet courage and profound love.

The soft-spoken Oklahoma-born priest, brutally murdered in 1981 while serving the poor at a remote mission in Guatemala, knew he was a target of the death squads rampant in that country during its long and bloody civil war.

But his love for the indigenous people he served so nobly kept him there, as did his love for the Gospel of Jesus Christ whose mission he embraced and advanced.

“The shepherd cannot run,” he told his family during a visit with them before returning to Guatemala for the last time.

On July 28, 1981, three masked men entered his rectory and shot him twice in the head. He was 46 year old.

Last week, Pope Francis recognized the priest’s heroism by declaring him a martyr, making him the first U.S.-born priest to be so designated and clearing the way for his beatification.

Once beatified, he will receive the title “Blessed” and will be well along the road to sainthood.

The idea of religious martyrdom doesn’t sit well with the modern sensibility. It’s almost as though it’s a long-gone ancient and medieval practice with no place in our civilized world.

Would that it were so.

Atrocities committed against people of faith, because of their faith, are very much with us—with the series of ISIS attacks on Christians and churches in recent years the latest horrific example.

And during decades of bloody political and military turmoil, Central and South America from the 1960s through the 1990s was fertile territory for those seeking to silence the Church’s influence with the poor and marginalized of the region.

Father Rother did not count the dangers. Beloved by the local people, he cheerfully went about his ministry. Arriving in 1968, he helped establish a school, radio station and health clinic, and worked to translate the Gospels into the native dialect.

By the late 1970s, his village of Santiago Atitlán was experiencing severe unrest with parishioners disappearing and being found dead days later along roadsides.

In October 2007, the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City under the direction of then-Archbishop Eusebius Beltran, now archbishop emeritus, opened a cause of canonization for Father Rother.

The Congregation for the Causes of Saints at the Vatican voted in November to advance the cause, followed by the decree recognizing the martyrdom as authorized by the pope.

The beatification ceremony could come as early as next fall.

“We’re just thrilled, and grateful to God and to all those who have worked to promote the cause of Father Rother,” said Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, the current archbishop. “The Church needs heroic witnesses to advance the mission of Christ, and Father Rother was truly a heroic witness…He gave his life in pastoral service to his people.”

Archbishop Coakley said he is “looking forward to the celebration of his beatification.”

We are too. We are as proud of that son of a small German farming community as they are in his hometown of Okarche.

True heroes are few in number these days, but Father Rother was one of them.