Читать книгу Archbishop Oscar Romero - Emily Wade Will - Страница 12

(1936–1943)

“I’ll be frank with you, Oscar,” Bishop Dueñas said. “Now that you’ve graduated from minor seminary, I’m not sure where to send you for your seminary studies. You might have continued them here in San Miguel, under my guidance, but, alas . . .”

The bishop sighed as he gazed over the campus, now eerily quiet without students. “Odd, isn’t it, how happenings in Spain affect us here in our little El Salvador, an ocean away?”

Oscar’s heart weighed heavy with the events that recently closed the minor seminary. A few months after his graduation in late 1935, civil war erupted in Spain. The Claretian superiors recalled its order’s brothers from abroad, including those who ran the San Miguel preseminary, to replace members killed in the hostilities. The San Miguel diocese lacked its own priests to staff the school.

“Any news of Father Aguadé? Of Fathers Burgoa and Calvo?” Oscar had shed tears when his beloved teachers left for their homeland, headed into violence and uncertainty. How were they faring?

“No news yet. Let’s keep them in our prayers.” The bishop paused and bowed his head in a moment of silence.25 “Now back to your situation, Oscar. I have some asking around to do, but until I figure out where to send you, I suggest you go home and spend time with your family. If they don’t need you, you might go help Father Monroy in his parish until I get plans lined up for you.”

Oscar’s posture sagged, and the bishop added, “Don’t worry, Oscar, you will become a priest. Our country desperately needs priests, and you’ll be a fine one. This period of waiting and uncertainty may be God’s test of your resolve.”

The year passed, and Oscar received no definitive news from Bishop Dueñas about his future. But in 1937, the bishop instructed Oscar to enroll in courses at the Jesuit seminary in the capital city.26 While Oscar was there, his father died on August 14, 1937, the day after his fifty-fourth birthday and the day before Oscar’s twentieth. The death resulted from Don Santos’s despair over the loss of his land and livelihood when he was unable to repay a loan he had borrowed during the difficult Depression years.27 He had also begun to drink heavily to dull his pain.28

Personal Loss

In his grief, Oscar wrote:

Everything, my God, speaks of sadness, of weeping. . . .

My father is dead! Dear Father, I who each evening turned my gaze to the distant east, sending you my loving distant thought, would think of you on the porch of the home I remembered, . . . would see you turning your gaze to the west where your son was. . . .

Only the memories remain, memories of childhood . . . I still see you one night waiting for us to return with Mother from our trip to San Miguel, waiting with a toy for each of us made with your own hands. . . .29

There was yet more sad news from home. Oscar’s mother suffered a malady, likely a stroke, which disabled her right arm and side. The paralysis would limit her activities for the rest of her life. Oscar, worried about his family’s future, wished he could hurry the day when he’d be working as a priest, earning a salary, however meager it might be.30

Bishop Dueñas eventually sent a message to Oscar. The bishop had been granted scholarships at the Colegio Pío Latino Americano in Rome and would send Oscar and his classmates Alberto Luna and Mauro Yánes to study there.

“I chose you three because you’re intelligent, with common sense and the willingness to work hard,” the bishop told the trio when they met to discuss plans. “And because you’re all healthy and hardy.”

“Why’s that so important?” Mauro asked.

“Rome gets cold in the winter. We Salvadorans are used to our subtropical sun. When we spend extended periods in Italy, many of us return with long-term respiratory problems. I need robust priests here because, as Jesus told his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.’”31 The bishop looked over the young men, his eyes intense. “You’ll also need emotional fortitude, especially if events in Europe continue to heat up. This man Hitler in Germany seems determined to rile up people. Did I tell you he made an appearance at the three-hundred-year anniversary of the Passion Play in Oberammergau?”

They nodded. Indeed, the bishop had told them about the 1934 event, a great outdoor pageant held every ten years. Bishop Dueñas had taken his nephew, Oscar’s good friend Rafael Valladares, and Abdón Arce, another San Miguel preseminarian, on his reporting trip to the Vatican that year. Rafael and Abdón stayed to study for the priesthood in Rome. They had stopped to see the famous theatrical production in Oberammergau, Bavaria, on their way.

“Adolf Hitler was named Germany’s chancellor the previous year.” The bishop dabbed his sweaty brow with a handkerchief. “He swooped through the town in an open black Mercedes, swastika flag on its front fender, to scattered cheers of ‘Heil Hitler.’ Hearing support for him chilled me. He stayed for the day-long performance and afterwards shook hands with the main actors.

“That Hitler’s a hatemonger and a rabble-rouser. Under the Versailles treaty, Germany’s forbidden to rearm itself, but that’s exactly what Hitler’s doing. Let’s pray he doesn’t march Europe into another war.”

To Rome

In late 1937, Oscar, Alberto, and Mauro boarded an Italian liner for Rome.32 The ship soon anchored at a port in northern Venezuela, where another young man headed to Rome boarded.33 Eighteen-year-old Alfonso could hardly tear himself away from the extended family members who came to see him off.34

Oscar, second from right, aboard the Orazio. (photo credit, Zolia Aurora Asturias and Eva del Carmen Asturias)

Oscar, wanting to ease the grieving newcomer’s transition, introduced himself. “Would you like to see your berth?”

The distressed youth nodded.

“Come. I’ll show you.” Oscar led the way to their bunks.

The next morning at breakfast, Oscar sat with Alfonso and offered to help communicate with the waiter. “That’s burro in Italian,” Oscar said, pointing, and the two boys laughed. Who would have thought the Spanish word for either donkey or stupid person meant butter in Italian? Oscar picked up an apple. “Mela,” he said, and Alfonso repeated it.35

Oscar, Alfonso, Mauro, and Alberto were four of about a dozen young Latin Americans crossing the Atlantic for seminary studies under Jesuit professors at the Gregorian University. Also aboard were some twenty priests and monks, as well as the nuncio of El Salvador.36

“Want to see the movie with me?” Alfonso asked Oscar one evening.

“I’m going to say the rosary on deck, if you’d like to do that instead,” Oscar replied.

“Maybe some other time,” Alfonso said as he headed to the theater.

Besides inviting others to pray the rosary in the evenings, Oscar assisted priests with two or three masses each morning. His devotion to spiritual matters became obvious to other passengers during the eleven-day crossing.

Once in Rome, the Latin American seminarians made their way to the Pontificial Colegio Pío Latino Americano, a fifty-year-old three-story building.37 The neoclassical edifice, a city block in size, next to the Tiber River and close to the Vatican, served as both a home-away-from-home and a structured learning environment for the students who lived in it under the guidance of Jesuit priests.

After a three-year separation, Oscar was thrilled to meet up again with his friend Rafael Valladares, who offered to show the newcomers around. “Your new home is spacious, as you can see,” Rafael told them, “but it’s drafty. So it’s too hot in summer and too cold in winter. As you’ll find out soon enough.”

Rafael showed them the dorms and the classrooms. “We attend our course lectures at the Gregorian University, but often the real learning takes place in these classrooms.”

“How so?” Oscar asked.

“Well, the university lectures aren’t always easy to understand. The Jesuit scholars who give them come from many countries. Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United States. And of course from here in Italy.”

“So, why’s that a problem?” Mauro asked. “They all lecture in Latin, right?”

“Latin, yes, but accented in each professor’s native tongue. Some are much easier to understand than others. We had one professor with such a thick accent we feared we’d fail his course.” Rafael swiped his forehead in mock fear. “And the professors lecture old-fashioned style.”38

“What does that mean?” one asked.

“They lecture, then leave. No time for questions.”

“So what do you do when you can’t understand the professor?” Oscar asked.

“That’s where these classrooms come in.” Rafael nodded to the blackboard at the front of the room. “The Jesuit fathers divide each year’s class into four smaller groups, which they call camerate.39 Then they meet with each camerata to review and discuss the lectures.”

“In Latin or Spanish?” one asked.

Rafael rolled his eyes. “In Spanish, of course. That was one reason why the Jesuits built this colegio—to help us Spanish-speaking Latin Americans make it through seminary.”

Oscar turned to the youth who had asked the question. “Remember. The students who attend the Gregorian University come from around the world, and Latin is our common language,” he said soothingly.

The youth hit his forehead with his palm. “Of course! What a burro I am!”

But can he dance?

Rafael led them to a wide double door. When he opened it, Oscar gasped to see a lovely theatre.

“Our Jesuit fathers want to make sure we learn to speak comfortably in public,” Rafael told the newcomers. “They assign us weekly performances. The camerate compete with one another.”

“What kind of performances?”

“You name it. Everything from classical plays to parodies—spoofs, that is—and musical theater, including operettas and zarzuelas.”

“What’s a zarzuela?” Oscar asked, baffled.

“It’s like a Spanish stew, with a bit of everything thrown in. Speaking, dancing, singing. Both opera and popular music.” When Oscar’s brow knit, Rafael said, “Don’t worry, Oscar. You’ll do fine, with all your musical talent. Not as well as me, maybe, but . . .”

Rafael laughed and Oscar joined in. He was glad to be with his lighthearted friend again, even though Rafael could not allay his fear of tripping over his own feet in some dance.

“We also use this theatre to celebrate birthdays, when the camerate take turns performing as choruses. At Christmas, the teams compete in building nacimientos, nativity scenes. Some get really clever, rigging up lights for their mangers or devising ways to make some of the figures move.

“Let me show you the chapel. It’s also two stories tall.” Holding open its door, Rafael said, “Some of you may be ordained in this very chapel.”

“Seems a long way off,” Oscar commented.

“Now it does,” Rafael agreed. “But once courses begin, you’ll wish you had even more time to cram everything in.”

“What about fun?” Alfonso asked.

“Fun? You think they sent you to Rome to have a good time?” Rafael teased. “Let me show you the area set aside for billiards, chess, and table tennis. And the soccer and basketball courts.”

Rafael’s tour ended in the dining room, in time for the evening meal.

The students who lodged at the Colegio Pío Latino Americano ate their meals in silence. They took turns reading aloud from classical literature while the other students ate, another exercise to help them develop ease in speaking in front of others. Even with a couple years of seminary under his belt, Oscar seemed to struggle with public speaking. On a notecard of November 23, 1940, he wrote, “[a seminary companion] tells me I’m a torrent of emotion . . . because my voice trembled nervously just reading the title of the book in my hands.” Two days later, however, he wrote, “Today I read in the refectory. My nerves were calmer.”40

The Jesuit fathers ran the combined boardinghouse and school as a large family, like the Claretian brothers at the minor seminary had done. Firm and disciplined but kind, they took every opportunity to expand the horizons of the some hundred fifty seminarians in their care. They also planned recreational outings.

On trips to the beach, Oscar, a strong swimmer, offered swim lessons to his companions. Once, he invited fellow seminarians to swim out to a rock. He arrived first. He sat on the boulder but quickly rocketed off: it was covered with spiny sea urchins. Unable to sit for several days, the stoical Oscar didn’t tell his classmates what had happened. The Jesuit brother who ran the colegio’s infirmary, however, leaked Oscar’s “secret.”41

In preseminary, Oscar had impressed his fellow students with his musical gifts and his academic achievement, especially remarkable considering his inadequate primary schooling in El Salvador’s “boonies.” He didn’t stand out among the seminarians in Rome, however, where he felt most comfortable among a small group of friends.42

Seminary studies pushed Oscar to his limits, but he remained steadfast and determined. In November 1939, he noted, “Study is difficult, hunger humbles me, communal life torments me, my thesis worries me. It matters not! Avanti [onward]!!”43

War!

On June 10, 1940, Oscar joined some seminarians to stroll in one of Rome’s lovely plazas, something they frequently did. As they chatted, enjoying the fresh air and bubbling fountains, a loudspeaker barked a shrill announcement. It took several repetitions for the people in the plaza to comprehend the garbled proclamation. When the import of the message hit, local women around the students broke into tears.44

Italy had entered the war, on the side of the Germans.45

World War II had begun nine months earlier when Nazi Germany occupied Poland on September 1, 1939. Oscar had been in Rome two years. Now Italy would actively participate in the bloodshed, and Rome’s officials began nighttime drills to prepare citizens for possible bombing raids.

For the next six months, the seminarians awakened to one or two nightly sirens. Yawning, but with racing hearts, Oscar and his fellow students hurried to the basement. Although the alarms were meant only to ready people for possible future bombings, the earsplitting awakenings stole sleep and induced fear.

With Italy’s entry into the war, the Jesuits running the colegio tried to find what they hoped would be safer places in other countries to send the seminarians until hostilities ended. The Latin Americans couldn’t go home; war halted most transatlantic voyages to and from Europe, due to such dangers as underwater mines, German U-boats, and rapidly shifting boundaries among the major powers. Those able to relocate to other European countries did so. Sweden, which had declared itself neutral, gave haven to fifty or so Mexican seminarians.46

The seminarians felt more separated from their families than ever, as they were limited to twenty-five-word “letters” that were sent through the Vatican or the International Red Cross and took months to arrive in the other hemisphere.47 Whenever one of them received a newspaper from his home country, all the others read it, too, no matter how old its news.

Oscar was among those who remained in Rome, sharing the fate of Italian civilians. Italy’s farms and factories redirected their output to the war effort, leading to year-round hunger and frosty homes in the winter for the citizenry.

The two priests who served as the Pío Latino Americano rectors during the war shouldered the tough job of finding food for the young men who remained.48 Food was rationed, and the rectors sometimes resorted to carrying in food hidden beneath their cloaks, including on occasion some meat from a farm outside of Rome.

Chestnuts from Italy’s abundant chestnut trees became a staple, prepared in myriad ways. Pureed, they made pancakes or fritters, which became a frequent meal at the colegio.49

Despite the rectors’ efforts, the seminarians constantly fought hunger. Every day, famished students fainted at the Gregorian University.50 Even so, the seminarians felt fortunate; most of the civilian population endured greater hardships than they.

Out for a stroll along the Tiber River on a November day in 1940, Oscar met an impoverished man who handed him a card offering his services mending priests’ vestments. “How anguished he looked!!!”51 Oscar noted later, distressed by the man’s suffering.

As he neared the colegio on his return that day, a pauper approached him.

“Please, food, please,” the ragged man implored. “Have mercy, young man.” Oscar’s own empty stomach rumbled but the beggar’s anguish touched him.

“Wait here,” Oscar instructed the man.

Oscar went to his room and gathered scraps of bread he had been stashing—he termed it “contraband” because colegio rules forbade seminarians from “smuggling” food out of the dining hall. He returned to the destitute man and offered him the bread.

“God bless you,” the man exclaimed.52

On Christmas Eve 1940, Oscar gazed out on a snowfall, a rare occurrence in Rome. His dorm was drafty but heated. “Here I am very comfortably savoring this beautiful white panorama while outside how many poor people suffer from hunger, cold, and broken spirits,” he penned.53 As difficult as his own situation might be, Oscar realized others were in even direr straits, and he felt compassion for them.

Interestingly, Oscar’s note exactly one year later foreshadows his thinking of his future years as archbishop: “The poor are the incarnation of Christ. Through their tattered clothing, their darkened gazes, their festering sores, through the laughter of the mentally ill . . . the charitable soul discovers and venerates Christ.”54

A challenge greater than hunger was to come.

In May and July 1943, Allied Powers55 flew some 520 bombing sorties over Rome, directed at three sites—the railroad, airport, and a steel factory. Thousands of civilians were killed. Oscar and fellow residents of the Pío Latino Americano experienced fear and uncertainty. They adjusted to power outages and no lights after dark. They covered the building’s windows with blackout paper to reduce the chance of being targeted by bombers.

“We got used to the fear,” a classmate of Oscar’s later said, “but it was very, very, difficult.”56

By the time of Rome’s bombardment, Oscar had graduated cum laude two years earlier, in 1941, with a licentiate degree in theology from the Gregorian University.57 Unable to leave Rome, he joined Rafael in working for a doctoral degree. Oscar planned to do his dissertation, a lengthy essay, on Christian perfection, based on the teaching of Luis de la Puente.58A Spaniard, Puente was a sixteenth-century Jesuit and writer of ascetics who at one point in his life dedicated himself to caring for people stricken with the plague.

Oscar longed for holiness throughout his years in Rome. In March 1940, for instance, he wrote, “If I do not advance in holiness at the pace it demands, I hope to at least move toward it, albeit slowly.”59

Three years afterward, while doing doctoral research, Oscar noted that he had been reading Puente’s biography of Balthazar Alvarez, an early Jesuit mystic and the spiritual director of Saint Teresa of Avila.60 As Oscar immersed himself in these saintly exemplars, he wrote, “The Lord has inspired me with strength . . . [and] a great desire for holiness. I’ve pondered how far a soul can climb if it lets itself be entirely possessed by God.”61

Father Oscar Romero, recently ordained. (photo credit, Zolia Aurora Asturias and Eva del Carmen Asturias)

On Holy Saturday 1942, April 4, having reached the required age of twenty-four, Oscar realized his lifelong dream. He was ordained a priest in the colegio’s chapel. Overcome with emotion, he noted:

My Saturday of glory! On this day the Lord made, my goal is crowned as I express my hallelujahs: I am now a priest! . . . The fragrance of the holy oil spilled on priestly hands was the love of Christ lavished on the chosen. With the Lord’s yoke on our shoulders, at one with the Pope, our voice, now omnipotent with the divine omnipotence of priesthood, we repeated on the altar the wonder of the Cenacle [Upper Room]: This is My Body . . . ! And surprised by the power of our lips, the Pope kneeling with us, all of us silent, we glorify the presence of the one who came to tell us: “I no longer call you servants, but friends.”62

Two years later, Romero would share his exalted notions of priesthood in the diocesan paper, and it became a theme he revisited occasionally. He felt inspired, and perhaps comforted, by the idea that, no matter what might happen, a priest was a priest for time without end:

All manner of disaster may thunder over the world. They can strip [the priest] of everything he has, his flesh can succumb to illness, and even his soul can exchange Peter’s fervor for Judas’s betrayal . . . but always, with courage or cowardice, loyal or traitorous—the priestly character will be written at the bottom of his soul: For eternity!63

Thirty years out, however, during a spiritual retreat, the matured Father Romero journaled about some of the doubts and mixed motives that had assailed him at the time. Like many seminarians who near ordination, he questioned whether he was suited to a life of celibacy. Yet he feared what people would think if he backed out of taking his vows at such a late date. He also worried about what he would do as a vocation after years of preparing for the priesthood.64

Homeward Bound

Before Romero could finish his doctorate, the new bishop of San Miguel diocese, Miguel Angel Machado, called both Romero and Valladares to return to El Salvador, either because he feared for their safety in a city under siege or, as one Salvadoran priest believed, he desperately needed clergy at home.65

“Well, Oscar, let’s hope they don’t shoot us down.” Rafael tried to make light of their situation as they boarded a plane on August 16, 1943. Oscar had turned twenty-six the day before and Valladares was thirty. “Hopefully God will spare two young priests,” Rafael added with a laugh.

The pair had an uneventful flight to Barcelona, Spain, where they boarded a ship to Cuba. During the two weeks it took to cross the Atlantic, they relished the idea that they’d soon be back in warm, sunny weather and reunited with their families. Their final war worry, they thought, were German submarines torpedoing ships in the Caribbean.

When the ship weighed anchor in the Havana harbor, Cuban officials asked to see the papers of those disembarking.

“What’s this? You’re coming from Rome,” a severe official asked the priests, who were dressed in their black cassocks.

“We studied for the priesthood in Rome, and we’re headed home to El Salvador.” Valladares spoke for both of them.

“You’re arriving from Italy, an enemy country,” the official said. “Here in Cuba we detain all passengers coming from Germany and Italy.” Authorities arrested the young priests and took them to an internment camp.66

“Our plane wasn’t shot down and our ship wasn’t torpedoed,” Valladares commented to Romero. “But it looks like we still won’t get home any time soon.”

“Think of the Apostle Paul,” Romero said. “He was shipwrecked three times, spent a night and a day in the open sea, and imprisoned at least once.”

“And don’t forget how he was whipped thirty-nine lashes on five occasions, beaten with rods three times, and once pelted with stones.” Valladares smiled. “Let’s hope God doesn’t favor us quite so generously.”

The two priests weren’t flogged, beaten, or stoned during their four-month internment, but, like Paul, they experienced hunger and hardship. Already undernourished, the hard labor assigned them at the camp exhausted them to the point they became ill. Valladares might have died had not Redemptorist priests in Havana heard of their plight, worked for their release, and got them admitted to a Havana hospital. With their identities and travel purposes verified, Cuban officials allowed them to leave.

Once more they boarded a ship, in U-boat infested waters, destined for Mexico. From there, they traveled by land to El Salvador.67 Though skinny and drained, they arrived safely in San Miguel on New Year’s Eve 1943. The diocesan newspaper and its citizens heralded their arrival as “a Christmas gift.”68

From San Miguel city, Romero headed to his hometown of Ciudad Barrios, where the townspeople turned out to give him a grand reception, proud of their native son who had studied in Rome.

He said his first mass there on January 11, 1944, undoubtedly recalling Father Monroy’s first mass in the same church some thirteen years earlier, when Oscar had confided in officials his interest in the priesthood.

The eight years between Romero’s 1935 graduation from minor seminary and his 1943 return to El Salvador furnished a turbulent stage on which he grew to adulthood and was ordained a priest. His reunion with his family was tinged with sadness, for the family had experienced upheaval while Oscar was faraway and correspondence nearly impossible. While Romero studied in Rome, his younger brother Rómulo died of appendicitis at age seventeen. The family lost its farmland, and the older children left town to seek their fortunes elsewhere. His mother would eventually move to San Miguel to live with her daughter and two grandsons, and Oscar helped his youngest brother, Gaspar, study in a San Miguel high school.

Valladares’s uncle, Bishop Dueñas, Oscar’s beloved mentor, had also died while the young men were in Rome.69

What Romero later said of Valladares was most certainly true for himself as well: “War’s austerities strengthened his resolve to become a dedicated priest.”70

25. Romero would later learn that Father Aguadé had been imprisoned by one of the factions upon his return to Spain. He survived the civil war, and eventually settled in Mexico City. Romero stayed in contact with him throughout the years.

26. The San José de la Montaña Seminary.

27. Some family members were outraged that it was a close friend and Arnoldo’s godfather, Claudio Portillo, who seized the property as payment for the 2,500 colóns (US $1,000) Don Santos owed him. This left Niña Jésus and her children without a means of livelihood. Gaspar recalled that when he reached the legal age of adulthood, he confronted Portilla and demanded that he explain himself and return the land. When Portilla refused to do so, Gaspar showed him his pistol and threatened to shoot him. Portilla reconsidered and gave him back a portion of the land. After Oscar returned from Rome, and Gaspar told him what he had done, Oscar scolded him severely, telling him he had done wrong.

28. According to his son Tiberio Arnoldo Romero, in a December 2, 1998, interview with the author, in San Miguel.

29. Part of a remembrance found among Romero’s papers after his death. From Brockman, A Life, 36.

30. After their father’s death, two of Oscar’s brothers earned money for the household by transporting firewood, coffee, and other agricultural products in an ox-drawn cart, according to Gaspar.

31. Matt 9:37 NIV

32. They left from Puerto Cutuco, on the Pacific. The ship was the Orazio, powered by two diesel engines. During a later trip, in January 1940, an explosion in the engine room set fire to the Orazio during a Mediterranean storm. The ship was carrying 218 crew and 431 passengers, many of them Jews escaping the Holocaust. About six hundred survivors were rescued from lifeboats, many badly burned.

33. The Venezuelan port of La Guaira.

34. His full name was Alfonso Alfonzo Vaz.

35. Monseñor Alfonso Alfonzo Vaz, in a February 18, 2000, phone conversation with the author, said that even some sixty-five years after the voyage, he hadn’t forgotten his first Italian words, among them apple and butter, which Oscar had taught him, nor Oscar’s kind befriending of him in his homesickness.

36. From photo in Jiménez and Navarrete, Reseña, 10. The nuncio, the Vatican’s ambassador to El Salvador, was returning home after his term of service.

37. The Colegio Pío Latino Americano was located on the road named Via Gioacchino Belli, next to the Tiber River and close to the Vatican. The colegio moved to a new location in 1962, and the building on Via Gioacchino Belli was eventually demolished.

38. Information from Father Alfonso Castro, a Mexican seminarian one year behind Oscar, in November 16, 1999, phone interview with the author.

39. The Italian word camerata can mean comrade, companion, or dorm. Its plural form is camerate. In this context, the Jesuits seemed to have used the word in the sense of team.

40. These are two of Romero’s two hundred fifty notecards, handwritten during his seminary days in Rome, shared in Delgado, “Joven Aspirante,” 8.

41. Monseñor Alfonso Alfonzo Vaz, in February 18, 2000, phone interview with author, and in Brockman, A Life, 34.

42. Father Alfonso Castro, of Mexico City, a seminary contemporary of Oscar, commented in a November 16, 1999, phone interview with the author: “Oscar was very shy, introspective. He didn’t speak much and had few friendships.” Another co-seminarian, however, viewed Oscar as quiet but not a loner. “He was not a leader but he was cheerful and very well-integrated into the student body,” said Father Rafael Montejano in a November 22, 1999, phone interview with the author. In adulthood, Montejano became a recognized historian of his native state of San Luis Potosí, Mexico.

43. Delgado, “Joven Aspirante,” 8.

44. Father Alfonso Castro, November 16, 1999, phone interview with author.

45. In September 1943, Italy switched sides to back the Allied Powers against Germany.

46. Father Bernardo Amaya, December 4, 1998, interview with author.

47. The war delayed or halted usual international mail delivery for several reasons, including suspensions in service between enemy countries, rapidly changing political boundaries due to conquest and occupation, altered or no longer usable travel routes, and mail censorship by one country against another.

48. Father Manuel Porta from 1937 to 1940, followed by Father Darío Ferioli until 1945.

49. According to Fathers Alfonso Castro and Rafael Montejano, who were seminarians at the time. (In separate 1999 phone interviews with author.)

50. A quote from Montejano, ibid.

51. Delgado, “Joven Aspirante,” 8.

52. Ibid. English translations of notecards from Carlos Colorado, “Fire Brand,” September 11, 2010, http://polycarpi.blogspot.com/2010/09/fire-brand-on-may-24-1941-young-oscar.html.

53. Ibid.

54. Ibid.

55. Of the Allied Powers, primarily Great Britain and the United States flew these sorties.

56. Father Alfonso Castro, in 1999 phone interview with author.

57. Equivalent to a master’s degree.

58. Brockman, A Life, 38.

59. Delgado, “Joven Aspirante,” 7.

60. An English version of Puente’s biography of Alvarez can be found at https://ia600300.us.archive.org/9/items/lifeoffatherbalt01puen/lifeoffatherbalt01puen.pdf.

61. Delgado, “Joven Aspirante,” 9. Among other things,Teresa of Avila is known for her prayers that put her in such deep communion with God that her body often levitated.

62. Ibid., 10.

63. Romero y Galdámez, “Juventud e ideal sacerdotal,” Chaparrastique, no. 1521, May 27, 1944, 1.

64. Romero y Galdámez, Ejercicios espirituales, 60–61.

65. Father Bernardo Amaya, December 4, 1998, interview with author.

66. Cuba set up four concentration camps after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. They were Tiscornia, Torrens, and Isla de Pinos, where mostly Japanese-Cubans were interned, and Arroyo Arenas, for women. Source: http://www.cuba.com/cuba_detail_1788_world_war_ii.html. The author was unable to learn at which of these Romero and Valladares were imprisoned.

67. Romero and Valladares traveled during the height of German U-boat activity in waters near Cuba, an island nation that held strategic importance as a portal to the Western hemisphere. Between mid-1942 and early 1944, German subs sank seven Cuban ships, killing more than eighty Cuban marines and three Americans.

Source: http://www.cuba.com/cuba_detail_1788_world_war_ii.html.

68. Romero y Galdámez, “Murió como santo porque vivió como sacerdote,” Chaparrastique, no. 2379, September 2, 1961, 1,8.

69. The bishop died in 1941, at age seventy-three.

70. Romero y Galdámez, “Murió como santo porque vivió como sacerdote,” Chaparrastique, no. 2379, September 2, 1961, 1,8.