Saturday, December 17, 2016

An American Martyr

From The Catholic Herald:
Fr Rother, born on March 27, 1935, on his family’s farm near Okarche, Oklahoma, was brutally murdered on July 28, 1981, in a Guatemalan village where he ministered to the poor. He went to Santiago Atitlan in 1968 on assignment from the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. He helped the people there build a small hospital, school and its first Catholic radio station. He was beloved by the locals, who called him “Padre Francisco.” Many priests and religious in Guatemala became targets during the country’s 1960-1996 civil war as government forces cracked down on leftist rebels supported by the rural poor. The bodies of some of Fr Rother’s deacons and parishioners were left in front of his church and soon he received numerous death threats over his opposition to the presence of the Guatemalan military in the area. (Read more.)
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