MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL
ANNALS OF HISTORY ALIVE: BY GAITHER STEWART Despite the many centuries intervening, Thomas Becket’s assassination foreshadowed similar political murders of Martin Luther King and of Archbishop Oscar Romero at the altar of a chapel in El Salvador in 1980, both murdered by reactionary death squads. Like Becket’s early relationship with the King, Oscar Romero was at first considered an ally of the ruling oligarchy of El Salvador in the grip of US imperialism. After he was named Archbishop in 1977, mounting repression, attacks on the clergy, murders of priests and the misery of the poor changed his views. Romero became a spokesman for the poor and the message of Liberation Theology so despised and feared by the popes of Rome. Oscar Romero boycotted the new President’s inauguration on July 1, 1977, denying him the blessing of the Catholic Church, and declared the election invalid.
