Santiago Atitlan, GUATEMALA — Thirty-eight pilgrims from Arkansas and Oklahoma, including Bishop Anthony B. Taylor, Oklahoma City’s Archbishop Paul S. Coakley and Archbishop Emeritus Eusebius J. Beltran, journeyed to Guatemala July 23 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the death of Father Stanley F. Rother.
Martyred on July 28, 1981, at the Oklahoma mission in Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala, Stanley Rother has been declared by the Church as a servant of God — which could make him the first male saint born in the United States.
Eight Arkansans joined Bishop Taylor on the pilgrimage. Bishop Taylor, formerly of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, was the episcopal delegate for Father Rother’s sainthood cause and has visited Guatemala several times to interview witnesses.
“This is very important for our province (Oklahoma and Arkansas dioceses). We need to understand more about him and his life,” Abbot Jerome Kodell, OSB, of Subiaco Abbey said. “It’s an important story, a witness, that we need to share and pass on.”
The most moving aspect of the pilgrimage, added Abbot Jerome, was the Masses at St. James Parish in Santiago Atitlan.
“So many people! I was deeply moved by their great expression of faith. From the altar I could see a sea of people, all focused on why they were there,” Abbot Jerome said.
 Prayer for Father Stanley Rother’s sainthood cause Click here |
Stanley Francis Rother was a farm boy from an ordinary town in western Oklahoma. He struggled as a student in his first year of studies at the seminary. He served the first five years of his priestly ministry without much notice in a series of little known Oklahoma towns. Then everything changed when Father Rother answered the call to serve at the mission in Guatemala, finding his heart’s vocation as a missionary to the Tzutuhil people.
Rother was only 46 when he was shot to death in his rectory. “Padre Apla’s” as he was called in Tzutuhil, was so beloved by the people of Santiago Atitlan that they requested permission to remove his heart before his body was returned for burial to Okarche, Okla. His heart, both figuratively and literally, will always remain with his beloved Tzutuhil as part of the church’s altar.
Father Rother’s cause has been promoted for sainthood by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. The Vatican has agreed to accept information supporting the effort.
When Pope John XXIII requested in the 1960s that a mission be established in the remote village of Santiago de Atitlan, no resident priest had been ministering to the indigenous community for 80 years.
Father Rother served Oklahoma’s Catholic mission in Guatemala from June 1968 until his death. During this time he established the first farmers’ coop, a school, the first hospital clinic and the first Catholic radio station, which was used for catechesis. Once Guatemala’s civil war found its way to the peaceful villages surrounding beautiful Lake Atitlan, people, like Father Rother’s own catechists, began to disappear regularly. Desiring to give them a proper burial, Father Rother would walk the roads looking for the bodies of the dead to bring them home.
In a letter dated September 1980 to the bishops of Tulsa and Oklahoma City, Father Rother commented on the political and anti-Church climate in Guatemala.
“The reality is that we are in danger,” he wrote. “But we don’t know when or what form the government will use to further repress the Church … Given the situation, I am not ready to leave here just yet. There is a chance that the Govt. will back off. If I get a direct threat or am told to leave, then I will go. But if it is my destiny that I should give my life here, then so be it … I don’t want to desert these people, and that is what will be said, even after all these years.”
In his annual 1980 Christmas letter to the diocesan newspapers that same year, he once again concluded, “The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger. Pray for us that we may be a sign of the love of Christ for our people, that our presence among them will fortify them to endure these sufferings in preparation for the coming of the Kingdom”
Shortly after midnight on July 28, 1981, three tall men wearing masks entered the rectory at Santiago Atitlan, shot and killed Father Rother. No one has ever been prosecuted for the killing.
“It was overwhelming, a great blessing, to see the faith and devotion present in the people in Santiago Atitlan,” explained Maria Peña, a parishioner of St. Theresa Church in Little Rock and Bishop Taylor’s executive secretary. “Bishop Taylor has taught about Father Rother and the great example that he is for us all, his Christ-like attitude. But being surrounded at Mass by the people from all the different towns who had come there to celebrate his life, and the way they welcomed us — it was way more than I expected.”
Having the Mass readings proclaimed in Tzutuhil, added Peña, “was a beautiful reminder that we are united by the Word of God, by the Eucharist, by our Catholic faith.”
Cathy Gilligan, a parishioner at Christ the King Church in Little Rock and director of the diocesan Tribunal, agrees.
“The people, the love they have for him, their demonstrations of that love — it was beyond my expectations.”
“It was really a great pilgrimage,” Abbot Jerome noted. “The events with all the Tzutuhil people were more powerful than any words can express, very spiritual. It confirmed for me how important it is for us to be here, and how important his canonization is for our Church and for our diocese.”
Servant of God Stanley Francis Rother “is our martyr,” emphasized Abbot Jerome. “We should be praying to him for intercession, and praying for his canonization. He is our saint.”
Read Bishop Taylor’s comments in his column for the Aug. 20 issue.
Prayer for Father Stanley Rother’s sainthood cause
Heavenly Father,
source of all holiness,
in every generation you raise up
men and women heroic in love and service.
You have blessed your Church
with the life of Stanley Rother,
priest, missionary, and martyr.
Through his prayer, his preaching,
his presence, and his pastoral love,
you revealed Your love and Your presence
with us as Shepherd.
If it be Your will,
may he be proclaimed
by the universal Church
as martyr and saint,
living now in your presence
and interceding for us all.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen
