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Twenty Arkansans attended a pilgrimage to Guatemala July 25-29 to observe the 35th anniversary of the death of Servant of God Father Stanley Rother.
Father Rother was a priest for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City where Bishop Anthony B. Taylor was ordained in 1980.
Bishop Taylor and 65 others visited Father Rother’s Santiago Atitlan parish July 28 to remember his death in 1981 at the hands of assailants. The country’s civil war lasted for 36 years until 1996.
The five-day pilgrimage included stops at the room where he was killed that is now a shrine and another shrine in the church where his heart is buried. Joining Bishop Taylor, who was the archdiocese’s episcopal delegate for Father Rother’s sainthood cause until he became bishop of Little Rock in 2008, were several of Father Rother’s family members, Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul S. Coakley and retired Archbishop Eusebius Beltran. Nineteen priests, deacons and seminarians from the Diocese of Little Rock also attended.
Father Stephen Bird, pastor of Epiphany of the Lord Church in Oklahoma City and worship and spiritual life director for the archdiocese, has visited Guatemala six times and coordinated the pilgrimage. Father Bird was awarded the Father Stanley Rother Faithful Shepherd Award this year to recognize his commitment to the spiritual lives of his parishioners.
“On July 28, the church was emptied and the benches were placed in the courtyard. In other years there were 800 to 1,000 people (inside the church),” he said. “But we guessed there were almost 3,000 people there in the plaza for the Mass. What that means is that the interest in Father Rother is growing. His death happened 35 years ago. Anyone 35 years old and younger wasn’t even alive. Most people really had no knowledge of Father Rother. They are learning about him from the older people in town.”
