蜜芽传媒

It's almost ten years since I visited El Salvador - a country a third the size of Scotland with almost 6m inhabitants; a country which between 1980 and 1992 was embroiled in a civil war in which over 75,000 people were killed or disappeared. The nation had been corrupted by a landed elite who ruled for their own advantage with the approval of foreign backers and - to some extent - the acquiescence of the Church.

There's one encounter in that visit I made under the auspices of Christian Aid, which has seared itself on my memory more than any other.

It was around 5.30 in the morning when a professional photographer and I visited a 14 year old boy called Jus. He lived most of the time on his own in what was undoubtedly the humblest dwelling I've ever been in. It was a wooden shack with holes in the roof and an earthen floor. There was a bed and little else. No wardrobe, no cupboards. His clothes hung from strings strategically placed to avoid them getting wet when the roof leaked. He cooked on an open fire.

When we met Jus, I said to him, 'Where I come from, people always associate El Salvador with the name of one person. Who do you think that might be?' He made no reply, even after I gave him clues; and when I mentioned the name of Oscar Romero - the archbishop who was assassinated as he celebrated a requiem mass in a hospital chapel - the boy was none the wiser.

Later in the day, I went to Jus's school and asked his teacher why a 14 year old boy would not recognise the name of his country's national martyr and hero. The teacher quietly confided that the government had changed the educational syllabus, so that children did not learn contemporary history until they were at least 16....by which time nearly all the pupils from poor and marginalised backgrounds would have left school.

Romero was not a politician. He was a priest who moved from being highly conservative spiritually and theologically when he realised that there was endemic structural injustice in the land which was crippling the poor and powerless who were made in God's image as much as the affluent and powerful. It was precisely because he changed from being acquiescent to being outraged and outspoken that he was killed. Anyone who says that he or she must respond to the Spirit of God in the cries of the victimised and voiceless will always be a threat to those who hug the microphone.

So well done to Pope Francis for promoting Romero's path to becoming a saint. Maybe now Jus and others like him will be able to see that God, through Romero, was not neutral when evil stalked their land.

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