Anniversary of Oscar Romero's birth

Today is the birthday of slain archbishop Oscar Romero. If he had not been cut down by an assassin's bullet, he would have been 88 today. As El Salvador struggles today to fight a new wave of crime and homicides, Romero's words from 25 years ago are as true now as they were then:

I will not tire of declaring that if we really want an effective end to violence we must remove the violence that lies at the root of all violence: structural violence, social injustice, exclusion of citizens from the management of the country, repression. All this is what constitutes the primal cause, from which the rest flows naturally.

SEPTEMBER 23, 1979

From The Violence of Love, available for download.