Two Catholic priests, Rutilio Grande and Cosme Spessotto, murdered in El Salvador for having defended the poor at the dawn of the civil war which ravaged the country between 1980 and 1992, will be beatified on Saturday January 22.
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The Jesuit Rutilio Grande, born in 1928 in El Paisnal, a locality located 40 km from the capital San Salvador, was appointed in 1972 parish priest of Aguilares, a region of sugar cane plantations.
On the spot, he discovers the ill-treatment suffered by agricultural workers.
“They are going to make him a Saint”
"
He was in favor of the poor,
" told AFP Maria Vicenta Gonzalez, 63, who often accompanied the priest on his visits to workers.
"
I'm happy because they are going to make him a Saint, he deserves it,
" she adds.
She remembers that the priest denounced during the masses the injustices against the workers, the poverty wages, the interminable working days.
On March 12, 1977, while driving on a road in El Paisnal, the priest was shot and killed by members of the former National Guard, now disbanded.
Two peasants are also killed.
This assassination marks the beginning of the repression launched by the military power and carried out by death squads against members of the Catholic Church who denounce social injustices.
After the death of his friend Rutilio, the Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Arnulfo Romero, took up the torch and became “
the voice of the voiceless
”.
This commitment will also be worth to him to be assassinated in February 1980 whereas he celebrates a mass.
He was canonized by the Vatican in 2018. Another priest will be beatified on Saturday in San Salvador, the Italian Cosme Spessotto.
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The Franciscan arrived in the country in 1950 and was appointed a few years later parish priest of San Juan Nonualco, about fifty kilometers from the capital. In the early 1980s, he received death threats. "
He defended all the people who were in danger
", recalls Miriam Marroquin who knew him. He was assassinated on June 14, 1980. With these two beatifications, Pope Francis wishes to pay homage to the Latin American Church which is committed to the defense of the poor and against social injustice, recalls the Vatican. During his trip to Panama in 2019, Francis told a group of Jesuits that at the entrance to his room he had a frame with a piece of cloth stained with Oscar Romero's blood and the notes of a catechesis by Rutilio Grande.