Like the prophets and like Jesus, Romero spoke the truth and paid the price. Like Jesus, he testified to the validity of his words by the quality of his deeds, and his testimony in word and deed was faithful until the moment when he offered his life for his people. Because the Archbishop's testimony was so evidently that of the just man of whom the Book of Wisdom speaks, because he was so clearly in the tradition of Jeremiah and Jesus, his words demand our attention: the words he spoke to his countrymen and the words he spoke to us as American citizens. In the complex, tragic, and violent struggle for justice in El Salvador, the Archbishop exemplified what the Latin American bishops at Puebla called a preferential option for the poor. As a pastor he spoke the truth to all in his society, but he spoke with and for the poor...The assassin's bullet will not silence the power of his words, or his witness.
