Hajja Salesjana Jan-Mar 2019

22 H AJJA S ALESJANA VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- A new documentary about St. Oscar Romero, featuring a rare interview with him, revealed the martyred archbishop’s thoughts regarding accusations that he became too progressive. Salvadoran Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chavez shared an excerpt of the interview with journalists during a briefing on Oct. 11 2018 at the Vatican press office. “We had never heard this before because it was dubbed in German. We waited 40 years to find out what Archbishop Romero said,” Cardinal Rosa Chavez said. The cardinal, who directed the documentary “ Oscar Romero: A Shepherd according to the Heart of Christ ,” explained that in 1979 a Swiss television crew visited the future saint and asked to follow him for one week. Blessed Romero’s response to a question regarding the fact that he “changed from a conservative bishop to a progressive bishop,” he said, is a question “that has caused so much debate” and is now answered by the slain archbishop himself. “I don’t think there has been a substantial change,” Archbishop Romero said in the interview. “ It is more of an evolution in accordance with the circumstances. My goal as a priest has always been to be faithful to the vocation, to the service of the church and the people .” Although the Salvadoran archbishop did not view his support of the poor and the oppressed as support for a political ideology, rumors abounded both in the halls of El Salvador’s right-wing government and in the corridors of the Vatican. Cardinal Rosa Chavez told journalists that the same year the documentary was filmed, Blessed Romero met with the newly elected pope, St. John Paul II. The meeting, the cardinal said, was Rare interview of St. Óscar Romero by Junno Arocho Esteves Catholic News Service