The 27 th anniversary of the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero will be commemorated at theUniversityofNotre Dame March27 and 29 (Tuesday and Thursday) with a panel discussion, a Mass and a lecture by Judge Victoria Marina de Aviles of the Supreme Court of El Salvador.
The panel discussion,Human Rights in El Salvador Today,will be held at12:30 p.m.March 27 in Room C103 of theHesburghCenterfor International Studies.Panelists will include Judge Aviles; Neris Gonzales, a Salvadoran Catholic Church worker and plaintiff in the recent Florida trial of Salvadoran military leaders responsible for torture and other human rights abuses during their countrys civil war; Douglass Cassel, director of Notre Dames Center for Civil and Human Rights; and John D. French, associate professor of history at Duke University and visiting fellow at the Kellogg Institute.
Following the discussion, a Mass for women who serve in Latin America will be celebrated at4 p.m.in theChurchofLorettoat Saint Marys College.
Judge Aviles also will give the annual Romero Lecture,El Salvadors Reform of the Judiciary,at8 p.m.March 29 (Thursday) in the auditorium of theHesburghCenter.The lecture will be in Spanish, but an English translation will be available.
Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated by a right-wing death squad while presiding at Mass onMarch 24, 1980, in a hospital inSan Salvador.His outspoken advocacy of human rights, his denunciations ofU.S.military aid toEl Salvador, his call for Salvadoran military personnel to disobey immoral orders, and his insistence that the Church be inseparable from the poor all made him a figure of some controversy beforeand after his death.
Archbishop Romero has been officially recommended for canonization by the Catholic Church inEl Salvador, and he is already widely venerated as a martyr in his native country, throughout Latin America and in theUnited States.
The events are sponsored by Latin American/North American Church Concerns (LANACC) in Notre Dames Kellogg Institute.
* Contact: * _Rev. Robert S. Pelton at 574 631-8528 or Pelton.1@nd.edu
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