Archbishop Oscar Romero's Final Homily

[Spoken at the National Cathedral in San Salvador on March 23rd, 1980. The day before his assassination.]

Beloved brothers and sisters... no government can be effective unless it is rooted in the people, much less so when it seeks to impose itself at the cost of pain and blood. I would like to appeal in a special way to the men of the armed forces, and concretely to the troops of the National Guard, of the police and of the military posts; Brothers, you belong to our people; you kill your own brother peasants; and in the face of an order to kill, which comes from a human person, the law of God should prevail which says DO NOT KILL! No soldier is obliged to obey a command which goes against the law of God. No one is required to comply with an immoral law. It is time now that you recover your conscience, and that you obey your conscience first rather than a sinful command. The Church, defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of human dignity and of the human person, cannot remain silent in the face of so much abomination. We want the government to consider seriously that reforms mean nothing when they come bathed in so much blood. In the name of God, then, and in the name of this suffering people, whose laments reach up to the heavens every day with greater intensity, I beg you, STOP THE REPRESSION! The Church preaches your liberation just as we have studied it here today in the Holy Bible -- a liberation which holds, above all, the respect for the dignity of the human person, the salvation of the common good of the people, and that transcendence which looks first of all to God, and from God alone derives its hope and its strength.