Fr. Stanley Rother
(1935 – 1981)
The name of a young priest from Oklahoma named Fr. Stanley Rother, who was gunned down in a Guatemala rectory in 1981 for refusing to leave his duties as a pastor, has been officially accepted for submission to the Theological Commission of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
Archbishop Paul Coakley of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City has confirmed that Cardinal Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, will submit Fr. Rother’s name in early 2015.
“What this means is that the members of this commission will begin their study of the Cause in the next few months. After completing their thorough analysis, they will submit their own findings to the Cardinals and Archbishops who constitute the Congregation for the Causes of Saints,” Archbishop Coakley said in a statement appearing on the Archdiocesan website.
“The members of the Congregation will conduct their own study, make their own comments and ultimately submit their recommendation to the Holy Father. Should the Holy Father determine that Father Rother died as a martyr, a decree would be issued to that effect, thus allowing for his subsequent beatification.”
Fr. Rother was born into a pioneering, farming family in 1935 near Okarche, Oklahoma. He was initially dismissed from the seminary because he could not master Latin but his bishop sent him to Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland where he was personally tutored in the subject. Ordained in 1963, he served in four parishes before deciding to travel to Oklahoma’s mission in Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala in 1968 to serve the descendants of the Maya-Quiche people who were known as the Tzutuhils.
Rother’s agricultural background enabled him to become very involved in the life of this farming community and he soon mastered the language, one of the most difficult in the world to learn. This enabled him to not only preach in the native dialect, but to translate the New Testament into the Tzutuhil dialect.
But political turmoil and violence gripped the country by 1970 with death squads terrorizing the population. Townspeople were known to disappear into the night and be found dead along the roadside the following morning. Some were never seen or heard from again.
In 1981, the death squads came looking for him, which was not unusual at the time because priests and catechists were under constant threat.
It was during this year that Rother left Guatemala to attend the ordination of his cousin, Fr. Don Wolf, and to spend some time in prayer at St. Mary’s Seminary. Another good friend, Harry Flynn, who later became the Archbishop of St. Paul-Minneapolis, remembers picking him up at the airport and listening to him speak about the challenges he was facing in Guatemala.
According to Tom Gallagher of the National Catholic Reporter, he told Flynn, “If I speak out, they will kill me. If I remain silent, what kind of pastor would I be?”
After spending a week in prayer at Mount St. Mary’s, he told Flynn, “I know what I must do.”
He returned to Guatemala to pastor his people.
No one was surprised. He had written a Christmas letter to the people of Oklahoma City in 1980 in which he wrote about being persecuted for defending the Tzutuhil people. “This is one of the reasons I have for staying in the face of physical harm. The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger. Pray for us that we might be a sign of the love of Christ for our people, that our presence among them will fortify them to endure these sufferings in preparation for the kingdom.”
In the early morning hours of July 28, 1981, three masked men stole into the rectory and shot Fr. Rother to death. He was just 46 years-old.
“As is customary, the Tzutuhil received permission to keep Rother’s heart and blood,” Gallagher reports. “Flynn later traveled to Guatemala in order to preside over a procession in which Rother’s heart and blood were delivered to a final resting place in the floor of the parish church in Santiago Atitlán.”
Flynn later reported that Rother’s heart was inexplicably incorrupt many years after his death. His room in the rectory where he was gunned down – the walls still splattered with his blood – is now serving as a parish chapel.
On Oct. 5, 2007, Archbishop Eusebius Beltran announced the opening of the cause for canonization for Rother, the first person from Oklahoma to be considered for sainthood.
After a determination is made about his martyrdom, Fr. Rother’s cause for beatification and canonization will proceed.
Click here for prayers for Fr. Rother’s canonization.
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