Romero Y Galdames, Oscar Arnulfo (1917-1980)

El Salvadorean Roman Catholic prelate, archbishop, and champion of human rights. He believed in the principles of liberation theology, that the Gospels demanded action against poverty and injustice. Romero spoke out courageously against the military regime regarding the appalling living conditions of the poor, violation of human rights, and the bloody repression of the people, which had claimed thousands of lives. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. He was assassinated in March 1980 by right-wing paramilitaries, while preaching at the Chapel of the Hospital de la Divina Providencia, a San Salvador medical chapel.

Born in Ciudad Barrios, in eastern El Salvador, he was ordained in 1942, made a bishop in 1970 and became archbishop of San Salvador in 1977. Hitherto viewed as a conservative traditionalist who favoured only limited social reform, he was radicalized by the upsurge in political violence across El Salvador in the late 1970s, involving the extreme right and left. Public revulsion at his assassination helped to bring back to power the reformist José Napoleon Duarte.