Franciscan Brother Octavio Durán returns the shoes worn at St. Oscar Romero’s martyrdom to Sister Tránsito de la Cruz, superior of the community at Divine Providence Hospital, center, in El Salvador. (Octavio Durán, Maryknoll Magazine | OSV News)As I held Archbishop Óscar Romero’s empty shoes in my trembling hands, I felt gravity heavier than their weight.
It was the evening of March 24, 1980, at San José de la Montaña, where I was a seminarian in San Salvador. Our daily routine proceeded normally until the end of the 5:30 p.m. Mass, when devastating news shattered our world. Archbishop Romero had been assassinated while celebrating Mass at the Divine Providence Hospital chapel.
El Salvador’s political situation was deteriorating dramatically. Violence engulfed the country as government forces committed widespread human rights abuses against civilians suspected of supporting leftist movements. Tensions had reached such extremes that Archbishop Romero felt compelled to address the armed forces directly in his Sunday homily, begging soldiers to stop the brutal repression.
In a powerful sermon on March 23, Archbishop Romero spoke with unwavering moral clarity. “Brothers, you are members of our own people. You kill your fellow peasants. … When faced with a man’s order to kill, God’s law must prevail: ‘Thou shalt not kill’,” he said.
“In the name of God, and in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression!”
This statement sealed his death sentence. No one knew his life would be taken the very next day.
The shoes remained
That evening, Father Gregorio Rosa Chávez, our rector, approached me with grave urgency. He requested that I accompany him to the medical facility where emergency personnel had transported the archbishop’s body.
As darkness fell, the taxi ride – a blur of motion and dread – took us through the crowded streets of a city already erupting with grief, outrage and uncertainty. Upon arrival, we found Archbishop Romero surrounded by frantic doctors and weeping religious sisters. His body still retained warmth, and a single, precise bullet hole in his chest marked exactly where hatred had pierced his compassionate heart.
Mechanically I took photographs, using my camera as an emotional shield between myself and the unbearable reality unfolding before me. Archbishop Romero himself had given me the camera to document the archdiocese’s work.
Trauma erased many details from my memory, yet one image is etched in my mind: When his body was wheeled away for autopsy, his shoes remained behind on the floor, suddenly empty and abandoned.
I knew well those simple, worn-down shoes. I had seen them faithfully carry him through El Salvador’s dusty streets and roads, to remote villages and to the humble homes of its most impoverished citizens. They had also taken him to the pulpit, where he boldly spoke truth to power.
These emptied vessels had transported a man who walked alongside the suffering, who refused the comfort of silence when his people desperately needed a voice for justice. Without thinking, I carefully placed them in my camera bag.
As we returned to the seminary in stunned silence, El Salvador trembled on the edge of an unimaginable brutality. Our shepherd had fallen, and 12 years of civil war would claim more than 75,000 lives. Half a million of us had to flee our country.
The long journey home
Throughout my four-and-a-half decades in the United States, these shoes accompanied me, tucked away safely yet always present. Silent companions witnessing my own journey, they saw me become a Franciscan friar and anchored me through life’s triumphs and hardships.
The shoes officially became relics with St. Óscar Romero’s canonization. But in time I came to realize that the shoes were like immigrants who yearned for their birthplace. The worn leather that once cushioned Monsignor’s feet belonged in the country whose soil is embedded in their soles.
So, 46 years later, I returned the shoes to their homeland.
On Jan. 14, I had the privilege of presenting his shoes to Sister Tránsito de la Cruz, superior of the community at Divine Providence Hospital. There, the Missionary Carmelites of St. Teresa lovingly tend a memorial museum in the little apartment where St. Romero lived, and the delivery took place in the chapel where he was martyred.
As Sister Tránsito received the shoes, her weathered hands trembled slightly – perhaps remembering the times when St. Romero himself walked these grounds, bringing comfort and courage to the sisters during uncertain times.
“These belong here,” she whispered, tears glistening. “They have completed their journey.”
As they passed from my hands to hers, I felt both emptied and fulfilled.
In giving the shoes away, I gained newfound clarity. They represent a path that few possess the courage to walk – one of sacrifice and unconditional love, placing one foot before the other, even when each step brings you closer to crucifixion.
But St. Romero’s legacy is not confined to museums. It lives in continuing acts of remembrance, in the courage of those who still speak truth to power, and in the hope that justice will someday walk freely in the land our martyr loved.
Brother Octavio Duran, a Franciscan friar who lives in Butler, New Jersey, is a freelance photographer and writer. He is a frequent contributor to Maryknoll magazine, where this piece originally ran.