This summer marks the forty-fifth anniversary of the martyrdom of Bl. Stanley Rother, the missionary priest from Oklahoma who was gunned down in 1981 by a government-backed death squad in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala. Bl. Stanley had served as missionary to the indigenous Tz’utujil for thirteen years before his mission got caught in the crosshairs of the brutal Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996). Long considered suspect by the government for his work among the indigenous, Fr. Stan was targeted for death and murdered in his rectory on July 28, 1981. Today we will be reviewing the life and virtues of Bl. Stanley on the occasion of the release of a wonderful new documentary about his life, coming to the big screen this month.
Stanley Francis Rother was born on March 27, 1935, in a farmhouse outside Okarche, Oklahoma, the eldest son of a German-American farming family. His childhood was quite normal for a Catholic boy of the rural plains: chores before dawn, Mass at Holy Trinity, participation in the Future Farmers of America, and hours spent working or repairing farm equipment. His family was immense; there were 47 Rother children from different branches of the family living around Okarche. Stan grew up in a loving family atmosphere permeated by the Faith.
Grace was moving in Stan’s life, however, and the boy discerned the priesthood around age 18 in 1953. (Coincidentally announcing his decision to enter seminary on the exact same day his sister announced her decision to enter the convent!) Stan had the support of his family and community, but his path would not be easy. Stanley was sent to the seminary at San Antonio, Texas, where Stanley floundered in Latin, failed his courses, and was sent home after six years, declared unfit for the priesthood.
It was only the personal intervention of his bishop that secured him a second chance at Mount St. Mary’s in Emmitsburg, Maryland, where he finished his studies and was ordained on May 25, 1963, for the Diocese of Oklahoma City-Tulsa.
Five years of parish work followed. Then, in 1968, Fr. Rother was recruited for the diocesan mission in Guatemala at Santiago Atitlán, a Tz’utujil Maya town on the shore of Lake Atitlán, ringed by volcanoes and reachable from the capital only by a long mountain road. It was there that the farm boy who could not master Latin learned Spanish and then Tz’utujil, an unwritten Mayan tongue with no grammar to consult and no textbook to memorize.
Fr. Stan threw himself into his assignment with zeal, earning the love and respect of the indigenous Tz’utujil. His parishioners affectionately called him Padre A’plas, their rendering of his middle name, Francisco.
His work was immense; the Tz’utujil had been without a regular parish priest for over one hundred and fifty years, were poorly catechized, and lived in extreme material poverty. Fr. Rother worked tirelessly to better their spiritual and material condition. He labored on a translation of the New Testament into their language. He introduced better farming methods, helped establish a co-operative, a school, a clinic, organized a catechist program, and a Catholic radio station for catechesis. He even fixed their broken-down farm machinery.
By 1975, he was serving some 22,000 souls nearly alone, as many other missionary priests had withdrawn due to the escalation of the Guatemalan Civil War.
The escalation of the civil war into the highlands around Lake Atitlán was problematic for Fr. Stan. The indigenous were mistrusted by the Guatemalan government, which viewed indigenous villages as potential beds of leftist insurgency. Fr. Stan’s humanitarian work among the Tz’utujil made him suspect. To teach an indigenous farmer to read, to organize a co-op, to preach to the poor in their own tongue were all interpreted by the military government as sedition, and those who did such things were marked as subversives.
The violence reached the highlands by 1980, and it touched Fr. Stan’s community personally: his catechists disappeared and were later found beaten and dead. Fr. Stan would walk the roads to recover the bodies and bury them, and he carried food to the widows and orphans the war left behind. His radio station was smashed and its director murdered.
Fr. Stan knew he was in mortal danger. In a letter home that Christmas, he wrote the sentence for which he is now remembered: “the shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger.” Even so, circumstance forced him into a strategic retreat. In January 1981, he learned that his name stood eighth on a death list, and his parishioners insisted he return to the U.S. for his own safety.
Fr. Stan reluctantly came home to Oklahoma, but he was unhappy and restless. He stayed only three months and constantly talked of returning to Santiago Atitlán. Those who saw him then recall a man distracted, restless, plainly elsewhere. His brother told him bluntly that they were waiting to kill him, but Fr. Stan was undaunted. He returned to Guatemala to great rejoicing in time to keep Holy Week with his people.
On the night of July 28, 1981, three masked men entered the rectory and seized a nineteen-year-old boy, Francisco Bocel, holding a gun to his head to make him lead them to the priest. The boy knocked at the utility room door and called out that they had come for him. Fr. Stan opened it. They wanted him alive; Fr. Stan fought them, and they shot him in the head. He was forty-six. His body went home to Okarche, but his heart, at his people’s request, remains buried beneath the church at Santiago Atitlán to this day.
When reviewing the life of Bl. Stanley Rother, it is hard not to be impressed by his heroic fortitude. He possessed a remarkable devotion to his mission, refusing to leave despite the obvious danger to his life. Bl. Stanley’s love for Christ was deeply “incarnated” through his fidelity to a particular place and a particular people. Fr. Stanley was no theologian and certainly no political activist. He was a humble pastor who had bound himself to a flock and would not be driven off.
In this sense, he reminds us of another missionary martyr, St. Isaac Jogues, who likewise would not abandon his mission in New France, despite the obvious dangers which eventually claimed his life. This is the great lesson of Bl. Stanley Rother’s life. We are accustomed to imagining sanctity as a kind of mystical ascent, a leaving-behind. Bl. Stanley’s holiness consisted in staying put, regardless of what sorts of obstacles were thrown into his path.
Another interesting parallel with St. Isaac Jogues: St. Isaac’s last act was to open the door of a wigwam he was summoned to. St. Isaac knew it was a trap; he knew his killers were lurking within waiting for an excuse to strike him down. St. Isaac went in anyway, believing it was the vocation of a priest to go when summoned. Similarly, Bl. Stanley’s last act was to open a door. His gunmen knocked on the door of his room late at night and Bl. Stanley answered—and why wouldn’t he? What if it was one of his flock who needed him? This “opening” is surely an apt analogy for the openness to God’s will that characterized the heroism of every martyr-saint.
In commemoration of the forty-fifth anniversary of Bl. Stanley’s death, the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City has partnered with the Oklahoma-based film studio Lampstand Story Company to produce a magnificent new documentary on the life of Bl. Stanley Rother. American Martyr: The Stanley Rother Story traces the life and virtues of Fr. Stan from his birth in Okarche all the way up to his martyrdom in Santiago Atitlán. With a run-time of 106 minutes and an excellent narration by Martin Sheen, American Martyr is a fabulous introduction to the life of Bl. Stanley.
I knew little about Bl. Stanley Rother before watching this film, and I must admit I was deeply moved. I will certainly be adding Bl. Stanley to my growing list of heavenly patrons. If you’re interested in learning more about the first native-born U.S. martyr, I highly recommend checking out American Martyr: The Stanley Rother Story.
Bl. Stanley Rother, ora pro nobis!
“The good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep.” (Jn. 10:11)
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To learn more about American Martyr: The Stanley Rother Story, visit RotherDoc.com. The movie is scheduled for release for two nights only in English, August 25-26th, and one night only in Spanish, August 27th.
Image by Julitomenchu on Wikimedia Commons
