In February 2023, Archbishop John Wilson stood at the spot where St. Óscar Romero celebrated his last Mass.
From his viewpoint behind the altar, the English archbishop looked out at the chapel doors, just a short distance away, where on March 24, 1980, a gunman appeared and fired a bullet into Romero’s heart.
The saint collapsed beside the altar of the chapel of Divine Providence Hospital in El Salvador’s capital, San Salvador. Above his body was a life-sized Crucifix, with Christ’s eyes upturned to heaven.
For Wilson, celebrating Mass at the site was the culmination of a journey into the saint’s spirituality that followed his conversion to Catholicism as a teenager. The voyage continued through his priestly ordination and appointment as Archbishop of Southwark, the archdiocese that covers London south of the River Thames.
Wilson has just published a book called “The Romero Rosary,” which presents a new cycle of rosary meditations inspired by the Salvadoran archbishop canonized in 2018. He discussed the project in a Feb. 20 interview with The Pillar via Zoom.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
St. Óscar Romero was Archbishop of San Salvador from 1977 until his assassination in 1980. As far as I know, he never visited the U.K.
Yet there’s a national shrine dedicated to him, in your cathedral in south London. What’s the connection between Romero and Britain?
First of all, I think Romero is a saint with universal appeal, because he’s powerfully an exemplar of somebody who loves the Lord Jesus. I think that’s getting to the heart of Romero — that everything he is, everything he was, is because of Christ.
He was martyred not because he was a politician or a soldier; he was martyred because he was a shepherd, and he was a fearless shepherd even though he was quite a shy man.
We’re blessed that we have a very vibrant Spanish-speaking diaspora in our diocese. There are very strong communities from across Central and South America. And the cathedral is a center for that. We have a Spanish Mass every Sunday, and it draws from across the whole of Latin America.
The shrine is very simple. At the heart of it is one of Romero’s zucchettos, his purple skull caps, and a piece of the bloodstained alb he was wearing when he died. All of that comes from a long-standing connection with Romero in our country because of his fearless love for Jesus and his defense of those who were persecuted and were treated appallingly at the time of the militarized government in El Salvador.
The Church in that period faced terrible repression. I think English Catholics understand what it is to be a persecuted Church. It’s kind of in our DNA as a community. I think we understand what it is to be in a place where what we hold true and stand for is either questioned or people are seeking to erase it.
At that time in England, it was illegal to practice the Catholic faith. You couldn’t go to Mass. You couldn’t be a priest in our country. There’s something about the psyche of what it is to be a Church under pressure and under threat, and to have priests and religious killed, that connects somehow with us as an English Catholic community, which is perhaps a little bit different from other Catholic communities around the world.
How did your own interest in Romero begin?
It kind of happened by chance. As I was growing up, becoming more interested in faith and things, I often used to go to bookshops. One of the books I bought when I was 17 was a little book of quotations from Romero’s speeches called “The Church is All of You.” I still have it today.
I found it absolutely fascinating, and it remains for me a great source. It gives an insight into Romero’s love for Christ, his love for the Church, and his love for his people and his country that maybe put that faith into action.
It was an incredible experience to go to El Salvador to visit his shrine in the cathedral and celebrate Mass at his tomb, and it struck me that there were people at that Mass who were old enough to have known Romero.
It was incredible to visit his home. He lived in the grounds of Divine Providence Hospital in San Salvador. His little house now is a shrine. It’s incredibly simple. One of the things that struck me was that in the garden there is a little Lourdes grotto — he had a great, great love for Our Lady.
As you go through the house, there’s his pectoral cross, his episcopal ring, and his rosary. And that’s what really stood out to me: here is something that this man of faith used to connect him to the Lord through his Mother.
To celebrate Mass in the chapel where Romero was assassinated, I found incredibly moving. I’d seen pictures of it and seen it on videos. I never realized it was so small, when you stand at the altar. Romero would’ve seen the face of the person who shot him, almost as if his martyrdom unfolded in front of him.
On the floor beside that altar, there was a glass sheet which had the outline of Romero’s body. So it was very much standing at the same altar to celebrate the same Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with a consciousness of Romero’s own sacrifice in that place decades ago.
You discovered Romero as a young man, but now you’ve gone on to have leadership responsibility in the Church.
Do you see him as an example for you as a Church leader?
I do. I suppose he was a Church leader formed in a very particular historic setting and political climate. He was very surprised to be made a bishop, and I know what that feels like. He was very surprised to be made an archbishop. I know what that feels like too.
He wasn’t an enormous, great towering figure. If you go into his house, in his wardrobe, which has got a glass front, these cassocks are hung there, and they are quite a few inches off the floor. He was short of stature, but his stature came interiorly.
I think he speaks of a leadership that is utterly faithful to the Church, that is completely immersed in a personal relationship with Christ, a love of the Scriptures. He was a man of incredible prayer. He would pray the whole night before he preached.
He was a man who understood his people and loved his people, and loved his priests and religious. He loved, in a sense, without discriminating. But increasingly he became aware of the need to speak out in defense of those who were persecuted.
How does he speak to me as a leader? He says to me that my primary relationship has to be with Christ, that I must immerse myself in a relationship with Christ, because that’s the only thing that can make sense of my ministry and whatever leadership I have, and Christ is the model for all our leadership.
He says that I have to have a love for the Church, the Church historically, traditionally, but also the Church as we find her now in the life of the world, and to try and love all the facets of the Church, which sometimes is complicated.
He also says to be sensitive to areas where it is important to sometimes say something.
Romero understood the truth that silence often only aids the people who are oppressing others, not the ones who are oppressed. I don’t think I’m a particularly courageous speaker, and I’m not a media hound really, but on certain things we have as an archdiocese spoken straightforwardly.
We did it through COVID about the reopening of churches, and we’ve done it recently through the proposals for legislation about assisted dying. We’ve done it on things like racism, and the need to combat injustice because of racial and cultural prejudice.
Romero can’t be replicated, but he can be an encouragement for this time, in this place, and for what we need in our life, Church, and society.
In the book, you insist on Romero’s complexity, the difficulty of categorizing him as a man of the ‘left’ or ‘right.’
Do you think we’re prone to oversimplifying Romero?
I think so. After one of the social media posts that we put out as a diocese, someone said something like “he’s nothing but a Marxist.” And I thought, gosh, how terribly you’ve misunderstood him.
Romero has been claimed for different voices and different factions in the life of the Church, but it’s a false dichotomy to put him on the left or the right. He’s utterly rooted in the tradition of the Church and the Church’s teaching.
Part of the reason for the book is to expose people who might not necessarily go to the six volumes of his homilies to some of his own words, because his own words speak most beautifully about him as a pastor, a disciple, a teacher of faith. For me, that’s the most important way to encounter him, to read the words he preached.
His preaching is absolutely beautiful. It’s utterly Christocentric. It’s rooted in the Scriptures. He contextualizes it in the context of his country and time, but it’s a mistake to hijack him in any way, and try to say that he’s “ours” rather than yours.
There’s this lovely explanation of Psalm 36 by St. Ambrose. It says that when we speak about wisdom, we are speaking of Christ. When we speak about virtue, we are speaking of Christ. When we speak about justice, we are speaking of Christ. When we speak about peace, we are speaking of Christ. When we speak about truth and life and redemption, we are speaking about Christ.
What stops Romero being hijacked is to always see him in relationship to Christ and to let him speak for himself in a holistic way, rather than allow anyone to caricature him in a soundbite.
When Pope John Paul II introduced the luminous mysteries of the rosary in 2002, it was somewhat controversial.
Some Catholics were reluctant to accept an addition to the traditional 15 mysteries.
Were you worried that proposing your own new mysteries might strike others as a little bold?
Absolutely. We had a book launch in London and a man wanted to know whether I asked permission of Pope Francis to issue these new mysteries. And I said: “Well, whether I should have done or I shouldn’t, I didn’t. But I don’t think Pope Francis would be too worried about this.”
The traditional rosary is an incredible gift to a Church: those original mysteries of joy, sorrow, and glory, then augmented by the mysteries of light, by Pope John Paul II. They were not to everyone’s taste, but I think they found their place in the normal rhythm of the Church’s rosary life.
There have been other traditions of rosaries in the history of the Church. There is a Franciscan rosary that has seven mysteries, and that’s quite an ancient thing. There’s another rosary that comes from the tradition of Brigit of Sweden and was picked up by Teresa of Ávila as well, and that has six decades rather than five.
So, yes, perhaps it’s a little bit bold and presumptuous. But the point is, this is simply an offering. This is for personal devotion. It’s not imposing anything. It’s to try and say: if you love the rosary, maybe you can discover Romero in a new way. And if you love Romero, maybe you can discover the rosary in a new way. And it’s to offer something as a positive, encouraging devotional proposal. People are entirely free to do what they want with it.
When we look at the formation of young people, who often have a sense of social justice, the question for me is: how do we link that into faith in Christ and the Church’s tradition? I think this is possibly a way of doing that.
The rosary is such a traditional prayer, so to see that through social justice eyes, with a very Christocentric focus, through Romero’s words, I think has some possibility for perhaps opening the rosary to people who have never experienced it before.
Obviously there’s a point at which faith has a practical import, you put faith into action. But if you’re not in touch with the mysteries of faith, with the beauty of our faith, with the person of Christ, with his Mother, with the saints, then faith and Catholicism becomes an activism. And it can’t simply be that. It has to be something that flows from a profoundly supernatural relationship.
How did develop what you call the ‘Romero mysteries’: the mysteries of charity; the mysteries of compassion and mercy; and the mysteries of justice and peace?
I’ve often used books of the traditional rosaries that either have meditations based on the Scriptures or reflections from saints. I thought, there’s a possibility here with Romero as well, just to tie those two things together. Having visited El Salvador, it sowed a kind of seed in my mind.
I was conscious that the Romero mysteries needed to be sufficiently distinct from the existing mysteries and, as it were, fill in a few gaps that are there in the life and ministry of the Lord.
A lot of them are just my favorite passages from Scripture. That’s what it comes down to, really. The recommissioning of Peter is such a powerful example of mercy, forgiveness, and healing. The parable of the Prodigal Son has always struck me deeply. Zacchaeus has always been a favorite of mine.
Romero is powerfully a witness to charity. He powerfully speaks about compassion and mercy, and he powerfully speaks about justice and peace. And so they kind of just fell in that categorization.
Then I read through the Gospels, and as I went through, I noted anything that might sit in those categories. If Romero did nothing else for me, he made me read the Gospels again from beginning to end, which I’m very grateful for.
When I prayed these mysteries, there in my sitting room, I was very struck by the first mystery of charity, The Lord Jesus Teaches Love for Enemies. I thought, who at the moment am I in some kind of tension with or who have I got a little bit of a frustration with? And it brought people and situations to mind.
We know Romero prayed the rosary at all kinds of moments in his life. He prayed it as a young boy, as a priest, as a bishop. His driver talks about how whenever there was trouble, there would be Romero with his rosary.
Romero talks about the rosary as a schooling, and I think it is a schooling of the mysteries of Christ. So it makes sense to me to try and make that experience as expansive as possible.
What’s your greatest hope for the book?
I would love for somebody who’s never prayed the rosary to pray it because of this book for the first time — whatever mysteries they pray.
The book uses Romero’s homilies to illustrate all the mysteries: joy, sorrow, light, glory, and then the three Romero mysteries. So even if you’re going to quibble with me about extra mysteries, even if you’re going to quibble with John Paul II about mysteries of light, you can still look at joy, sorrow, and glory.
I would love it to ferment a love and praying of the rosary. And I’d love people also to understand Romero a little bit better because of this and see him as an encouragement, an intercessor, someone who internalized the truths of faith so much that they changed his outward life.
Romero said some words that really struck my heart: “There is no chain more beautiful for joining the world with God than the chain of the holy rosary.” If anyone grasps that a little bit more deeply or for the first time, I’ll take that as success.
