Rutilio Grande

The Holy See announced on 21 February 2020, that Pope Francis, having met with the prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, formally approved the beatification of Father Grande and his two lay companions, though the rite was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, hence a tentative date of August 2020 was scrapped. The beatification Mass was eventually celebrated on 22 January 2022, with Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chávez presiding on the Pope's behalf.

The canonization process for Grande, opened in March 2014 by the Archbishop of San Salvador, José Luis Escobar, was ceremonially closed on Aug. 16, 2016. The documents concerning the process were submitted to Rome, where it is being handled by the Jesuits. In March 2018, the Salvadoran Ambassador to the Holy See noted that Pope Francis was a strong advocate of the canonization of Rutilio Grande, whose path to sainthood had been delayed by "misunderstandings and slander." Early in 2019, when Pope Francis was asked on the cause for Rutilio's beatification, he replied that "well informed people tell me that the declaration of martyrdom is going well."

The life and ministry of Grande is depicted in "Monsenor: The Last Journey of Oscar Romero", produced by the Kellogg Institute at the University of Notre Dame in 2011.

As of 2005, Grande's nephew Orlando Erazo was the parish priest in El Paisnal.

Immediately, news of the murders was transmitted to Óscar Romero, the reigning Archbishop of San Salvador, as well as to the local Provincial of the Society of Jesus, who also lived in the capital. Romero, his auxiliary bishop Rivera y Damas, and three Jesuits from the Provincial office all headed to El Paisnal. At 7:00 p.m., President Arturo Armando Molina called Romero to offer his condolences, promising a thorough investigation; newspapers later reported that Romero had called the president first. This discrepancy between the narratives of the government and the Church continued to be a developing theme throughout the period of violence that followed, ending in 1992.

On 15 March 1991, a group of Salvadorans returning from Nicaragua after 11 years of being refugees founded Comunidad Rutilio Grande. Among the group's many projects is "Radio Rutilio," a radio station featuring local youth as broadcasters of community news and announcements. The community also participates in a partnership with a Lutheran congregation in the United States to provide secondary education to children in the Rutilio Grande community. In addition, the community has also maintained a sister city relationship with the town of Davis, California since 1996.

The 1989 biography film Romero (1989) depicts Grande's friendship with Romero, his community work and activism, and his assassination. In the film, Grande's death becomes a major motivation in Romero's shift toward an activist role within the church and the nation. This view is supported in various biographies of Romero.

Grande challenged the government in its response to actions he saw as attempts to harass and silence Salvadoran priests. Mario Bernal Londono, a Colombian priest serving in El Salvador, had been kidnapped January 28, 1977 – allegedly by guerrillas – in front of the Apopa church near San Salvador, together with a parishioner who was safely released. Bernal was deported by the Salvadoran government. On 13 February 1977, Grande preached a sermon that came to be called "the Apopa sermon," denouncing the government's expulsion of Londono, an action that some later believed helped to provoke Grande's murder:

On 12 March 1977, Rutilio Grande was assassinated by Salvadoran security forces, just outside his hometown, suffering martyrdom for the people he served and loved.

In 1977, after the murder of Rutilio Grande, they wanted to pay tribute to his work and life, and all the country's artists were summoned to do so. Faced with silence and fear of reprisals towards artists, the Spanish painter and sculptor Pedro Gross made a monument to Grande. Days after its inauguration, the bust was blasted with dynamite, the artist suffered threats and an attack that he escaped unscathed. He and his family fled the country.

Upon his return to El Salvador in 1973, Grande embarked on a team-based Jesuit evangelization "Mission" to Aguilares, El Salvador. Deeply engaged in the lives of the people he served, Grande led with the Gospel but did not shy away from speaking on social and political issues, which had profound consequences for the church. He could be credited with promoting a "pastoral" liberation ministry that began in scripture and allowed lay people in El Salvador to work for social transformation without resorting to Marxist analysis. Grande was prophetic on issues of land reform, the relationship of rich and poor, liturgical inclusiveness, workers' rights, and making the Catholic faith real for very poor people. He was fond of saying that "the Gospel must grow little feet" if Christ is not to remain in the clouds. Grande had been master of ceremonies at Romero's installation as bishop of Santiago de María in 1975 and remained a friend and confidant of Romero, whom he inspired through his ministry and through the ultimate sacrifice he made.

Shortly after this falling out with church leadership, and reconciliation over his criticism of the seminary system, Grande would attend the Latin American Pastoral Institute (IPLA) in Quito, Ecuador beginning in 1972. There he learned the method of conscientization of Paulo Freire and combined it with the pastoral theology of the Medellín Conference (a meeting of Latin American bishops in 1968). Attendance at this Institute was a turning point for Grande, for he was finally able to integrate Vatican II, the teaching of the Latin American bishops, and his own reality in Salvador in a ministry that had explosive consequences.

Grande had served in the parish of Aguilares off and on from 1967 to 1977. He was responsible, along with many other Jesuits, for establishing Christian base communities (CEBs, in Spanish) and training "Delegates of the Word" to lead them. Grande spoke against the injustices at the hands of an oppressive government and dedicated his life's work to organizing the impoverished, marginalized rural farmers of El Salvador as they demanded respect for their rights. Local landowners saw the organization of the peasants as a threat to their power.

He returned to El Salvador in 1965 and was appointed director of social action projects at the seminary in San Salvador, a position he held for nine years. From 1965 to 1970 he was also prefect of discipline and professor of pastoral theology. He taught a variety of subjects including liturgy, catechesis, pastoral theology, and introduction to the mystery of Christ (philosophy). He also fully utilized the social sciences in an effort to understand the reality within which he lived and ministered. During this time, Grande initiated a process of formation for seminarians which included pastoral "immersions" in the communities they would someday serve. This included time with people listening to their problems and their reality. Grande put it this way, "the first contact with the people was to be characterized by a human encounter; to try to enter into their reality in order to leave with common reality."

Grande continued his studies for the priesthood at the major seminary of San José de la Montaña, where he became friends with Romero, a fellow student. Grande was ordained a priest in mid-1959 in Spain in the city of Oña. He returned to Spain in 1962 to complete studies left undone due to his physical and mental struggles. In 1963 he attended Lumen Vitae Institute in Brussels, Belgium, where he studied new directions in pastoral ministry inspired by Vatican II. He was particularly influenced by his experiences of an inclusive liturgy which insisted upon the widest and deepest lay participation possible at that time. As his biographer stated, "Very probably at this moment his fundamental lines of pastoral action matured. Certainly, a part of this epoch in pastoral theological development was to always look for the greatest participation possible by the base or least empowered part of a community, and to never proceed autonomously or without hearing the community."

At the age of 17, following the final year of high school seminary (minor seminary), Grande entered the Jesuit process of the formation called the novitiate. Thus began a period of time outside of El Salvador. Grande first traveled to Caracas, Venezuela, since there was no Jesuit novitiate in Central America. Initially, Grande felt called to the missions of the church in Oriental countries of the East. After two years in Caracas, he pronounced his vows of poverty, chastity and, obedience and then traveled to Quito, Ecuador to study the humanities, which he completed in 1950. The following three years were spent as a professor in a minor seminary in El Salvador where he taught sacred history, history of the Americas and of El Salvador, and writing.

Rutilio Grande García, SJ (5 July 1928 in El Paisnal – 12 March 1977 in Aguilares) was a Jesuit priest in El Salvador. He was assassinated in 1977, along with two other Salvadorans. He was the first priest assassinated before the Salvadoran Civil War started and a close friend of Archbishop Óscar Romero. After his death, Romero changed his silence and urged the military junta to investigate the murder. His beatification, through his status as a martyr, was approved by Pope Francis on 21 February 2020, with the ceremony being held on 22 January 2022.

Rutilio Grande was born on 5 July 1928, the youngest of 7 children, to a poor family in El Paisnal, El Salvador. His parents, Salvador Grande and Cristina García, divorced when he was young and he was raised by his older brother and grandmother, a devout and strong Catholic woman. At the age of 12, Rutilio was noticed by Archbishop Luis Chavez y Gonzalez during his annual visit to their village and was invited to attend the high school seminary in San Salvador, the capital of the country.