A MAN IN DARK TIMES.

Oscar Romero
Memories in Mosaic
Maria Lopez Vigil
Translated by Kathy Ogle
EPICA, $19.95, 424 pp.

This portrait of Oscar Romero (1917-80), the archbishop of San Salvador murdered at the altar during El Salvador's civil war, is, as the title says, mosaic-like. For Romero, posterity might well come to consider it the equivalent of what The Little Flowers of Saint Francis came to be for the poor man from Assisi. That is because Mosaic tells the story of the Salvadoran martyr through the reminiscences of dozens of people who knew him, recollections that are evocative in detail, vivid in language, and while not given to the miraculous, do give evidence of God's power in a remarkable time and person.

Most people know, at least in outline, the high drama and appalling bloodshed of Romero's story. This compendium provides that, but, more pointedly, it tells the story of a conversion, the conversion of a bishop who becomes a genuine witness of Christ. It is a conversion story all the more salient for being told in the irrepressible voices of those who witnessed it.

Robert Royal, in his chapter on the martyrs of El Salvador in The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century (Crossroad), stresses the continuity of Romero's spiritual path, nods to his closeness to Opus Dei, and underscores the support he received from Pope John Paul II. Memories in Mosaic tells a very different story. Here we find Romero, a generous young prelate who is, nonetheless, a stickler for regulations, ill at ease with others and disliked by many, overworked, and sometimes clearly depressed. His lip trembles at the mention of Medellin, the revolutionary meeting of Latin American bishops in 1968. As Carmen Alvarez recalls, "It seemed to me that he had his head in the clouds, away from reality, up in the trees like avocados." Romero's eventual successor, Arturo Rivera y Damas, speaks of him as a loner who often appeared exhausted; Inocencio Alas, another friend, describes him as "a pastor to his paperwork."

But this all changed dramatically in 1977 after Romero was appointed archbishop of San Salvador by Pope Paul VI. A priest Romero greatly admired, Rutilio Grande, S.J., was murdered by death squads, the rightist Roberto D'Aubuison began a public "Be a Patriot. Kill a Priest" campaign, and National Guardsmen mowed down parishioners and desecrated a church at Aguilares. As Mosaic relates, the timorous Romero reached out and became a man of the people, soon the most outspoken leader for justice in the country. At a time when people buried their Bibles for fear of the army, Romero said that he had learned to read the Gospels anew from the Salvadoran people. His Sunday homilies, broadcast nationwide, became the voice of the dispossessed and the disappeared, the scourge of the conscienceless. As a result, the papal nuncio told a group of catechists that "The church is in danger because of the insane behavior of this archbishop." There was talk of Rome appointing an administrator, and the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador forwarded negative criticism of Romero to the Vatican. Following the assassination of another close friend, Father Octavio Ortiz, Romero said the president of El Salvador was a liar for having declared the church was not being persecuted.

According to Maria Lopez Vigil, Pope John Paul II consented to see Romero following Ortiz's death, but implied to Romero, the archbishop's protestations notwithstanding, that Ortiz had been a guerrilla. Romero was devastated, particularly by the pope's icy manner. He had expected something different from a fellow bishop who had lived through persecution.

But these are only a few of the themes that emerge from this captivating collection, and not the major one. What is most telling here is the picture of Romero's personality, illustrated with striking vividness: his pushiness, his fears, his run-ins and impatience with other bishops, his appetites (Questioner: "What would you miss most in heaven?" Romero: "Beans and avocados. Going without them will be awful"), his love of marimba music, his remarkable courage, and the delight he took in laughter and a colorful joke.

Cesar Jerez tells the story of a staff meeting: "'History is moving too fast. Things are happening before we expect them to,' someone said one day. And Monsignor Romero said, 'It's like when the French priest went to perform a wedding in a village way far away. The bride was all dressed up in white and wearing her orange blossom wreath in her hair, but you could tell she was practically nine months pregnant. When the priest saw her coming down the aisle in such an "advanced" state, he says to her, "You should be wearing oranges instead of orange blossoms!"' And he [Romero] threw his head back and laughed."

If there is anything this collection lacks, it is a fuller set of critical voices. True, there are some, but finally they are from within the fold. Providing the perspective of Romero's foes would have made the story all the more compelling. And second, the compiler, after a remarkable effort to gather the materials, does not adequately identify the people speaking. Perhaps most are well known to a Salvadoran audience, but not to this reader. A line of identification for each would have etched their remarks in the reader's inner ear even more firmly.

The translation, on the other hand, is a joy: sure, fluent, and rooted in the Salvadoran idiom. Here is a description of the ovations that would sweep through the cathedral during Romero's sermons: "And the dogs that go to Mass in the cathedral barked too." Romero would have loved it. He had become the bishop of most things Salvadoran. This book, with the immediacy of its Studs Terkel-like panoply of voices, confirmes it.

Patrick Jordan is Commonweal's managing editor.