Former Salvadoran refugee’s father granted martyrdom by Pope Francis

When she was a child in a small El Salvadoran village, Luisa Orellana-Westbrook would imitate her father by preaching the word of Jesus Christ to other children.

Today, living in Spokane 32 years after her father was hauled away by death squads, she’s still motivated by her father’s mission to lift up the poor and suffering. And she’s especially pleased that Pope Francis formally recognized her father as a martyr recently – an apparent change of attitude from the church toward Catholic clergy and others killed during El Salvador’s civil war.

“I was taught by my dad that every person I see in my life is the image of Christ,” Orellana-Westbrook said this week. “It is important to me that we look at each other and see Christ is present in us – in each one of us.”

When she was growing up in El Salvador, the ministry was a dangerous vocation for a child to imitate. The government’s military death squads targeted civilians and clergy – torturing them, killing them, disappearing them. Perhaps most infamously, Archbishop Oscar Romero was killed in 1980 while standing at the altar of a chapel in San Salvador, urging military soldiers to stop killing their fellow citizens.

Because Orellana-Westbrook’s father, Jose Estanislao Orellana Villalobos, worked alongside Romero as a catechist, he was targeted by the same regime. Three years later, soldiers dragged Villalobos away from his family, never to return.

For many years, the work of Romero, Villalobos and others in El Salvador was politically controversial, seen as Marxist or communist because of its intense focus on justice for the poor. The military forces that carried out the killings of clergy and others were supported by the American government. And, though many have long honored Romero as a hero, calls for him to be moved toward sainthood went unanswered by previous popes.

But this spring, Pope Francis beatified Romero, moving him nearer to sainthood. Romero’s beatification was worldwide news, but it came with a lesser-known component: Many El Salvadorans who lost their lives to the death squads, including Villalobos, were granted martyrdom status.

The declaration by Pope Francis is a formal recognition that Villalobos lost his life in the service of God, for “working with the poor, helping them to understand God’s justice,” said Sister Judith Desmarais, the provincial superior for the Sisters of Providence.

Supporters of Romero have long called for him to be named a saint. “Many people believe, have always felt, that Archbishop Romero was a saint,” she said. “In their hearts, they know he’s a saint.”

Some 75,000 people died in the Salvadoran civil war from 1979 to 1992. Villalobos grew up in a Catholic family, the ninth of 10 children, and by the time of the civil war, he’d become a catechist under Romero, serving people in small rural villages – often with a guitar in his hands.

“I remember standing in front of kids, pretending I was preaching like my father,” Orellana-Westbrook said.

He was working with a population in deep poverty and largely illiterate. People were dying – at the hands of the military and from hunger.

“A lot of Catholics at the time were told it was the will of God that they were poor, the will of God to be suffering,” Orellana-Westbrook said. “However, the God we believe in was a God of compassion and kindness.”

The “liberation theology” followed by Romero and developed in the Latin American world in previous decades became intensely controversial, both within the church and within politics. It focused on fighting poverty and working for justice for indigenous peoples, and it included a call for the church to align itself with the poor and their interests, and not with the wealthy.

In a country devastated by poverty and war, Romero became a hero.

Orellana-Westbrook, who has portraits of Romero hanging on the walls of her home, said, “He was loved by everyone. I remember the day he was assassinated, March 24 (1980). We heard he had been killed while he was saying Mass. I just felt like everything was dark and we had lost hope.”

Not long after, on Easter Day, her father gave a sermon calling on people not to give up.

“He said we would not stop talking against injustice, because Christ called us to make a commitment,” he said. “He said we would continue the mission of Archbishop Romero.”

Everyone was well aware of the potential consequences: “ ‘If they kill me,’ he said, ‘I will be resurrected among my people.’ ”

After receiving threats from the military, the family began a three-year journey, moving from church to church, from sanctuary to sanctuary. On March 16, 1983, Luisa and her sister woke one night to the sound of their father screaming, “Father, Father, they will kill me!” and soldiers assaulting her mother. Her father was taken away, and they never saw him again.

The family fled to the United States. In 1985, they came to Spokane, where they were given sanctuary at St. Ann’s Catholic Church. Luisa’s mother, six brothers and three sisters, along with three nieces and nephews, lived in the church basement for years, fearful that they would be deported to the country that murdered their father.

St. Ann’s was participating in the Sanctuary Movement, a campaign to provide safe haven for refugees fleeing civil wars in Central America who could not legally enter the country. As the recent immigration debate in Spokane has played out, City Council President Ben Stuckart has spoken of his experiences as a member of St. Ann’s when Orellana-Westbrook and her family were living there.

“The homily would sometimes be what to do if (immigration officials) come,” Stuckart said.

Orellana-Westbrook and most of her family members have settled here and become citizens. They don’t hide anymore.

“I see them out at community events now,” Stuckart said. “These are people I grew up with … and the family is now all productive members of the community.”

Orellana-Westbrook met her husband, Christian Westbrook, through the church. She now works teaching English as a second language, and sees firsthand how many refugees still find themselves coming to Spokane.

“If it were over, and it wasn’t still happening in the world, I would just be quiet and I would not be talking about my dad or Archbishop Romero,” she said. “But so many things are still happening.”

She often teaches people who suffered under oppressive regimes or extreme poverty – “people who are afraid, who fear for their lives,” she said. “Those who have the freedom, the ability, to speak up, should do so.”

So she continues doing her father’s work. And, though his body was never found, the formal declaration of his martyrdom helps give her family something it has never had. His name is now etched on a monument in San Salvador attesting to his status as a martyr.

“Now we have a place we can go and visit,” she said.