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Danny Sweeney, Social Justice Coordinator with Justice & Peace Scotland gives his personal reflection in our blog on the beatification of Fr Rutilio Grande SJ and his fellow martyred companions Nelson and Manuel after attending the Thanksgiving Mass in Edinburgh on 22nd January 2022.

“True love is what Rutilio Grande brings with his death, with two campesinos next to him.” This was the homily of his friend and archbishop, Oscar Romero following the murder of Fr Rutilio, along with his partners in mission Manuel Solórzano and Nelson Lemus on 12th March 1977 by a military junta death squad. Over 40 years later, and with a couple of COVID related delays the church recognised the martyrdom of Rutilio, Manuel and Nelson, along with the Italian Franciscan Fr. Cosme Spessoto who was assassinated in El Salvador on 14th June 1980 saying Mass for a murdered student.

 Sacred Heart Church, Edinburgh marked the beatifications a few hours ahead of the events in El Salvador on 22nd January 2022. The Jesuit church has a small chapel dedicated to Romero and Grande including a relic of the new Blessed; his diary. Fr David Stewart S.J showed me the diary before the Mass started, it includes notes by Grande reminding him to take medication for his diabetes. “We’re not quite sure how it ended up here, or really if we should keep it” he does confess. Fr David has been the driving force behind the event, with the support of the Jesuit community, Justice and Peace Scotland, and the Archdiocese of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh.

Archbishop Leo Cushley lead the celebrations, the Gospel for the vigil mass recalling Jesus starting his ministry taking up the scroll of Isaiah; “The spirit of the Lord has been given to me, for he has anointed me. He has sent me to bring the good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and to the blind new sight, to set the downtrodden free, to proclaim the Lord's year of favour.”

The good news to the poor is what led Grande and his partners to be martyred. Fr David noted in his homily that Grande’s murder wasn’t the start of Romero’s conversion to the option for the poor but certainly was a fork in the road which led to his own martyrdom three years later. But the new Blessed brings far more to the universal church than being just “the inspiration of Oscar Romero”. Looking online the response in both English and Spanish I’m struck by the numbers across the world who are celebrating this; is a beatification usually such big news? There is a call for Grande to be recognised as a patron saint for mental health, following his first-hand struggles with mental and physical health challenges. Fr David noted that most Salvadorean Jesuits at the time were committed to university academia, but Grande chose to go out to the poorest in the villages, and banners carried in San Salvador are celebrating him as “Amigo de los pobres”.  (Friend of the Poor)

Speaking with those gathered I was most struck that they wanted their children to be present. One mother to two young girls from the parish serving on the altar, the other whose son is a university student in Edinburgh both told me they saw this event as speaking to the life of a church which is active and engaged in the world, and they thought it important to share this with their families. Perhaps it is the grouping of the three new beati which can speak volumes? Manuel Solórzano in his early 70s, Nelson Lemus aged 16, both lay people along with Fr Tilo (as he was known) on a shared mission for justice and in solidarity with the poorest in their community. Coming from a reality where for too long the church had sided with the rich and powerful, where Generals and dictators expected the archbishops’ blessings, to see clergy and laity taking the side of Isaiah, of Jesus, of the poor gives us new hope that we won’t just speak the words of justice, peace, and hope but will live them in our community too.

For me, I found myself thinking of the communities I’ve come to know in recent months ahead of COP26 who with Pope Francis are trying to hear and respond to ‘the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor’. In Latin America we continue to see the murder of earth defenders, indigenous leaders, and activists by governments and corporations more interested in exploiting our common home than protecting it. In Myanmar where another military junta is waging war against the people and the church. We know that such persecutions continue today, but they can seem very distant from our own experience in the West. This distance was shortened towards the end of the Mass when Archbishop Leo remarked how deeply moved he had been by the service, having known in his previous ministry several people who like Rutilio, Manuel, Nelson and Cosme had paid the same price for proclaiming the good news to the poor as they had. 

Perhaps it is fitting that here too, where we see a government mired in corruption, the poorest communities suffering the most, and the various mental and physical health challenges exacerbated by two years of pandemic we celebrated the beatification and look to the lessons these saints have for our church here and around the world.

Blessed Rutilio Grande, Blessed Manuel Solórzano, Blessed Nelson Lemus, and Blessed Cosme Spessoto; Rezar por Nosotros!

You can watch a recording of the service on our YouTube channel here https://youtu.be/oR_Nap8yUKc

This text was originally published in ICN on Wednesday 26th January 2022. 

Just returned from another month in Calais at the Maria Skobtsova House, Alex Holmes updates us on events over Christmas and the New Year.

St Pierre Park, Calais, the willow trees are gold in the early January sun. Euphrosyne, Aglaea and Thalia, the ‘Three Graces’, daughters of Zeus, are the central feature of the park’s fountain and an immutable reminder of the gifts they were said to bestow: youth and laughter and elegance.

Fireside, in the Eritrean camp. The laughter is infectious. ‘Fessehaye’s Tigrinya is no good. Remember he didn’t know what alam dirho* means?’ Yusef’s smile lights up his whole face. ‘Now I have the egg, and he has the poop’. He’s video calling from his bed in a UK hotel having rowed across the Channel in November. 

‘Hotel like prison’ retaliates Fessehaye with a prolonged chuckle, ‘here we are free, with fresh air and a fire, good Eritrean friends and we can cook our own delicious food. Come back to Calais!’ 

‘Calais is dog’s life’, retorts the ever-grinning Fili, his hand freshly bandaged from a burn. I ask him how his hand is. ‘Fine’, he grins, ‘but in our tradition, if you burn yourself, you must use shinti.’ 

‘What is shinti?’

‘Pee-pee’. Laughter ripples around the fire. ‘And if you cut yourself, you must rub bun (coffee) into the cut and then cover it. Our village medicine is history, not science. It is good’. He turns his attention to his shoes. ‘I need softy’. He’s passed a packet of tissues and begins to meticulously wipe every trace of mud from his shoes.

The talk moves to the UK and the increasing difficulties of crossing the Channel to claim asylum. Hamed, the artist, smiles, but it is a wistful smile. ‘Life for the rich is good but not good if you are poor. If you have money, you can pay a smuggler to help you cross the sea and there are no CRS*. If no money, you try in a truck and there is always CRS’. Today he spoke to his girlfriend in Eritrea. He’s 21 and it’s been 4 years since he saw her. ‘She said ‘how is school?’ I tell her it is good. I cannot tell her about life here, the cold and the mud’. The stress of Calais has pushed Hamed to take up smoking.

A figure skips out of the dusk. It’s Hayat. ‘I skip like bambino’. He laughs. ‘In Libya, people were kind. They say I am bambino’. He tells me about life back home, the farm he grew up on. ‘It was a big farm, we had a large house, more than 450 cattle, many donkeys and camels, 36 dogs.’ But like everyone held in a smuggler’s detention centre in Libya, he was a commodity with a value. ‘My father had to sell 400 cattle to raise the money or smugglers kill me’. Hayat moves away from the fire to a secluded spot to dye his hair black. The diet and stress have partially turned his hair brown; it is undignified, and he is concerned about his appearance.

Negassi is taking photos of his new acquisitions, hair oil and a bar of ‘Beauty Cream’ soap. There’s a burst of laughter from the other side of the fire. It’s Aaron, Aaron whose broad smile lightens my every visit to the fireside. ‘Too late for you, Negassi, you are too old to become beautiful’. Negassi’s hair is very black, soft and straight. ‘My grandfather was British. He came to Eritrea in colonial days. I am going to UK to find him’. 

Night has fallen. Passing the line of tents that are pitched at the foot of the 4 metre high security wall, I notice one that is flattened. A figure is moving under the canvas. ‘Bruq leyti, goodnight’ I call. A face pops out. It’s Sami. ‘What happened to your tent Sami?’  ‘No problem’, he laughs, ‘I fix it tomorrow’.

One definite highlight was the bishop coming to say mass in the car park beside the larger of the 2 Eritrean camps on Christmas Eve despite the objections of the mayor of Calais

* alam dirho , the world is like a chicken (to some it gives eggs, to others poop!)
* CRS, the French riot police

Alex Holmes has just returned from a month in Calais supporting destitute asylum seekers there and has kindly written this update, giving us another glimpse into the realities of the situation for those seeking sanctuary at the border.

How can their shoes be so white in this mud-packed and puddled place?
‘Mister, bonbons, give us bonbons!’  Two little girls race towards me in their very white shoes. This time I’m prepared. Delving into my pocket, I give one a pink lollipop, one an orange. 

‘Mister, I want pink one, and pink one for my sister too’.

BMX, the larger of the two Eritrean encampments in Calais. The daily police evictions have finished and the community are moving their tents back into the apology of woodland that is their precarious base.

Alone, balancing his way along a concrete kerb, a boy of perhaps 12. He has hearing aids in both ears.

‘Kabey metsika’, where are you from, he asks me. The UK, I reply. He smiles, a warm, gentle smile. Later beside the fire, he comes up behind Saare and puts his arms round him. Saare takes first one of the boy’s hands, and then the other and gives each a kiss. The children here are much loved. 

Away from the fire, four young Eritreans sit at a round table drinking coffee. For once the air is still and they have lit a white candle. The flame is unwavering. Behind them on the wire fence hangs a framed tapestry depicting the church of Our Lady in Lourdes, and a pristine white sheet drying in the sun.

White. Milky porridge white. A charred black pan sits precariously on the fire in the firepit. Rahwa gently stirs the contents. The rain has stopped, but the wind is strong, the smoke from the fire frenzied. There’s no escape from stinging eyes. Rahwa pours the now ready porridge into disposable cups and small bowls. The bowls are taken over to where a group of women and children sit on a felled tree trunk. Around the fire, we are given the filled cups. The porridge is sweet, thick and so hot it blisters the roof of my mouth.  Beside me Aman. Seduced by the sight of the porridge, he gives up on what he’s been trying to eat, some cold rice from the previous day, and strides off to jettison it on the food dump. The large flock of juvenile gulls that scour the waste food, takes to flight, a wing-cloud that momentarily deadens the afternoon light. ‘The birds are beautiful’, says Awet looking up from his porridge. ‘All animals are beautiful; they are from God’. I raise an eyebrow at the rats that scurry across the packed earth ground. ‘Yes rats are beautiful too’ he insists, ‘but you must not take food into your tent or they will make holes and come inside’. ‘Tu-um’, delicious, says Aman who has returned and is tucking eagerly into his porridge.

White in the darkness. The stadium camp. The sun has set, another day is ending. A barn owl, ghostly white in the mix of spotlight and night, sits atop the security fence seemingly unconcerned by the group of diners around the nearby fire. A sudden swoop and it disappears into the undergrowth. At ground level a chaotic warp and weft of rats are in constant motion in their search for food. Two hungry coots emerge from the foetid drainage channel and peck at some discarded grains of rice. Tonight, the full moon is pale orange; it’s a ‘hunter’s moon’.

Hamid and Yusef emerge from the darkness into the glow of the fire, their faces creased in pain. They’ve been pepper sprayed by the CRS. Handed small cartons of milk, they let the contents dribble down over their closed stinging eyes. The pain lessens, and they come and sit at the fireside. As the milk dries, their faces become a blotch of dark skin and white. And gradually they begin to smile.