Bulletins
September 24, 2017
Download the Bulletin as a PDF“Padre, they've come for you.”
Those were some of the last words heard by Father Stanley Francis, spoken by someone staying at the mission in Guatemala who had been led, at gunpoint, to where he was sleeping. It was 1:30 in the morning on July 28, 1981, and Guatemala was in the throes of a decades-long civil war. Fifteen minutes and two gunshots later, Father Stanley was dead and the men fled the mission grounds.
The five-foot-ten, red-bearded missionary priest was from the unassuming town of Okarche, Okla., where the parish, school and farm were the pillars of community life. He went to the same school his whole life and lived with his family until he left for Mount St. Mary's seminary in Maryland.
A few years after he was ordained for the Diocese of Oklahoma City, Fr. Stanley accepted an invitation to join the diocesan mission among the Tz'utujil Mayan Indians in Santiago Atitlan in Guatemala, where he spent the next 13 years of his life.
Over the years, the violence of the Guatemalan civil war inched closer to the once-peaceful village. Acknowledging the danger he wrote famously to his family back home, “The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger. Pray for us that we may be a sign of the love of Christ for our people, that our presence among them will fortify them to endure these sufferings in preparation for the coming of the Kingdom.” In January 1981, in immediate danger and his name on a death list, Fr. Stanley did return to Oklahoma for a few months. But as Easter approached, he wanted to spend Holy Week with his people in Guatemala, where he was killed weeks later.
Fr. Rother was beatified Sept. 23 at the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City, making him the first martyr of the Church born in the United States.
Blessed Stanley Rother pray for us!
Fr. Christopher J. Pollard
p.s. To read the whole article about him, please click here: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/this-priest-from-oklahoma-was-a-martyr-heres-his-powerful-story-22825/
