September 10, 2017 - "Fr. Stanley Rother"

During the latter part of this year  we will see two men born in the United States declared Blessed by the Church.  The first one to be beatified will be Fr. Stanley Rother (1935-81).  His beatification will take place in Oklahoma City on September 23, 2017.  I will write about Fr. Rother in this week’s column.    The second American to be beatified this year is Fr. Solanus Casey, O.F.M. Cap.  He will be beatified in Detroit on November 18, 2017.  I will write about him in next week’s column.
                Stanley Rother was one of five children born to Franz Rother (1911-2000) and Gertrude Smith Rother (1913-87).  He had two brothers and two sisters.  Stanley grew up in Okarche, Oklahoma where the local parish, school, and farm were pillars of community life.  After graduating from high school he told his parents that he felt called to the priesthood.  Stanley had not taken Latin in high school and struggled with several courses in the seminary as a result of it.  Often in those days a seminarian needed a good knowledge of Latin to be successful in seminary studies. In fact one seminary dismissed him after he had had completed first theology because he had performed poorly in several courses.    But because Bishop Victor Reed, Bishop of Oklahoma City-Tulsa, believed that he had a vocation to the priesthood, he sent Stanley to study at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg.  He successfully completed the seminary course of studies there and was ordained a priest on May 25, 1963. 
While Stanley was still in the seminary, Pope St. John XXIII issued a call to the Churches of North America to supply priests for the countries of Central and South America.  Heeding this call, Bishop Reed established a mission in Santiago Atitlán in Guatemala, a poor rural community of mostly indigenous people.  No resident priest had served that indigenous community for almost a century.  During his first five years of priestly ministry Fr. Stanley served as a parochial vicar in several parishes in the diocese.  In 1968 he requested an assignment in the Guatemalan mission.  Bishop Reed accepted his request. Fr. Stanley would serve in the parish of St. James the Apostle (Santiago Apóstol) in Santiago Atitlán for the next thirteen years.
Once in Guatemala Stanley worked hard to learn both Spanish and the Tz’utuhil language spoken by the indigenous people.  The work ethic that Fr. Stanley had learned at home on the family farm served him well in the Guatemalan mission.  As a mission priest he was called upon not only to say Mass but also to fix the broken truck or work in the fields.  He built a farm cooperative, a school, a hospital, and the first Catholic radio station which he used for catechetical purposes to the more remote villages. He was also a critical force in developing Tz’utuhil as a written language, which led to translations of the Mass and the Lectionary, with the New Testament in Tz’utuhil being published after his death.  By the grace of God, Fr. Stanley who flunked because he could not master Latin became the missionary pastor who not only learned Spanish but became fluent in his parishioners’ native of tongue, Tz’utuhil. Because the native peoples could not say Stanley, they called him instead Padre Apla (which translates as Francisco in their native language).  He was known for his kindness, selflessness, and attentive presence among his parishioners.
 
During Stanley’s years in Guatemala, a civil war was raging in that country.  Once the civil war came to the villages surrounding Lake Atitlán, many people, including some of his own catechists, began to disappear regularly.  His response was to show the way of love to all through his daily work in the mission:  teaching agriculture to simple farmers, educating the children, and burying the dead—particularly those whom no one would claim.  By 1980 the political and anti-Church climate continued to worsen.  Six months before his death, Stanley and his associate pastor left Guatemala under threat of death because they witnessed the abduction of a parish catechist.  However, he returned to Guatemala in time to celebrate Holy Week in April of 1981, ignoring the pleas of those who urged him to consider his own safety.  On July 12, 1981, in a statement read in all the nation’s parishes, the bishops of Guatemala denounced a “carefully studied plan” by the government to intimidate the church and silence its prophetic voice.  Sixteen days later three non-indigenous men broke into the rectory, beating Fr. Stanley and then shooting him twice in the head.  His body was shipped back to Oklahoma for burial but his heart was entombed under the altar in Santiago Atitlán at the request of his parishioners.
Fr. Stanley was one of thirteen priests who were killed during Guatemala’s 36 year-war, a tragedy that killed an estimated 140,000 people.  Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City sums it all up very well:  “He had the heart of a shepherd.  The life and witness of Father Rother is a gift to the Church in America, especially the way he lived his priesthood:  selflessly, generously, and heroically.”  For more information on Fr. Stanley’s life, you can read the biography of him by María Ruiz Scaperlanda, The Shepherd Who Didn’t Run (Our Sunday Visitor).
 
Until next week,
Fr. John