I’ve posted before about American priest Stanley Rother, who was assassinated in 1981 by Guatemalan military in Santiago Atitlan during Guatemala’s 36-year armed conflict. Called Padre Aplas by the faithful he served, Rother is the first U.S.-born Catholic priest to be beatified.
In this beautiful and moving article, Guatemalan People Celebrate Father Stanley Rother’s Beatification, Mary Jo McConahay (author, Maya Roads and Ricochet) tells the story of Stanley Rother, from his Oklahoma boyhood to his life among the Tzutujil Maya to his death by masked assailants in the parish where he lived.
At the Catholic ceremony in Santiago, one cofradia sacristan said of Rother: “He talked about equality of people and equilibrium, that people should love each other, like the harmony of our Maya cosmovision–he said this was the word of God.”
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