Stanley Rother

Life and Ministry

Stanley Francis Rother was born at Okarche, Oklahoma, in AD 1935 to a German-American Catholic farming family, struggled academically through seminary training (failing Latin twice and being dismissed from Assumption Seminary before completing his theology at Mount Saint Mary's in Maryland), and was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Oklahoma City and Tulsa in AD 1963. Assigned to the diocesan mission to the Tz'utujil Maya at Santiago Atitlán in the Guatemalan highlands in AD 1968, he served there for the next thirteen years, learning both Spanish and the Tz'utujil language well enough to translate the New Testament and the lectionary into Tz'utujil — a translation still used by the parish. The Maya parishioners called him Padre Aplas (Father Francis) and identified him as the priest who had built clinics, established the parish credit union, and would walk for hours to bring the sacraments to the lakeside villages.

Circumstances of Death

From AD 1980 the Guatemalan civil war reached Santiago Atitlán with deadly intensity: the Tz'utujil catechists of the parish were systematically killed by army death squads, with Rother's name on the published kidnap lists by January AD 1981. He returned briefly to Oklahoma in February for safety and to his family's anguished reception, but flew back to Guatemala for Holy Week saying: The shepherd cannot run. On the night of 28 July AD 1981 three men in ski masks broke into the parish rectory at Santiago Atitlán, beat him in his bedroom in a brief but bloody struggle, and shot him twice in the head. The parishioners gathered the next morning and refused permission for his body to be repatriated whole; his heart was buried beneath the altar of the parish church at Atitlán, the body returned to Oklahoma for burial.

Legacy

Stanley Rother was beatified at Oklahoma City on 23 September AD 2017 — the first American-born priest beatified by the Roman Catholic Church and the first American martyr recognized in the canonical sense. His shrine, the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine, opened in Oklahoma City in AD 2022. His witness is that the shepherd cannot run: the Oklahoma farm boy who had failed Latin twice translated the New Testament into Tz'utujil and stayed at his post when the death lists were published. His heart remains under the altar at Santiago Atitlán; the parish he served continues at the lake.