[Aztlan] Slain American priest honored in Guatemala

[ewray39362 at aol.com]

 Slain American priest honored in Guatemala Fri Jul 28, 2006 10:46pm ET
 
   By Mica Rosenberg SANTIAGO ATITLAN, Guatemala (Reuters) - On the 25th anniversary of his killing by a Guatemalan death squad, an American priest was honored on Friday by hundreds of Mayan Indians at the church where his heart and intestines are buried. 
  The Rev. Stanley Rother, who is being considered for sainthood, worked for 13 years with the poor in Santiago Atitlan, a town popular with foreign tourists, about three hours from Guatemala City. Priests and nuns who worked with Rother said he was targeted by the Guatemalan army as a guerrilla sympathizer during the height of the country's 36-year civil war.    On July 28, 1981, four men stormed into the rectory behind the church just after midnight and shot Rother in the head. Ana Maria Chavajay, a nun who served with the priest, said Rother, who was 46 when he was killed, was considered a threat because of his work with the indigenous poor who made up the bulk of the more than 200,000 people killed during the civil war. 
  The priest spoke the local Mayan Tzutujil language better than Spanish and was so beloved the town asked permission to keep his organs after the autopsy. His heart and intestines and two jars of his blood are buried under the altar of the town's main church where the Mass on Friday was celebrated. 
  The rest of his body was sent home to his family in Oklahoma and the state's archdiocese launched a campaign to declare Rother a saint. Among those at the Mass on Friday were two dozen Catholic pilgrims from Oklahoma, many from Rother's hometown of Okarche.
  
  The small room where the priest was murdered has been converted into a shrine with a large framed photograph of Rother. Glass cases display some of his modest possessions: a pair of plaid shirts, a leather suitcase holding a beginning Spanish workbook and a small wooden bust of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy. 
  "They beat and tortured him before he died," said Chavajay, who found the priest in a pool of blood, "but he was quiet to protect the nine young nuns living here." "He died like Jesus, without making a sound," she said, breaking into tears.    Most at the service carried a pamphlet with a picture of Rother and a prayer composed by the Oklahomans asking God to grant the canonization of the priest. 
  The pamphlet quotes a Christmas letter Rother sent home in 1980 after receiving death threats for his work in Guatemala. It read: "A shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger."
    
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