The cathedral site is the place where the old Temple of Santo Domingo (dedicated to St. Dominic) once stood. It is on the northern side of Plaza Barrios, named after the Salvadoran military hero, Gerardo Barrios. The eastern periphery of Plaza Barrios is the old National Palace building. The first cathedral was established in 1842 and destroyed in an 1873 earthquake.
The second wooden cathedral, completed in 1888, served as the seat of San Salvador's archbishops. On August 8, 1951, the Old San Salvador Cathedral was consumed by fire as a distraught crowd of onlookers watched.[1]
For the next forty years, the San Salvador Cathedral was a barren concrete structure of exposed bricks and jutting iron buttresses. During the late 1970s, Archbishop Óscar Romero famously deferred completion of the Cathedral in order to fund projects for the poor. The site was also the stage of several national sagas, including the grand funerals of assassinated political figures, and Romero's fiery Sunday Masses. On May 9, 1979, 24 demonstrators were gunned down by supposedly security forces on the front steps of the cathedral during the San Salvador Cathedral Massacre.[2]
An even greater toll was exacted on Palm Sunday, March 30, 1980, during the funeral of Óscar Romero (who was assassinated Monday, March 24, 1980). At his funeral, 44 people were killed during a stampede after some elements, allegedly members of security forces (although it has never been corroborated) fired on mourners/worshippers and on Romero's funeral cortege. The gunmen were never officially identified. Later, the square in front of the cathedral was the site of rapturous celebrations after the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords that ended the Salvadoran Civil War in 1992. The cathedral was completed and inaugurated on March 19, 1999, and finished off with a festive tiled facade by the Salvadoran master Fernando Llort.[1]
The church was twice visited by PopeJohn Paul II who said that the cathedral was "intimately allied with the joys and hopes of the Salvadoran people."[3] During his visits in 1983 and 1996, the pope knelt and prayed before the tomb of Archbishop Óscar Romero, assassinated in 1980, whose tomb here is a major pilgrim draw. United States President Barack Obama visited the cathedral and the tomb during his March 2011 trip to Latin America.
In late December 2012, the Archbishop of San Salvador, José Luis Escobar Alas, ordered the removal of Llort's tiled ceramic mural facade of the cathedral without consulting the national government or the artist. Workers chipped off and destroyed all 2,700 tiles of the mural.[4]
Architecture and style
The festive and colorful facade surrounds a shrine to an image of the Divine Saviour of the World (Jesus, after the Transfiguration, the patron of El Salvador) sculpted by Friar Francisco Silvestre García in 1777.[1] The main altar features an image of the Divine Saviour donated by the Holy Roman EmperorCharles V in 1546. The image rests on a four-column baldacchino surrounded by images of the prophets Moses and Elijah, who take part in the Transfiguration story. The main altar is surrounded by eight large paintings showing scenes from the life of Christ painted by Andrés García Ibáñez.[1] Above it all, the bright Churrigueresque cupola stands 148 feet in height, with a 79-foot radius.[1]
San Salvador is the capital and the largest city of El Salvador and its eponymous department. It is the country's political, cultural, educational and financial center. The Municipality of San Salvador has 209,633 inhabitants (2020). The Metropolitan Area of San Salvador, which comprises the capital itself and 13 of its municipalities, has a population of 2,404,097. The urban area of San Salvador has a population of 1,600,000 inhabitants.
Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez was a prelate of the Catholic Church in El Salvador. He served as Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of San Salvador, the Titular Bishop of Tambeae, as Bishop of Santiago de María, and finally as the fourth Archbishop of San Salvador. As archbishop, Romero spoke out against social injustice and violence amid the escalating conflict between the military government and left-wing insurgents that led to the Salvadoran Civil War. In 1980, Romero was shot by an assassin while celebrating Mass. Though no one was ever convicted for the crime, investigations by the UN-created Truth Commission for El Salvador concluded that Major Roberto D'Aubuisson, a death squad leader and later founder of the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) political party, had ordered the killing.
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Roberto D'Aubuisson Arrieta was a Salvadoran military officer, neo-fascist politician, and death squad leader. In 1981, he co-founded and became the first leader of the far-right Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and served as president of the Legislative Assembly from 1982 to 1983. He was a presidential candidate for 1984 presidential election, losing in the second round to José Napoleón Duarte, the former president of the Revolutionary Government Junta. After ARENA's loss in the 1985 legislative elections, D'Aubuisson stepped down in favor of Alfredo Cristiani and was designated as the party's honorary president for life. D'Aubuisson was named by the United Nations' Truth Commission for El Salvador as having ordered the assassination of Óscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador in 1980.
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The culture of El Salvador is a Central American culture nation influenced by the clash of ancient Mesoamerica and medieval Iberian Peninsula. Salvadoran culture is influenced by Native American culture as well as Latin American culture. Mestizo culture and the Catholic Church dominates the country. Although the Romance language, Castilian Spanish, is the official and dominant language spoken in El Salvador, Salvadoran Spanish which is part of Central American Spanish has influences of Native American languages of El Salvador such as Lencan languages, Cacaopera language, Mayan languages and Pipil language, which are still spoken in some regions of El Salvador.
Aguilares is a municipality in the San Salvador department of El Salvador, located 33 km away from the city of San Salvador. The municipality measures 33.72 km² and as of 2006, had an estimated population of 73,300. Sugar cane cultivation is the major economic activity for the area.
Rutilio Grande García, SJ was a Jesuit priest in El Salvador. He was assassinated in 1977, along with two other Salvadorans. He was the first priest assassinated before the Salvadoran Civil War started and a close friend of Archbishop Óscar Romero. After his death, Romero changed his silence and urged the military junta to investigate the murder. His beatification, through his status as a martyr, was approved by Pope Francis on 21 February 2020, with the ceremony being held on 22 January 2022.
The Catholic Church in El Salvador is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome and the Episcopal Conference of El Salvador. There are almost 5 million Catholics in El Salvador. The country is divided into eight dioceses including one archdiocese, San Salvador. The Constitution explicitly recognizes the Catholic Church and it has legal status.
Fernando Llort Choussy was a Salvadoran artist, often dubbed "El Salvador's National Artist" by the Foundation for Self Sufficiency in Central America.
Luis Chávez y González (1901–1987) was the seventh Bishop and third Archbishop of San Salvador, El Salvador, and immediate predecessor of Archbishop Óscar Romero. Unlike Romero, who served for three years before being assassinated in 1980, Chávez had an archbishopric that was long and low key. Chávez was Archbishop of San Salvador for 38 years (1938–1977), longer than any other Salvadoran bishop. Like his more famous successor, Chávez is also a candidate for sainthood. His beatification process was started in June 2001.
Arturo Rivera y Damas was the ninth Bishop and fifth Archbishop of San Salvador, El Salvador. Msgr. Rivera's term as archbishop (1983–1994) coincided with the Salvadoran Civil War. He was the immediate successor of Archbishop Óscar Romero. During Romero's archbishopric (1977–1980), Rivera was Romero's key ally. He had been the auxiliary of Romero's long-reigning predecessor, Luis Chávez y González (1938–1977). He was also a friend of Mother Teresa, who stayed at his family home on her visit to El Salvador
The Archdiocese of San Salvador is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or archdiocese of the Catholic Church in El Salvador. Its archepiscopal see is the Salvadoran capital, San Salvador, and the surrounding region.
Octavio Ortiz Luna was a Roman Catholic priest in El Salvador who was assassinated on January 20, 1979. He served under Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez. His murder was characterized by Romero as part of a systematic persecution of the Catholic Church and oppression against efforts to reform a military dictatorship there to guarantee human rights for the poor masses.
Gregorio Rosa Chávez is a Salvadoran Latin Catholic prelate who was an Auxiliary Bishop of San Salvador from 1982 to 2022. He was a close collaborator of the slain Archbishop Saint Óscar Romero.
St. Oscar Romero Catholic Secondary School is a Catholic high school in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It operated as Archbishop Romero Catholic Secondary School until 2015 and Blessed Archbishop Romero Catholic Secondary School until 2018. The school is a member of the Toronto Catholic District School Board, formerly the Metropolitan Separate School Board and is named after Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated in 1980. The school building was opened in 1967 as York Humber High School by the Board of Education for the City of York, later the Toronto District School Board. It has been leased to the MSSB/TCDSB since 1989. St. Oscar Romero's school motto is "Community, Justice, and Knowledge".
José Luis Escobar Alas is a Salvadoran Catholic prelate who has served as Archbishop of San Salvador since 2009.
The San Salvador historic downtown includes the area where the capital city of El Salvador has been located since the 16th century. This district has long been the country's political, economic and religious center.
The Plaza Gerardo Barrios is a plaza in the historic center of the city of San Salvador, El Salvador.
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