Bishop Rhoades delivered this homily for the Tuesday of Fifth Week of Lent, March 24, 2026, at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at the University of Notre Dame. This evening brings together two important expressions of the Church’s mission here at Notre Dame. For the past 38 years, Notre Dame has honored St. Oscar Romero and continues to explore his legacy, teaching, and prophetic work during these Romero Days. Today is St. Oscar Romero’s feast day, the day of his martyrdom 46 years ago. At the same time, the Notre Dame Law School and its Exoneration Justice Clinic is observing its second-annual Death Penalty Abolition Week. I am very grateful that the Law School, so deeply committed to the dignity and sanctity of human life, recognizes with the Church that taking human life, even as a punishment for a terrible crime, contributes to a culture of death. It denies the offender the opportunity for rehabilitation, atonement, and reconciliation. And it is flawed, as the Exoneration Justice Clinic has shown, due to the risk of executing innocent people. Thank you for exemplifying the Church’s commitment to reformative justice rather than retributive violence. Celebrating this Mass on the feast of St. Oscar Romero is also meaningful during this Death Penalty Abolition Week since he was such a staunch opponent of the state-sanctioned killings and executions carried out by government-backed death squads and the military in El Salvador. Jesus said to the Pharisees in today’s Gospel, “I am going away and you will look for me, but you will die in your sins.” He then explained why: “For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.” Jesus was using the divine name “I am,” the name God revealed to Moses at the burning bush when He said, “I am who am.” Our Lord then went on to explain to the Pharisees that He was sent by the Father and that He says and does only what the Father taught Him. Jesus explained that He always does what is pleasing to the Father. Now this discussion with the Pharisees continues past today’s Gospel for another 28 verses of John Chapter 8, which ends with the Pharisees and their followers picking up rocks to throw at Jesus. They rejected Jesus, His teachings, and His actions. They felt threatened and insulted by Him. They considered Him guilty of blasphemy. Their hearts were hardened to the Good News of Jesus because of their own self-righteousness and their desire for status. They were offended by Jesus pointing out their hypocrisy. They wanted Him killed. I’m sure Archbishop Oscar Romero, a disciple steeped in God’s word, meditated on today’s Gospel, but I couldn’t find it among his many homilies. In my own meditation while preparing this homily, I could not help thinking about St. Oscar Romero’s desire always to be faithful to God’s word in his preaching of the Gospel. In doing so, he also encountered criticism, anger, and rejection. His enemies considered him dangerous and a threat to them, like the Pharisees considered Jesus. Like Jesus, Monseñor Romero trusted in the Father and sought only to do what was pleasing to Him. He was a man of deep prayer, formed by the Scriptures and the social doctrine of the Church, faithful to the Gospel and the teachings of the Church, even though some within the Church rejected him as well, accusing him of being too political. Many falsely accused Archbishop Romero of being a Marxist or Communist. Despite threats to his life, Monseñor Romero persevered with courage to preach the truth of the Gospel, to promote and defend the rights of the poor and oppressed Salvadoran people. He was always a faithful servant of God and the Church, but his preaching became bolder and his service truly heroic just a few weeks after becoming archbishop of San Salvador when he saw the body of his murdered friend, Father Rutilio Grande. I believe the Holy Spirit filled him with the gift of courage to a heroic degree as he became a tireless and fearless prophet, carrying on the mission of Jesus by becoming “the voice of the voiceless” in El Salvador, defending the poor, and denouncing injustice, even at the risk of his life. He preached against violence and oppression, and he embodied a life of a disciple of Jesus in his loving solidarity with the poor and vulnerable. As a board member of Catholic Relief Services, I went on a trip to El Salvador in 2020, shortly before the COVID pandemic. We visited many of the sites of CRS development and peacebuilding projects and programs, including a program in a large, overcrowded prison housing many MS-13 gang members. Several shared with me about their experience of the CRS rehabilitation program in the prison. One young man said to me, “Monseñor, aunque estoy en la prisión, me siento más libre que nunca en mi vida” (“Bishop, even though I am in prison, I feel freer than ever before in my life”). Then he told me that in his rehabilitation – I would also call it his “conversion” – he came to reject violence and embrace the Gospel by reading Archbishop Romero’s homilies and learning about his life. This young man’s life has radically changed. He now prays and receives the sacraments. He feels very close to St. Oscar Romero and asks him to intercede for him and his fellow inmates. While in El Salvador, I saw the people’s fervent devotion to Archbishop Romero everywhere I went. He continues to give hope to the people who still suffer the wounds of violence and poverty. He gives hope and inspires all of us and people around the world, both Christians and non-Christians, to pursue justice and peace. St. Oscar Romero has much to teach us in the United States amid the challenges we face today. He is an example for us of truly embracing Catholic social doctrine and putting it into practice. How often we can be tempted to do what is popularly pleasing, what is pleasing to our culture, to the reigning government, to the Democratic party, to the Republican party, or whomever, rather than what is pleasing to God. Or at a university, to be pleasing to a secularist academic establishment and its ideologies. Our faith is not centered on an ideology – it is centered on a Person, Jesus Christ, and on His Kingdom. St. Oscar was not a communist nor was he a capitalist. His master was not Karl Marx nor was it Adam Smith. His Master was the Lord Jesus, and his mission was to serve His Kingdom. Jesus said to the Pharisees in today’s Gospel, “You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world.” Jesus inaugurated the Kingdom of heaven on earth. He proclaimed that Kingdom and manifested that Kingdom in His works. He definitively established it on the cross. As the liturgy says on the feast of Christ the King, it is “an eternal and universal kingdom: a kingdom of truth and life, of holiness and grace, of justice, love, and peace.” Archbishop Romero served that Kingdom in his efforts toward justice and peace. He recognized that the Kingdom of God is a reality that is both “already here” in Christ and “yet to come” in its eternal fullness. He emphasized that the Church’s mission is to point out what reflects this Kingdom in history and what does not. That is what we, the Church in the United States, at this moment of our history, are called to do. We are called to stand up for human life and dignity, even when it is unpopular to do so. For Archbishop Romero and his people, doing so carried the risk of death. For us, it carries the risk of criticism and angry opposition. St. Oscar defended the sanctity of life. He condemned the killing of the unborn through abortion and the killing, torture, and persecution of those who worked with the poor. He condemned the violence perpetrated by both sides in the nation and tried to mediate peace. He condemned the social injustices that led to terrible poverty, including structural inequality, wealth disparity, and land dispossession. He embraced with all his energy the Church’s preferential option for the poor. We are called to do the same. As you know, in our nation today, the Church continues its decades-long efforts to defend the lives of unborn children, to advocate for economic justice and for comprehensive immigration reform. More recently, we have had to defend our freedom to serve migrants. Despite severe funding cuts by our government, we continue to serve refugees and to advocate for those who seek to escape extreme poverty, violence, and persecution. As you probably know, this past November, the bishops of the United States expressed our strong opposition to the indiscriminate mass deportation of immigrants in our country and have called for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement. And we continue our efforts to end the death penalty. We are involved in all these efforts here in our diocese. And I am so very grateful that you here at Notre Dame are doing the same. We now prepare to go to the altar of the Lord for the celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice. As we do so, I invite you to contemplate these last words from Archbishop Romero’s homily spoken 46 years ago today. He was speaking about the Mass and the bread and wine becoming the body and blood of the Lord. He said, “May this immolated body and this flesh sacrificed for humankind also nourish us so that we can give our bodies and our blood in suffering and pain, as Christ did, not for ourselves but to bring justice and peace to our people.” After saying these words, Archbishop Romero went to the altar for the Liturgy of the Eucharist and a sniper’s bullet pierced his heart. His Eucharistic life reached its climax in his martyrdom. St. Oscar Romero, bishop and martyr, pray for us! The post ‘St. Oscar Romero Has Much to Teach Us,’ Bishop Rhoades Preaches at Notre Dame appeared first on Today's Catholic. ...read more read less