Oklahoma Priests Responded to Death With Determination

By Eileen Dugan
The Sooner Catholic

Strain was evident on the faces of the 20 Oklahoma priests who visited Santiago Atitlan, Father Stanley Rother's mission in 1983, two years after he was shot to death.

 "It was very tense in Guatemala City," said Father Don Wolf. The current pastor of Assumption Church in Duncan and a cousin to Father Rother, Father Wolf said he remembers the uneasiness felt by the visitors.  "The streets were empty, and the City was under martial law; there was a military presence around Lake Atitlan.

"The situation was so tense that instead of staying at the mission, we stayed at a hotel across the lake from Santiago Atitlan. We stayed for five days, checking on the situation at the mission and celebrating the second anniversary of Father Rother's death. Then, we headed home."

Father Rother was in the seminary when Father Wolf was a child. But it wasn't until Father Wolf became a deacon that he got to know Father Rother personally.

 "When he was home in the spring of 1981, I saw him. We had dinner with some relatives. He talked about the fighting going on in Guatemala, that they were killing people. He said it was because of the injustices going on there. Nobody up here, he said, would put up with the injustices his people faced every day," Father Wolf said. "He had seen lots of people kidnapped and tortured terribly. He said he wouldn't let them take him and do that."

Father Stanley Rother was a courageous man who "lived out his life as a priest and a pastor, and that is what he was called to do. When you understand that, you understand him. It was his priesthood that brought him to Guatemala," Father Wolf said.

Father Wolf said most of the Oklahoma priests who traveled to Guatemala in 1983 were members of the Priests Council. On their return to the States, the Council passed a resolution to restaff the mission at Santiago Atitlan.

Subsequently, Archbishop Salatka decided to send more priests to Santiago Atitlan. Within a year, two priests were on their way to Guatemala: Father John Zeazey, a priest from Brooklyn, New York, and Father Tom McSherry, from the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City.

On October 1, 1984 Father McSherry, the current pastor of Saint Patrick's Church in Oklahoma City, and Father Wolf began the long drive to Guatemala. Father Wolf accompanied Father McSherry because he was fluent in Spanish and knew the way, having made the journey the previous year. He would return to Oklahoma immediately after his arrival. Father McSherry, on the other hand, would remain at the mission, ministering there for the next 17 years.  

"It took several days to drive from Oklahoma to Guatemala City," Father Wolf said. "The situation in Guatemala City was still tense but not bad as in 1983. This time there was no martial law."

The two Oklahoman priests arrived in Santiago Atitlan on October 4, 1984. Father McSherry remembers it well.

 "It still was dangerous in Guatemala. When I got to the mission, there was no military encampment near the village, but soldiers did come through the mission on occasion. Six months later, they set up an encampment outside the town, and there was an increased military presence. They had numerous foot patrols through the town to keep the people in line. The military did do some threatening, but the assassinations and kidnappings were carried out by death-squads, not the military."

It was a death-squad that had probably killed Father Stanley Rother.

Father McSherry remembers Father Rother as "quiet, serious, yet having a great sense of humor. He was friendly and very adept at mechanical things like electricity and plumbing."

Father Rother's legacy to Guatemala is "his witness, his faithfulness, and his willingness to identify with the people of Santiago Atitlan. Father Rother stayed with them and, eventually, died with them," Father McSherry said. "He was open to whatever the bishop here in Oklahoma City wanted him to do, and he did it."

 "Several years ago, the Episcopal Conference of Guatemala collected names of those killed for the faith in Guatemala in the persecutions of the 70s and 80s," Father Wolf said.

According to Father McSherry, during the Papal Visit to Guatemala in 1997, the Guatemalan bishops presented Pope John Paul II with the names of these persons martyred for the faith. Father Stanley Rother's name appeared on that list.