Father Stanley Rother was 46 when he was killed in July 1981 while serving in Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala. He had been ministering to the Catholic community there for 13 years, including during the tumultuous years of political strife in the 1970s and into 1981.
Rother knew the dangers. Other priests had been killed. But he refused to abandon his flock, writing in a 1980 letter, "The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger."
Although Rother was an Oklahoma priest, his cause for canonization has ties to Arkansas. Anthony Taylor, bishop of the Diocese of Little Rock, served as the episcopal delegate for the cause while working in the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City before he was named bishop in Arkansas. He continued working with the committee while in Arkansas.
The Diocese of Little Rock is part of the same ecclesiastical province as Oklahoma, with the archdiocese serving as the head.
As the episcopal delegate, Taylor was charged with investigating Rother's death and interviewing witnesses and members of his community in Guatemala. He made several trips to the country, conducting about 50 interviews.
"I conducted all the Spanish language interviews and investigations in Guatemala and some of the English ones in the United States," Taylor said. "Once I became bishop my successor finished the English ones."
Taylor said Rother had reason to believe that as a U.S. citizen he would be at less risk than the other priests.
"He knew that would not be absolute protection but it would provide a certain amount of freedom," Taylor said. "He was very discreet and was not adversarial. He wasn't looking for a fight."
Taylor said Rother was sent to Guatemala to serve the Tzutujil people. He began working there in 1968 with a few others but by 1975 he was the only clergy remaining at the mission.
"It's in the highlands of Guatemala," Taylor said. "The population is almost entirely indigenous, so Spanish was not the native language. They were extremely poor."
At the time the archdiocese took over the mission in the 1960s, the life expectancy in the area was 42, Taylor said.
"They had a very high infant mortality rate," he said. "No school, no drinking water. Everything was out of the lake which was also the sewer so public health was very poor."
As Rother toiled far from home, civil war in the country drew closer to the remote town and, on the night of July 28, the priest was shot in the church rectory. After Rother's death, the archdiocese did not send other priests to the area until 1984. The community was served by priests from Guatemala until then. Taylor made several trips to the mission in the 1980s to check on the priest serving the community. He said military oppression was at its height during the 1980s.
"People were being killed routinely," he said.
The committee for the cause of canonization began working on the 25th anniversary of Rother's death, and this year for the 30th anniversary a group from Arkansas and Oklahoma made a pilgrimage to Santiago Atitlan.
The work of the committee, the so-called discovery phase, was passed on to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome. The future of the cause of canonization will be decided by this group.
If Rother is canonized, he will be the first American born male saint.
"He's a very strong model of priestly holiness and American holiness and courage," Taylor said. "He comes from a very humble background. He would have been one of those people that would not have stood out but who was really faithful."
Michael Witczak, associate professor of liturgical studies at Catholic University of America in Washington, said the process of achieving sainthood has changed since ancient times.
"For the first thousand years of the church's history, there was no formal process someone had to go through to be canonized," Witczak said.
The people venerated local "saints" — those who died while being persecuted or who exemplified holiness. It wasn't until the 11th and 12th centuries that the pope took control of naming saints, Witczak said.
"The process became more and more elaborate," Witczak said. "Finally we reached the process that we have today."
Witczak said two paths for canonization exist. One is the path of heroic virtue. The other is for martyrdom. The committee from the archdiocese conducted interviews to cover both possibilities, Taylor said.
To achieve sainthood for heroic virtue, two miracles attributed to the would-be saint must be authenticated, the first for beatification or to be called "blessed," the second for canonization as a saint. For martyrdom, the evidence must prove Rother was killed because of his faith.
"The hard thing to prove is he died out of hatred for the faith and not because someone was robbing the rectory," Taylor said. "We can show that because the church was a target of persecution at that time in Guatemala. There had already been six priests killed that year. There is ample proof that the government was targeting the church."
Miracles pose another obstacle, and most confirmed by the church today in causes for sainthood involve sudden, unexpected healing from a medical condition, Taylor said. The miracles must be spontaneous, permanent and not attributed to human intervention of any kind, and both must occur after the person's death.
Taylor said if Rother is declared a martyr, the requirement for the first miracle is bypassed.
The bishop said the Congregation for the Causes of Saints usually reviews about 25 cases a year, which means a long wait for news on Rother's case.
"We can expect in 16 years they'll get to our case," Taylor said. "If we've done our work, then beatification would occur. We could live to see that."
Taylor said Rother is an example for all Catholics regardless of how long the path to sainthood takes.
"He gave himself fully, heart and soul to the Lord and to the people the Lord entrusted to his care," he said. "He was faithful. He served Jesus and saw him in the poorest of the poor, and he stayed with them in their time of need. He said, 'The shepherd cannot abandon the flock when the wolf comes threatening.'"
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