In January 1980, Archbishop Romero was in Rome for a second audience with the pope, and it did not go much better. In a diary entry, Romero wrote he was grateful that John Paul “received me very warmly and told me he perfectly understood how difficult the political situation of my country is.” Still, rather than give full backing to Romero’s brave protest against the savagery of El Salvador’s military, the pope once again urged caution. He said Romero should be worried about the possibility of “score-settling” violence by the government’s “popular Left opponents, which could be bad for the church.” Even more than the year before, Romero returned home convinced he would soon be assassinated. In February, the church radio station was bombed, as was the library of the Catholic university. He stopped sleeping in his own home, hoping to make it more difficult for the death squads to find him. He had taken to driving alone. “I prefer it this way,” he wrote. “When what I’m expecting to happen, happens, I want to be alone. So it’s only me they get. I don’t want somebody else to suffer.”
More than nine hundred Salvadoran civilians were killed in political violence in the first three months of the year. In a sermon in March, Romero warned that the nation was “in a prerevolutionary stage,” with worse to come. He wrote in his diary that he could not understand why the pope, who regularly condemned Mafia violence in Italy, did not say more about political violence in Central America. He was puzzled that John Paul would “speak out about the cruel killings in Italy” but remain mostly silent about the “many killings in El Salvador every day.”
In his final speeches, Romero said he was comforted that, in defending the poor and oppressed, he had done the work demanded by the Savior. In his last radio address, he said: “I know that many are scandalized at what I say and charge that it forsakes the preaching of the Gospel to meddle in politics. I do not accept that accusation.” His diaries show he was unaware at the time that the pope had formally decided to strip him of his authority. In March, senior Curia officials met to plan his ouster from his archdiocese. “He was acting without responsibility,” said Cardinal Silvio Oddi, who then led the Congregation for the Clergy. According to Oddi, Romero had to go because the government in El Salvador “interpreted Romero’s doctrine to be in favor of communism.” Before he could be ousted, however, Romero was dead. On March 24, he was assassinated as he said Mass in a small hospital chapel in San Salvador. The assassin, later identified as a member of a government-backed death squad, fired a single bullet into Romero’s chest, just as the archbishop was raising a chalice to begin Communion. A photographer captured the moment, as Romero gasped for breath, blood pouring from his mouth. A week later, his funeral descended into chaos; twenty-six people were killed and hundreds injured when gunfire broke out on the steps of the Metropolitan Cathedral.
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