$50M shrine to honor slain priest, first US Catholic martyr

OKLAHOMA CITY – The delivery of Stanley Francis Rother was by all accounts peculiar, apart from the climate. The Catholic farm boy got here into the world throughout an Oklahoma mud storm.

But in life – and in dying – he was extraordinary.

The 46-year-old priest, shot to dying in Guatemala in 1981, turned the first individual born within the United States to be declared a martyr by the Catholic Church.

Now a $50 million shrine constructed to honor the slain missionary — killed by three masked assassins who entered his rectory throughout Guatemala’s civil conflict — is predicted to draw 1000’s of pilgrims to his dwelling state.

“People from all over the world can come and know more about him and really ask for his intercession,” stated María Ruiz Scaperlanda, writer of “The Shepherd Who Didn’t Run,” a 2015 biography of Rother.

A dedication Mass set for Friday will mark the official opening of the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine in Oklahoma City. The Spanish colonial-style construction incorporates a 2,000-seat sanctuary in addition to a customer middle, present store, museum and smaller chapel that may function Rother’s final resting place.

The shrine grounds additionally will characteristic a re-creation of Tepeyac Hill, the Mexico City website the place Catholics consider the Virgin Mary appeared to an Indigenous Mexican man named Juan Diego in 1531. An artist created painted bronze statues of Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Juan Diego — every weighing 1000’s of kilos — for the Oklahoma website.

Catholic donors funded the shrine, which was constructed debt free, Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul S. Coakley stated.

“I think there are a lot of different things that will draw people to the campus, whether to honor Mary or Juan Diego or Blessed Stanley Rother,” Coakley stated. “We hope it’s an opportunity for people to experience faith and grow in their relationship with the Lord.”

The Oklahoma advanced joins practically 120 Catholic nationwide and diocesan shrines in 27 states and the District of Columbia, in accordance to the National Association of Shrine and Pilgrimage Apostolate.

Prior to turning into the Rother shrine’s government director in 2020, Leif Arvidson oversaw the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin, for a decade. About 75,000 pilgrims visited annually, Arvidson stated.

He declined to estimate what number of guests the Rother shrine may appeal to.

“We’re still somewhat of a minority here,” Arvidson stated of Oklahoma’s Catholic inhabitants.

Evangelical Protestants make up the biggest share of the Bible Belt state’s adults at 47%, in accordance to the Pew Research Center. Mainline Protestants observe at 18%. Catholics are subsequent at 8%.

“I think he’ll be really special not only to Catholics but to Oklahomans and just people who will recognize the beauty of the virtues that he exhibited — of service and humility and dedication to God’s call in a person’s life,” Arvidson said.

Zac Craig, the Oklahoma City Convention and Visitors Bureau president and a Southern Baptist, echoed Arvidson’s assessment.

“It really adds to the cultural mix of diverse attractions that we have. … I think it’s going to be appealing to all,” stated Craig, citing the town’s new First Americans Museum in addition to the nationwide memorial for the 1995 bombing of a federal workplace constructing.

Rother’s story begins with his 1935 birth in Okarche, a small town about 40 miles northwest of Oklahoma City.

While he served as an altar boy at his hometown Holy Trinity Catholic Church, Rother seemed destined for farm life. He studied vocational agriculture in high school, while his brother, Tom, took a Latin course – a language long associated with Catholicism.

Family members couldn’t help but chuckle when Stan — not Tom — later became a clergyman. But the road to the priesthood proved a struggle. He dropped out of his first seminary but eventually graduated from another before his ordination in 1963.

He served several Oklahoma parishes before volunteering for mission work in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala, in 1968.

During his 13 years in the Central American nation, the priest who once had trouble with Latin learned Spanish and his parishioners’ Tzʼutujil language. He worked to translate the New Testament’s Gospels into the native dialect.

Amid political and military unrest in the late 1970s, parishioners began disappearing, their bodies found dumped on roadsides. By 1981, Rother knew he was on a “hit list,” according to the Oklahoma City archdiocese.

His last visit home came a few months before his July 28, 1981, murder. He accepted an invitation to watch his younger cousin, the Rev. Don Wolf, join the priesthood and celebrate his first Mass as a priest that May.

“We talked a lot about the dangers that he faced,” recalled Wolf, now 67.

But Rother insisted on returning to Guatemala, telling loved ones, “The shepherd cannot run.”

Rother became one of at least 13 Catholic priests killed during the war, branded as communists in collusion with left-wing revolutionary guerrillas.

Now his cousin will serve as the shrine’s first rector. Besides welcoming pilgrims, the new church will become the worship place for two of the city’s growing Hispanic parishes. They will combine into one — relieving crowding at existing facilities.

Wolf said it’s an exciting time — both for the memory of his cousin and the chance to grow the church in a state with a rising Latino population.

“Stan has become this incredible character,” Wolf said of the stories told about Rother. “I’ve always been proud to be a part of his family. But I’ve always felt more closely connected to Stan because I’m a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City than because he has the same last name as my mother.”

In December 2016, Pope Francis officially recognized Rother as a martyr. In September 2017, in the final step before sainthood, Rother was beatified at a special Mass that drew about 20,000 people, making him the first U.S. priest to be beatified.

For Rother to become a saint, a miracle involving his intercession must be verified.

“It’s a very rigorous process,” Coakley said. “The church tends to be very skeptical about claims of miraculous healings, until they can be proven that they’re not attributable to science or anything else.”

“It could be a long while,” the archbishop added. “It may never happen, for all we know, because we can’t predict how God is going to act.”

Scaperlanda, Rother’s biographer and an Oklahoma City Catholic, stated she loves {that a} boy reared in humble circumstances in Middle America has a shrine named after him.

“He’s ordinary in that sense, and I think that’s one of the invaluable gifts he gives us,” she stated. “If he can do it, then I can live out my best life that God put me here to do. I mean, I don’t have to be martyred like he was, but to give myself so fully to something, that’s a value that I want.

“I can ask Father Stan to help me live as he did.”

___

Associated Press faith protection receives assist by the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely accountable for this content material.