Blessed Rutilio Grande

Rutilio Grande García, SJ (5 July 1928 in El Paisnal – 12 March 1977 in Aguilares) was a Salvadoran Jesuit priest assassinated in 1977 by Salvadoran security forces. He was the first priest assassinated before the Salvadoran Civil War started and was a close friend of Archbishop Óscar Romero. His beatification, through his status as a martyr, was approved by Pope Francis on 21 February 2020, with the ceremony being held in San Salvador on 22 January 2022. Rutilio Grande was born on 5 July 1928, the youngest of 7 children, to a poor family in El Paisnal, El Salvador. His parents, Salvador Grande and Cristina García, divorced when he was young, and he was raised by his older brother and grandmother, a devout and strong Catholic woman. At the age of 12, Rutilio was noticed by Archbishop Luis Chavez y Gonzalez during his annual visit to their village and was invited to attend the high school seminary in San Salvador, the capital of the country. At the age of 17, following the final year of high school seminary (minor seminary), Grande entered the Jesuit process of formation called the novitiate. Thus began a period of time outside of El Salvador Grande, first travelled to Caracas, Venezuela, since there was no Jesuit novitiate in Central America. Initially, Grande felt called to the missions of the church in Oriental countries of the East. After two years in Caracas, he pronounced his vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and then travelled to Quito, Ecuador, to study the humanities, which he completed in 1950. The following three years were spent as a professor in a minor seminary in El Salvador, where he taught sacred history, history of the Americas and of El Salvador, and writing. Grande continued his studies for the priesthood at the major seminary of San José de la Montaña, where he became friends with Romero, a fellow student. Grande was ordained a priest in mid-1959 in Spain in the city of Oña.