Bl. Stanley Rother

The Shepherd Who Would Not Run

Stanley Francis Rother was born on March 27, 1935, in the small farming town of Okarche, Oklahoma, to a devout German-American family. A quiet, hardworking young man more at ease on a tractor than in a classroom, he struggled academically when he entered seminary. Assumption Seminary in San Antonio dismissed him for poor grades. But Stanley refused to give up on his vocation. He transferred to Mount St. Mary Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, where he completed his studies and was ordained a priest on May 25, 1963, for the Diocese of Oklahoma City and Tulsa.

In 1968, Father Rother was assigned to the Oklahoma mission parish of Santiago Atitlan, a Tz’utujil Mayan village on the shores of Lake Atitlan in the highlands of Guatemala. There, the farm boy from Oklahoma found his calling. He learned the Tz’utujil language, became the first person to translate the New Testament into that tongue, built a small hospital and a farmers’ cooperative, and established a radio station to serve the indigenous community. His parishioners called him “Padre Francisco” or “Apla’s”, their word for father. He lived among them as one of their own.

When the Guatemalan Civil War engulfed the highlands in the late 1970s, government death squads began targeting the indigenous population. Catechists and parishioners were kidnapped, tortured, and murdered. Father Rother’s name appeared on a death list. His bishop ordered him home to Oklahoma in January 1981, but after a few months he insisted on returning. “A shepherd cannot run at a time of danger,” he wrote to the people of Oklahoma. On the night of July 28, 1981, three masked gunmen entered the mission rectory and shot him dead. He was 46 years old. At his parishioners’ request, his heart was removed and remains enshrined in the church at Santiago Atitlan. His body was returned to Holy Trinity Cemetery in Okarche. In 2017, Pope Francis declared him Blessed, the first American-born martyr to be beatified. The Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine opened in Oklahoma City in 2023, the first shrine in the United States built to honor a blessed.

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