He spoke
each night
on the radio.

Crackling across kitchens
and darkened barrios,
his voice
walked through walls,
lingered among the people,
a challenge to the powerful.

Farmers stopped
to listen.
Soldiers too.

He named the dead,
named the killers.
Named the hope
that God had not forgotten
those without
a voice.

He knew
what it would cost.
“If they kill me,”
he said,
“I will rise again
in the people.”

And he did.

But first,
he watched San Salvador
shake with sirens,
heard the boots
and broken glass
on Calle Rubén Darío,
saw the church walls
blackened with slogans:
'No more martyrs'
painted beside
fresh bullet holes.

He knew the corridors
of power—
had sat with ministers
who sipped coffee
and smiled
while the poor bled.

This priest preferred
the voices on the street.
The woman in Aguilares
with nine kids
and no home.
The baker whose oven
had been seized
for feeding rebels.
The teenager
beaten for carrying
the wrong book.

He preached
from a pulpit
and from pavement.

He said,
'A Church
that does not unite itself
with the poor
to denounce injustice
is not the true Church
of Jesus Christ.'

He carried
his cassock like a target,
his Bible like a blade.
Not to harm,
but to reveal.

He’d once believed
in gentler things—
obedience,
order,
quiet service.

But love
had made him
dangerous.

The shelves in his study
were not decorative.
Worn paperbacks,
corners folded:
Jesus the Liberator,
The True Church and the People,
The Cry of the Oppressed.
A photo of Rutilio
taped to the wall.

He spoke in tones
that shook palaces.
And still,
he prayed.

Still,
he offered
bread and wine
while streets burned.

Still,
he believed in
Crucifixion and
resurrection—
not as symbol,
but as strategy.

He said,
“There are many things
that cannot be seen
except by eyes that have cried.”

He had cried.
And he had seen.

He offered
his last homily
as if it might
be his last.

Because he knew.
They had warned him.
Watched him.

He spoke anyway.

And when the bullet came,
it did not silence him.

It planted him.

And now—
in Soyapango and Mejicanos,
in chapels and coffee fields,
in radio frequencies
still humming
with memory—
he rises.

East of Eden,
he walked
with the crucified poor.

The follower of Jesus,
The friend of the poor,
A Priest,
then a prophet,
now a saint—
planted like seed.
And rising still.

Rev Jon Swales