Lenten Campaign 2025
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Each year on March 24, the world pauses to honor a voice that refused to be silenced. The United Nations chose this date to mark the International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims. It is no coincidence that this day is rooted in the life — and martyrdom — of Saint Óscar Romero.
Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, was assassinated while celebrating Mass on March 24, 1980. In the months leading up to his death, he had become an unflinching advocate for the poor, the “disappeared,” and the voiceless in El Salvador, a country then torn apart by civil unrest and systematic violence.
His murder, carried out by a pro-government death squad, was a direct response to his public denouncement of human rights abuses.
The United Nations, in establishing this annual observance in 2010, recognized what millions already knew: that Romero’s life was a testimony to the power of truth in the face of terror. The right to know what happened to a loved one — the truth about their disappearance, their death, or their suffering — is a political demand yet also a deeply human longing.
Persons, not statistics
In places where mass atrocities and political repression have occurred, the search for truth is often met with denial, delay, or distortion. But as the UN notes, this right is inalienable. Families have the right to know. Societies have the right to remember. And victims have the right to be recognized not as statistics, but as persons with dignity.
Romero understood this long before the language of international law caught up. In his final homilies, he gave voice to grieving mothers and missing fathers, to peasant workers and children caught in the crossfire of El Salvador’s long civil war. From the pulpit he insisted on everyone’s human dignity, also the disappeared, and his words carried the weight of their suffering:
“In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven … I beg you, I implore you, I order you: stop the repression!”
He paid for those words with his life.
Standing for the truth
The Catholic Church recognized his martyrdom in 2015, and he was canonized in 2018 by Pope Francis. But his legacy goes far beyond El Salvador or the Church. Romero has become a global symbol of what it means to stand for truth when it is dangerous to do so.
The UN’s choice to align the Right to the Truth Day with his martyrdom is more than symbolic. It’s a call to action. It’s an invitation to protect whistleblowers and witnesses, to preserve archives, to investigate abuses, and to ensure that no family is left in the dark about what happened to their loved ones.
Romero once said, “There are many things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried.”
The right to the truth honors that kind of vision — the kind that sees justice not as revenge, but as recognition, restoration, and hope.
This March 24, the world remembers not just how Romero died, but how he lived: as a shepherd who stood with his people, and as a witness to the truth, no matter the cost.
And today we celebrate...