Stanley Francis Rother — born at Okarche (Oklahoma) on 27 March 1935, murdered at Santiago Atitlán (Guatemala) on 28 July 1981 — was an American missionary priest, killed by a death squad in the midst of the Guatemalan civil war. The son of farmers, rejected from the seminary for his inability to learn Latin, he nevertheless became one of the most luminous faces of twentieth-century North American holiness.[1][2]
Sent in 1968 to the mission his diocese maintained among the Tz'utujil Maya, on the shores of Lake Atitlán, he learned Spanish and then Tz'utujil, a Maya language with no written form before the missionaries arrived, celebrated Mass in that language and took part in the collective translation of the New Testament into Tz'utujil, completed and published after his death. A trained farmer, he drove the mission bulldozer himself and kept up the farming co-operative, the clinic, the first Catholic radio station in the region: the Indians called him Padre A'plas, "Father Francis".[3][4][5]
When repression fell upon the Church in Guatemala and his name appeared on a death list, he refused to desert. In his last Christmas letter of 1980, he wrote the sentence that became famous: "The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger."[6][7] Shot twice in the head in his rectory on 28 July 1981, he was brought home to Oklahoma, but his heart was buried beneath the altar of his Guatemalan church, at his people's request. Pope Francis recognised him as a martyr on 1 December 2016, and he was beatified on 23 September 2017 — the first United States-born priest raised to that honour.[8][9]
The Child of Okarche: An Oklahoma Farm Boy (1935–1957)
Birth into a German Farming Family
Stanley Francis Rother was born on 27 March 1935 on a farm outside Okarche, a tiny Oklahoma town (barely 1,300 inhabitants) founded by Catholic settlers of German origin.[10] He was baptised two days later, on 29 March 1935, in Okarche's Holy Trinity church.[11] His parents, Franz Rother and Gertrude Smith, worked the land; Stanley was the eldest of Franz and Gertrude's five children: his sister Betty — the future Sister Marita —, his brothers Jim and Tom, and little Caroline, who died shortly after her birth.[12][13][14]
The Rother home was one of rural, hard-working, unemphatic Catholicism: field work, Sunday Mass, the family rosary. It was in that ordinary soil — country piety and the demand of work well done — that the future martyr's character was formed: tenacious, quiet, faithful.
"Future Farmer of America": The Land Before the Altar
At first, nothing in young Stanley suggested a priest. He was a boy of the soil, good with his hands, at home with engines, harvests and livestock. At Holy Trinity High School he was elected president of the local chapter of the Future Farmers of America — the association of young American farmers.[15] He could repair a machine, drive a tractor, build, sow and reap: that peasant know-how, seemingly unrelated to the priesthood, would later prove decisive in the mountains of Guatemala.
But within that farmer's son a greater call was at work. Against all expectations — and to the surprise of those around him — the teenager asked to enter the seminary to become a priest.
Failure at the Seminary: Turned Away over Latin
The story could have ended there. Sent to study at Assumption Seminary in San Antonio (Texas), Stanley struggled there for some six years with the classical subjects — and failed Latin miserably, the language then indispensable for theology and the liturgy.[16][17] He failed his first year of theology, and the rector, discouraged, sent him home, suggesting he give up the priesthood.[18]
It is one of the most striking paradoxes of his life: the man who would later prove able to master two languages as an adult — Spanish, then arduous Tz'utujil, a Maya language with no written form before the missionaries' work — was first judged incapable of learning schoolboy Latin. Academic weakness was no weakness of soul.
The Second Chance and Ordination (1963)
The young man would not resign himself; he confided his distress to his bishop, Bishop Victor Reed of Oklahoma City–Tulsa. The prelate, discerning beneath the academic failures an authentic vocation, offered him a second chance at another house of formation: Mount St. Mary's Seminary at Emmitsburg, Maryland.[19][20] This time, Stanley succeeded. The rector of Mount St. Mary's even noted: "Mr. Rother has made excellent progress in this seminary and should make a very good parish priest."[21]
On 25 May 1963, Stanley Rother was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Oklahoma City–Tulsa by Bishop Victor Reed.[22] The farmer's son once rejected over his Latin had become a priest of Christ.
From an Oklahoma Parish Priest to a Guatemalan Missionary (1963–1968)
The First Parishes
For five years, young Father Rother ministered in the parishes of his diocese: St. William in Durant, St. Francis Xavier and Holy Family Cathedral in Tulsa, then Corpus Christi in Oklahoma City.[23] A conscientious, self-effacing priest, he was no brilliant orator; his strength lay elsewhere — in presence, availability, constancy. A former seminary classmate, Father Tom Connery, summed him up in a word: "Stanley was hard-working, dedicated, faithful."[24]
The Call of Guatemala
At the same time, the Church in the United States was answering Pope John XXIII's call for North American dioceses to send missionaries to Latin America. The Diocese of Oklahoma opened a mission in Guatemala, at Santiago Atitlán. In 1968, at his own request, Father Rother was sent there.[25][26]
The missionary who landed on the shores of Lake Atitlán was a mature man of thirty-three, with no outward brilliance, but carrying a rare asset for a mountain mission: a farmer's hands and a parish priest's heart.
The Padre A'plas of Santiago Atitlán (1968–1981)
A Maya People: The Tz'utujil
Santiago Atitlán is an indigenous town nestled at the foot of volcanoes on the shores of splendid Lake Atitlán, in the department of Sololá. Its people, the Tz'utujil, are a poor Maya people, deeply marked by their own culture and language, long kept at the margins of the dominant ladino (mestizo) society.[27] It is to this people that Father Rother would give himself entirely for thirteen years.
Learning the Impossible: The Tz'utujil Language
The priest who had never been able to retain Latin now set out, as an adult, to learn two languages in succession: first Spanish, then Tz'utujil, a Maya language of great difficulty, with no written form before the missionaries arrived: the first records had been laid down as early as 1966 by the missionary Ramón Carlín, helped by two parishioners, and Rother carried that work forward with energy.[28][29] Rother attacked it with a farmer's obstinacy: he learned, transcribed, systematised, until he could preach and celebrate Mass in Tz'utujil, in the very language of his parishioners.[30]
As there was no Tz'utujil equivalent of the first name "Stanley", the Indians called him by his middle name, Francis: to them he became Padre A'plas (Apla's), "Father Francis".[31]
The Farmer-Priest: Co-operative, Clinic, Radio
Among the Tz'utujil, the former Future Farmers of America president was back in his element at last. Rother was not only the man of the altar: he was a priest with calloused hands who drove the mission bulldozer himself, working some days from seven in the morning until half past four, stopping only for Mass.[32] Around the parish he brought a whole network of mutual aid into being: a farming co-operative, a nutrition centre, a school, a clinic — the little hospital of Panabaj, the "Hospitalito" — and the region's first Catholic radio station, broadcasting catechesis and lessons in language and arithmetic.[33][34]
That incarnate Christianity — faith that ploughs, heals, feeds and teaches — rooted the Gospel in the concrete. Rother did not "civilise" the Indians from above: he stooped down to their language and their labour, and it was from there that his ministry radiated.
Translating the New Testament
His most lasting work is a spiritual one: his share in the translation of the New Testament into Tz'utujil, so that this people might at last hear and read the Word of God in its mother tongue. Far from a solitary undertaking, the project had been opened as early as 1966 by his predecessor, the missionary Ramón Carlín, helped by two parishioners; Rother threw himself into it with energy and, when violence struck, he protected the translator Diego Mendoza Lacán by moving him to safety — the work was completed and published after his death.[35][36][37][38] For a man once sent down from the seminary over languages, the enterprise holds something of the prodigy of grace: the Latin failure helped give a whole people the Gospels in its own tongue.
Guatemala in Blood: The Persecuted Church
The Civil War and the Repression
The 1970s and 1980s were, for Guatemala, years of an atrocious civil war. Facing the guerrillas, the army and death squads linked to those in power waged a blind repression, whose heaviest victims were the indigenous populations and the Church — suspected of "subversion" because it defended the poor. Rother himself described the roots of the tragedy in his letters:
"The country down here is in rebellion, and the government is after the Church. The low salaries paid, the very small number of excessively rich people, the bad distribution of land — these are some of the causes of this widespread discontent." — Father Stanley Rother, letter from Santiago Atitlán[39]
The Catechists Who Disappear
Violence soon knocked at the very door of the mission. In late 1980, the radio station was destroyed and its director murdered; catechists and parishioners of Rother's disappeared, later found dead, bearing marks of torture.[40][41] The priest, heartbroken, buried his own and carried on. Against terror, he obstinately chose another path:
"And what to do in the face of all this? What can we do but go about our work, keep our heads down and preach the Gospel of love and nonviolence?" — Father Stanley Rother, letter of his last year[42]
The Death List
Early in 1981, the inevitable came: Rother was warned that his name stood on a blacklist of the death squads — in eighth place.[43][44] The warnings were clear: he must leave Guatemala at once if he wanted to stay alive.
"The Shepherd Cannot Run": The Choice to Stay
The Christmas 1980 Letter
Long before the threat took definite shape, Rother had already settled the matter in conscience. As early as May 1980, he was writing with disarming lucidity:
"If I get a direct threat or am ordered to leave then I will leave. But if it is my destiny that I should give my life here, then so be it." — Father Stanley Rother, letter of May 1980[45]
Then, in his Christmas 1980 letter to the faithful of Oklahoma, he delivered the sentence that sums up his whole life and would give its title to his reference biography, The Shepherd Who Didn't Run:[46]
"The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger. Pray for us, that we may be a sign of the love of Christ for our people." — Father Stanley Rother, Christmas 1980 letter[47][48]
He refused to abandon his own, whatever the cost: "I don't want to desert these people, and yet that is what will be said, even after all these years."[49]
The Return to Oklahoma and the Decision to Go Back
In January 1981, yielding to pressure from his bishop and his family, Rother went back — reluctantly — to Oklahoma, provisionally escaping death.[50] But exile was unbearable to him: he could think only of his threatened people. After celebrating Easter in Oklahoma, he took the decision that sealed his fate and left for Guatemala again in April 1981, knowing full well he was being watched.[51] To his brother Tom, who warned him, he simply answered:
"A shepherd cannot run from his flock." — Father Stanley Rother, to his brother Tom[52]
His father, old Franz Rother, would later say, without a word of complaint: "We are really proud of him. He felt his people needed him, and he went back."[53]
The Martyrdom of 28 July 1981
The Night of 28 July
In the night of 28 July 1981, shortly after midnight, three masked men broke into the rectory of Santiago Atitlán.[54][55] They seized a teenager, Francisco Bocel, who was on the premises, and forced him at gunpoint to lead them to the priest's room. Rother opened his door; he did not want to be carried off and disappear like the others. A struggle followed, while young Bocel managed to flee. Father Rother was shot twice in the head.[56][57] He was forty-six.
He was not the only victim: Stanley Rother was one of ten priests murdered in Guatemala in that single year of 1981.[58] His killers — three masked men — were never identified or brought to justice: the men arrested by the police did not match the description given by Francisco Bocel.[59]
The Body in Oklahoma, the Heart at Santiago Atitlán
The missionary's remains were brought home to Oklahoma and buried on 3 August 1981 in the Holy Trinity cemetery at Okarche, his native soil.[60] But his inconsolable Tz'utujil parishioners would not be parted from their father altogether. At their request, his heart was removed and buried beneath the altar of the church of Santiago Atitlán, where he had so often celebrated the Eucharist.[61][62]
The gesture says better than any speech what he had been to them. A member of the American embassy, witnessing a whole people's mourning, summed it up: "It was like their God had died."[63]
From Servant of God to Blessed
The Cause and the Declaration of Martyrdom (2016)
Stanley Rother's reputation for holiness and martyrdom only grew. His cause was opened at diocesan level, transferred to the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City; he was declared Servant of God on 25 November 2009.[64] After examination of his life and death, Pope Francis confirmed on 1 December 2016 that Father Rother had indeed been killed in odium fidei — "in hatred of the faith" — that is, that he was an authentic martyr.[65][66] Recognition of martyrdom dispensed with the requirement of a miracle for beatification.[67]
The Beatification of 23 September 2017
On 23 September 2017, before some twenty thousand faithful gathered at the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City, Cardinal Angelo Amato, the Pope's envoy, proclaimed Father Stanley Rother blessed.[68] The event was historic: Rother became the first United States-born priest and the first American martyr raised to the honours of the altar.[69][70]
In his homily, Cardinal Amato applied to the missionary Christ's words on the grain of wheat, summing him up in a formula that echoed his own words:
"The good shepherd cannot abandon his flock." — Cardinal Angelo Amato, beatification homily, 23 September 2017[71]
The Shrine in Oklahoma City
To honour the new blessed, the archdiocese built the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine in Oklahoma City, dedicated on 17 February 2023 by Archbishop Paul S. Coakley before some 3,000 faithful from around the world.[72][73] Built in a Spanish colonial style recalling the church of Santiago Atitlán, funded debt-free by Catholic donors at a cost of about 50 million dollars, it offers a 2,000-seat shrine church and has become the largest Catholic church in Oklahoma.[74] His liturgical feast is set on 28 July, the day of his martyrdom.
On the occasion of that dedication, the blessed's body was transferred from Holy Trinity cemetery at Okarche to a chapel of the shrine, where it now rests beneath the altar; his heart remains beneath the altar of the church of Santiago Atitlán.[75][76] His biographer, María Ruiz Scaperlanda, welcomed this new place of pilgrimage:
"People from all over the world can come and know more about him, and really ask for his intercession." — María Ruiz Scaperlanda, biographer of Blessed Stanley Rother[77]
Archbishop Coakley, for his part, summed up the meaning of the place:
"We gather here to honor the God who created all of this, and the God who is glorified in his saints." — Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, Archbishop of Oklahoma City, dedication homily, 17 February 2023[78]
The following table sums up the major stages of the blessed's life, from the Okarche farm to the altars.
| Stage | Date | Event |
|---|---|---|
| Birth at Okarche | 27 March 1935 | Eldest of a family of German farmers in Oklahoma |
| Sent down from the seminary | c. 1959–1960 | Failure in Latin and theology at Assumption (San Antonio) |
| Priestly ordination | 25 May 1963 | By Bishop Victor Reed, after a second chance at Mount St. Mary's |
| Departure for the mission | 1968 | Santiago Atitlán (Guatemala), among the Tz'utujil, at his request |
| Name on the death list | early 1981 | Eighth place on a death-squad list |
| Forced return to Oklahoma | January 1981 | Then voluntary return to Guatemala in April 1981 |
| Martyrdom | 28 July 1981 | Shot in his rectory at Santiago Atitlán |
| Heart buried at Atitlán | August 1981 | Body buried at Okarche, heart beneath the Guatemalan altar |
| Martyrdom recognised | 1 December 2016 | By Pope Francis, in odium fidei |
| Beatification | 23 September 2017 | At Oklahoma City, by Cardinal Angelo Amato |
| Transfer to the shrine | 17 February 2023 | Body reinterred at Oklahoma City; heart still at Santiago Atitlán |
The Spirituality of Stanley Rother: Ordinary Faithfulness
There is nothing spectacular about Stanley Rother's holiness. No visions, no stigmata, no eloquence: only an obstinate faithfulness, that of the countryman who stays in the field to the end. That is precisely where his greatness lies.
"For Myself I Am a Christian; for Others I Am a Priest" (Saint Augustine)
A saying of Saint Augustine, which the young ordinand had chosen for his ordination card, sums up the spirit that animated him, at once humble and burning:
"For myself, I am a Christian; for the good of others, I am a priest." — Saint Augustine (formula adapted by Rother for his ordination card, 1963)[79]
His whole life is held in that sentence: the priesthood lived not as a status, but as a total gift in the service of the people. The priest does not exist for himself — he is turned entirely toward those he must lead to Christ. Nor is it a formula of his own coining: it is a saying of Saint Augustine's, which the young ordinand chose himself to adorn his 1963 ordination keepsake — a sign that, from the very first day of his priesthood, he had made his own that Augustinian hierarchy between Christian being and priestly office.[80]
The Shepherd and the Eucharist
Rother's heart, buried beneath the altar of Santiago Atitlán, is not merely a touching symbol: it is the exact image of his life. He was a priest of the Eucharist, stopping his bulldozer to celebrate Mass, refusing to leave the altar where he gathered his people. His martyrdom extends and seals the Eucharistic offering: like the grain of wheat of the Gospel, he fell into the ground to bear fruit.[81]
A Holiness Without Glitter
What strikes witnesses is the absence of all theatrical heroism. Rother did not seek death; he merely stayed, day after day, when everything ordered him to leave. His holiness is that of ordinary virtue pushed to the end: the constancy of a man who loves his duty more than his life. That is what Cardinal Amato underlined, holding him up as a model not of extraordinary exploits, but of daily faithfulness to the post received.
What Blessed Stanley Rother Teaches Today
The story of Stanley Rother is one of Gospel contrast: a farmer's son turned away from the seminary become apostle to a Maya people, an unremarkable man become martyr, a priest "incapable of learning Latin" who helped give the Gospels to a whole people in its own tongue. Three lessons remain.
- Weakness is no bar to holiness. Rejected, sent home, judged unfit, Rother reminds us that God calls the weak and uses them: his academic shortcomings did not hinder his vocation; they made it shine all the more brightly.
- The shepherd stays. In the face of danger, he did not flee. His sentence — "The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger" — is an examination of conscience for every person in charge, priest, parent or teacher: do we love our duty more than our safety?
- Holiness is ordinary. Rother was neither mystic nor orator: he was faithful. His life proves that we become saints not through prodigies, but by humbly carrying out, to the end, the task God entrusts to us.
"A shepherd cannot run from his flock." — Blessed Stanley Rother[82]
For Further Reading
- Blessed Miguel Pro (1891–1927) — Mexican Jesuit priest, another great twentieth-century Latin American martyr, shot crying "¡Viva Cristo Rey!".
- Blessed Solanus Casey (1870–1957) — American Capuchin, another great figure of twentieth-century North American holiness, who had likewise struggled at the seminary.
- Blessed Frédéric Ozanam (1813–1853) — layman, apostle of charity, another blessed wholly given to the service of the poor.
Notes and References
Wikipedia (EN), "Stanley Rother": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Rother. Stanley Francis Rother, born 27 March 1935 at Okarche (Oklahoma), baptised 29 March 1935 at Holy Trinity church; son of Franz Rother and Gertrude Smith, farmers; siblings Betty (Sister Marita), Jim and Tom — and a little Caroline, who died shortly after her birth, according to his sister Marita's testimony; difficulties at Assumption Seminary (San Antonio), failure in Latin and theology, dismissal; second chance at Mount St. Mary's (Emmitsburg, Maryland) thanks to Bishop Victor Reed; ordination 25 May 1963; Oklahoma parishes (Durant, Tulsa, Oklahoma City); mission at Santiago Atitlán (Sololá, Guatemala) from 1968, at his request; Tz'utujil people; learning Spanish and Tz'utujil (Maya language with no written form before the missionaries, first records laid down in 1966 by Ramón Carlín); nickname "Padre Apla's / A'plas" (Francis); translation of the New Testament into Tz'utujil; works (co-operative, clinic/Hospitalito of Panabaj, school, radio); civil war, destruction of the radio and murder of its director, disappearances of catechists; name on a death list (8th place) in early 1981; return to Oklahoma in January 1981, return to Guatemala in April 1981; murder on 28 July 1981 (three masked men, Francisco Bocel forced to comply, two bullets in the head); one of 10 priests killed in Guatemala in 1981; body buried at Okarche on 3 August 1981, heart buried beneath the altar of Santiago Atitlán; Servant of God on 25 November 2009; martyrdom recognised by Pope Francis on 1 December 2016 (in odium fidei); beatification on 23 September 2017 at Oklahoma City by Cardinal Angelo Amato; first United States-born priest and martyr beatified; feast on 28 July; shrine in Oklahoma City (Spanish colonial style, largest Catholic church in the state, dedicated 17 February 2023).
1 3 8 11 12 16 19 22 23 25 27 28 31 34 35 40 43 50 51 54 56 58 60 61 64 65 69 76Franciscan Media / St. Anthony Messenger, "Blessed Stanley Rother": franciscanmedia.org. Born on a farm at Okarche (c. 1,300 inhabitants), German Catholic community; president of the local Future Farmers of America chapter at high school; academic difficulties at the seminary, failure in Latin, failure of the first year of theology and dismissal by the rector; second chance offered by Bishop Victor Reed at Mount St. Mary's (Maryland); thirteen years of mission at Santiago Atitlán, nickname "Padre Apla's" (Francis); farming co-operative, nutrition centre, school, clinic, first Catholic radio station; became fluent in Tz'utujil despite his failure in Latin, translation of the New Testament; verdicts of Father Tom Connery ("Stanley was hard-working, dedicated, faithful") and Sister Bernice Kita ("gift of presence"); murdered 28 July 1981, three men, two bullets in the head, heart buried at Santiago Atitlán; words of old Franz Rother ("We are really proud of him. He felt his people needed him, and he went back"); beatified 23 September 2017, first United States-born martyr and first diocesan priest beatified, no miracle required by reason of martyrdom.
2 4 10 13 15 17 18 20 24 26 30 33 36 49 53 55 67 70America Magazine, "Father Stanley Rother knew 'a shepherd cannot run from his flock'" (28 June 2017): americamagazine.org. Farmer's and mechanic's skills placed at the mission's service: driving the bulldozer from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., stopping only for Mass; mastery of Spanish and Tz'utujil, translation of the New Testament; letter on the causes of the violence ("The country down here is in rebellion, and the government is after the Church. The low salaries… the bad distribution of land…"); "The reality is that we are in danger"; to his brother Tom: "A shepherd cannot run from his flock"; seminary rector's assessment ("Mr. Rother has made excellent progress… he should make a very good parish priest"); testimony of a member of the American embassy ("It was like their God had died").
5 21 32 39 52 63 82Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine (Oklahoma City), "About Blessed Stanley Rother": rothershrine.org. The shrine's official site; biography of the blessed, context of the civil war and repression (destruction of the radio, disappearances of catechists and parishioners), Christmas 1980 letter ("The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger"), martyrdom of 28 July 1981 and heart buried at Santiago Atitlán.
6 41 47National Eucharistic Revival, "American Eucharistic Witnesses: Blessed Stanley Rother — The Shepherd Who Didn't Run": eucharisticrevival.org. Rother quotations: May 1980 letter ("If I get a direct threat or am ordered to leave then I will leave. But if it is my destiny that I should give my life here, then so be it"); letter of his last year ("What can we do but go about our work, keep our heads down and preach the Gospel of love and nonviolence?"); Christmas 1980 letter ("The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger. Pray for us, that we may be a sign of the love of Christ for our people"); death on 28 July 1981 at about 1:30 a.m., two bullets in the head; heart buried in the altar of Santiago Atitlán; beatification on 23 September 2017.
7 42 45 48 57 62Catholic News Agency / EWTN News, "Faithful martyr and missionary Father Stanley Rother beatified in Oklahoma" (23 September 2017): catholicnewsagency.com. Beatification of 23 September 2017 at the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City before more than 20,000 people, presided over by Cardinal Angelo Amato on behalf of Pope Francis; homily applying to Rother the words on the grain of wheat ("Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit") and the formula "the good shepherd cannot abandon his flock"; Rother described as having done good and spread peace and reconciliation in a time of bloody persecution of the Church, continuing to preach the Gospel of love and nonviolence.
9 66 68 71 81Diocese of Dodge City, "Blessed Father Rother's sister recalls his goodness" (testimony of Sister Marita Rother, the blessed's sister): dcdio.solutiosoftware.com. Father Stan was 14 months older than his sister; a brother, Jim, was born after Sister Marita, followed by Caroline (who died shortly after her birth), then by Tom, born three years later — five children of Franz and Gertrude Rother in all.
14National Catholic Reporter, "Guatemalan people celebrate Fr. Stanley Rother's beatification": ncronline.org. The ancient language had no written form until 1966, when Father Ramon Carlin, Rother's predecessor in the Oklahoma mission, began with two parishioners to set down its sounds in writing — a project Rother carried forward with energy; Rother took great risks to keep the New Testament translation going despite the violence, sheltering the threatened translator, Diego Mendoza Lacán, in a safe house.
29 37Denver Catholic, "Stanley Francis Rother, a shepherd who didn't run": denvercatholic.org. Father Rother worked to have the Mass lectionary and the New Testament translated into Tz'utujil — a project completed and published after his death.
38National Catholic Register, "American Martyr Fr. Stanley Rother: 'A Shepherd Cannot Leave His Flock'": ncregister.com. In early 1981, Rother warned that his name stood eighth on a death-squad blacklist and that he must leave Guatemala immediately; reluctant return to Oklahoma in January, then decision to go back; "the shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger" as the motive for his return.
44María Ruiz Scaperlanda, The Shepherd Who Didn't Run: Blessed Stanley Rother, Martyr from Oklahoma, Our Sunday Visitor (revised edition), ISBN 978-1-68192-456-4. The reference biography of Blessed Stanley Rother, whose title takes up his sentence from the Christmas 1980 letter; traces the childhood at Okarche, the seminary failures, the Santiago Atitlán mission, the civil war, the death threats and the martyrdom.
46National Catholic Reporter, "Fr. Stanley Rother beatified in Oklahoma City": ncronline.org. Rother was killed by three masked men who were never identified; Franciscan Media (John Rosengren, "Father Stan Rother: American Martyr in Guatemala"): the police arrested three men of Santiago Atitlán and charged them with the murder in the course of an alleged burglary — though they did not match the description given by Francisco Bocel; Stan's killers were never brought to justice.
59Mount St. Mary's University (Emmitsburg, Maryland), "He Was a Good Shepherd: Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine Dedicated in Oklahoma City" (February 2023): news.msmary.edu. Rother was ordained from Mount St. Mary's Seminary in 1963; dedication of the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine in Oklahoma City on 17 February 2023, a 2,000-seat shrine, dedication Mass presided over by Archbishop Paul S. Coakley; the blessed was reinterred in a chapel of the shrine over the dedication weekend; quotation from Archbishop Coakley: "We gather here to honor the God who created all of this and the God who is glorified in his saints."
72 75 78America Magazine, "A $50 million shrine will honor Blessed Stanley Rother, the first American martyr" (14 February 2023): americamagazine.org. Dedication of the shrine on Friday 17 February 2023; cost of about 50 million dollars, funded entirely by Catholic donations and debt-free; Spanish colonial architectural style; 2,000-seat shrine with welcome centre, shop, museum and chapel intended as Rother's final burial place; quotation from the biographer María Ruiz Scaperlanda: "People from all over the world can come and know more about him and really ask for his intercession"; quotation from Archbishop Paul S. Coakley on the hope stirred by the shrine.
73 74 77Holy See, Extraordinary Missionary Month portal (October 2019), notice "Fr. Stanley Rother": october2019.va/en/testimoni/i-testimoni/p-stanley-rother.html. Ordained in May 1963; arrived at the Oklahoma mission in Guatemala in June 1968; parish of Santiago Atitlán, Diocese of Sololá; learning Spanish and Tz'utujil; founding of a farming co-operative, a school, a clinic and a Catholic radio station; departure from Guatemala in 1981 under threat, return three months later; killed 28 July 1981 at 46 by three unidentified masked men; notes that the quotation "For myself I am a Christian, for the good of others I am a priest" is a saying of Saint Augustine which Rother chose himself for his ordination keepsake; also quotes his December 1980 letter to the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City: "This is one of the reasons I must resist the violence: the shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger."
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