UK: Fr Francisco de Roux SJ to give 2016 Romero Lectures

Fr Francisco de Roux

The Archbishop Romero Trust has announced that Jesuit Fr Francisco de Roux will be its guest speaker for the commemorations in March of Blessed Oscar Romero's martyrdom. He will speak to 'Archbishop Romero and the Search for Peace'.

Since the 1980s Fr de Roux has been a leading voice in the efforts to seek a negotiated settlement to Colombia's decades-long armed conflict. He has received numerous awards recognising his contribution to human rights and peace-building: among them the French Légion d'Honneur, Colombia's National Peace Prize and the Chirac Foundation's 2012 prize for Peace and Conflict Prevention.

Fr de Roux is speaking in Edinburgh, Leeds and Manchester, and will be the preacher at the annual ecumenical service in St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, to mark Romero's martyrdom, this year taking place at 11am on Saturday, 19 March. It will mark the 36^th anniversary of the martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Romero services will take place in:

Edinburgh: Tuesday, 15 March at 7.30pm, Lauriston Centre EH3 9DJ

Leeds: Wednesday, 16 March at 7pm, Leeds Cathedral Hall LS2 8BE

Manchester: Thursday, 17 March at 7pm, Loreto College Chapel M15 5PB

London: Saturday, 19 March at 11am, St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London.

Other services to mark the anniversary of Blessed Romero's martyrdom include:

• Annual CAFOD Romero Mass in the Archdiocese of Birmingham, Tuesday, 8 March at 1pm in St Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham
• Annual Romero Mass in the Archdiocese of Liverpool, Sunday, 13 March at 10am, St Benedict's Catholic Church, Rhodes St, Warrington WA1 2NS

Oscar Romero was a priest and bishop in El Salvador. His love for his people who were suffering violence and oppression led him to take their side and to denounce their oppressors. And so he was killed, whilst saying Mass, on 24 March 1980.

www.romerotrust.org.uk