Rutilio Grande
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Servant of God, Father Rutilio Grande S.J. |
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| Orders | |
| Ordination | 1959 |
| Personal details | |
| Birth name | Rutilio Grande García |
| Born |
5 July 1928 El Paisnal, El Salvador |
| Died | March 12, 1977 (aged 48) Aquilares, El Salvador |
| Sainthood | |
| Venerated in | Roman Catholic Church |
| Title as Saint | Servant of God |
Rutilio Grande García, S.J. (5 July 1928, El Paisnal – 12 March 1977, Aguilares) was a Jesuit priest in El Salvador. He was assassinated in 1977, along with two other Salvadorans. Rutilio Grande was the first priest assassinated before the civil war started. He was a close friend of Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero. After his death, the Archbishop changed his conservative attitude toward the government and urged the government to investigate the murder.
Rutilio Grande was born July 5, 1928, the youngest of six children, to a poor family in El Paisnal, El Salvador. His parents divorced when he was young and he was raised by his older brother and grandmother, a devout and strong Catholic woman. At the age of 12 Rutilio was noticed by Archbishop Luis Chavez y Gonzalez during his annual visit to their village and was invited to attend the high school seminary in San Salvador, the capital of the country.
At the age of 17, following the final year of high school seminary (minor seminary), Grande entered the Jesuit process of formation called the novitiate. Thus began a period of time outside of El Salvador. Grande first travelled to Caracas, Venezuela, since there was no Jesuit novitiate in Central America. Initially, Grande felt called to the missions of the Church in Oriental countries of the East. After two years in Caracas, he pronounced his vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and then traveled to Quito, Ecuador to study the humanities, which he completed in 1950. The following three years were spent as a professor in a minor seminary in El Salvador where he taught sacred history, history of the Americas, the history of El Salvador, and writing.
Grande was trained at the seminary of San José de la Montaña, where he became friends with Romero, a fellow student. Grande was ordained a priest in 1959, and went on to study abroad, mainly in Spain. He returned to El Salvador in 1965 and was appointed director of social action projects at the seminary in San Salvador, a position he held for nine years. From 1965 to 1970 he was also prefect of discipline and professor of pastoral theology in the diocesan seminary. Grande was master of ceremonies at Romero’s installation as bishop of Santiago de María in 1975.
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