Published: October 10, 2007 04:44 pm            

Slain Oklahoma priest could become saint

OKARCHE, Okla. — A priest gunned down in Guatemala could become Oklahoma's first saint.

Holy Trinity Church in Okarche recently hosted the Mass and commissioning of Committee for the Cause of Canonization of Father Stanley Francis Rother.

Rother was an Oklahoma missionary in Guatemala who was shot to death in his rectory around 1 a.m. on July 28, 1981 by the military government of Guatemala. Rother was 46.

The commissioning of the Committee for the Cause of Canonization is the first move toward sainthood.

“This is the first official step in the process,” said committee coordinator Deacon Norman Mejstrik of Saint Philip Neri Catholic Church in Midwest City.

The committee has written a biography of Rother, Mejstrik said, and must conduct an investigation of “Historical conduct from birth to death all of the writings of his and to him." Then his theological conduct will be analyzed to see his spirituality, virtues and examples of heroic acts, he said.

Finally, the committee will seek witnesses from both Oklahoma and Guatemala to show Rother’s exercises of Christian virtues.

Mejstrik said the process of canonization will take a few years at least.

“It’s hard to say,” Mejstrik said.

After the committee completes its work, their findings will be turned over to Rome.

“Rome will do its own analysis to decide to proceed with the canonization,” Mejstrik said.

“This is a long process,” Archbishop Eusebius Beltran said at the Mass. “some of the people here will be gone before it is completed.”

They will look for three prerequisites for martyrdom: the assassin must have been motivated to killing the victim only because of the victim’s faith; the victim must have accepted to die for the faith and the victim must have died violently.



The Midwest City and Del City (Okla.) Sun

        

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