Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
Father Don Wolf, a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, offers a Catholic perspective on the issues confronting each person today.
Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
Faith Under Fire: How Blessed Stanley Rother Became a Martyr | July 27, 2025
In this episode, Father Wolf takes listeners on a profound journey through the life and martyrdom of Blessed Stanley Rother as the 44th anniversary of his death approaches. The Oklahoma farm boy turned Guatemalan missionary exemplifies how ordinary faithfulness can lead to extraordinary holiness.
When Father Ramon Carlin recruited Stanley Rother to join the Guatemala mission in 1968, he recognized something special in the young priest from Okarche. Stanley's mechanical aptitude—his ability to fix vehicles, maintain buildings, and work with his hands—made him uniquely valuable to the mission. Yet what began as practical service soon blossomed into something deeper as Stanley immersed himself in the community of Santiago Atitlan. Despite earlier academic struggles, he mastered the complex T'zutujil language, allowing him to celebrate Mass and eventually translate the New Testament for his parishioners.
Rother's missionary journey wasn't without significant challenges. He watched as the Oklahoma mission team gradually disbanded, eventually leaving him as the sole Oklahoman serving there. His agricultural projects failed, teaching him humility and respect for indigenous knowledge. The mission's approach was questioned, with some team members moving into the village to live among the people. Throughout these difficulties, Stanley maintained his commitment to the people he served, understanding their struggles in ways many other Americans couldn't comprehend.
Though often described as "apolitical," Stanley recognized the injustices his parishioners faced during Guatemala's violent civil war. His powerful statement that "to shake the hand of an Indian is a political act" revealed his understanding that simple human dignity was revolutionary in that context. When his name appeared on a death list in early 1981, Stanley briefly returned to Oklahoma before making the fateful decision to return to his flock. "The shepherd cannot run," he explained. His presence in the rectory on July 28, 1981, when three masked men took his life, wasn't naivety—it was the culmination of a life dedicated to sacrificial love.
Visit the Shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother in Oklahoma City to learn more about this remarkable American martyr whose witness continues to inspire believers to authentic discipleship and courageous faith.
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Father Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Living Catholic also broadcasts on Oklahoma Catholic Radio several times per week, with new episodes airing every Sunday.
This is Living Catholic with Father Don Wolfe. This show deals with living the Catholic faith in our time, discovering God's presence in our lives and finding hope in His Word. And now your host, father Don Wolfe.
Speaker 2:Welcome Oklahoma to Living Catholic. I'm Father Don Wolfe, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish and rector of the Shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother here in Oklahoma City. On the 28th of July coming up, we'll commemorate the death of Blessed Stanley Rother. It was on that date, 1981, about 1 am, that three men entered the rectory of the parish of Santiago Atitlan. They came to Fr Rother's room. There was a brief struggle and they left him dead on the floor, bleeding into the woodwork of a bench in his bedroom. And although the town was under martial law and anyone moving in the streets at night could be shot on sight, they exited the house as unconcerned as carpenters, putting down their tools and walking away from their job site. At the end of the day, as news of Father Rother's death began to circulate, immediately the machinery of commemoration began and as we approach the 44th anniversary, here at the Shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother, we're focused on the memory of his witness and the meaning of his holiness. We're here in order to help everyone remember. There are some key elements in the life and witness of Blessed Stanley that remain important for all of us as we approach this anniversary, and it's vital for us to take the time to consider them as our commemoration looms large, because one danger we court as we become accustomed to the Shrine and its presence in the Church of Oklahoma is that we begin to take for granted all Father Rother did in his missionary work and all that his martyrdom accomplished in Guatemala. As in all things we become accustomed to, after a while we scarcely notice. It's important to take time to notice, and that's, of course, what anniversaries are for. The first thing to take account of is Father Rother's enthusiasm to embrace the missionary life.
Speaker 2:In 1968, father Ramon Carlin, the founder of the mission in Guatemala, came back to Oklahoma in order to recruit Stan to come to the mission to work with him. Stan had been ordained five years and was in a good position to respond to the invitation. He'd been a responsible associate pastor, noted as a serious and hard-working young priest. Fr Carlin knew he could bank on those attributes as he made the offer for Stan to consider coming to Guatemala. It wasn't all up to him, of course. Ultimately, it's the bishop who makes the assignments for his priest. Course, ultimately, it's the bishop who makes the assignments for his priest. Bishop Reed had to agree to Father Carlin's evaluation and then okay his recommendation of Stan as an additional associate for the mission there. The bishop's ultimate agreement was an expression then of the whole Church of Oklahoma for Stan to be a part of the mission there in Guatemala in the name of the diocese.
Speaker 2:Stan was an embodiment of the missionary ideal of the entire church of Oklahoma. Now, stan had many attributes that attracted Father Carlin's interest. Premier among these was his mechanical aptitude. Like so many young men of his time, stan was at ease with machinery and tools. He knew how to use his hands With all of the brainpower that was already available to the mission in Santiago.
Speaker 2:The greater need was to find someone who could keep things running in the parish, and Father Stan filled this bill brilliantly. From keeping the vehicles in Fetal and the buildings sound, fixing up the water system and hooking up the showers in the rectory. Stan was the guy who could make those things happen. Father Carlin was a stranger to those things, as were the rest of the priests on the team there. Stan was somebody with a demonstrated and well-known record of being able to just do those things, and Stan loved it. I mean, who doesn't want the chance to go and do what he's good at?
Speaker 2:Part of the enthusiasm of Stan's missionary journey was the opportunity to make use of the strongest set of talents that he had been blessed with. He was able to translate his well-known and obvious abilities, which had been mostly sidelined in the seminary and during his priesthood, into active, meaningful service. Not only that, he was well aware of his unique place there. No one could do what he could do and they could never have learned it. And there's nothing quite like being the only one who has the most needed and most recognized ability on a team. Stan could make things happen, and he was enthusiastic as he did. But of course that's not quite the whole story, because from the beginning of his time there, father Carlin also recognized something of Stan's potential in other aspects of pastoral service. He sent Stan to language school to learn Tsutuhil and became more active in order to become more active and more engaged in the life of the parish, rather than simply having a mechanic on staff. Father Carlin recognized an authentic aptitude for pastoral ministry and missionary leadership in Fr Rother and worked to leverage those talents in the widest possible way. It doesn't take a genius to know that language is the gateway into the lives of people, but it did take a genuinely perspicacious insight for Fr Carlin to sacrifice the time and work that Stan could have given to the parish right away there in Santiago in order to prepare him for the more expansive work of relating to the people and becoming a future parish leader.
Speaker 2:Learning a language is hard for everyone. That's especially true for an Anglo, while learning a Mayan language like Sutujil, it's a complicated and difficult language, filled with hard-to-duplicate, harsh sounds and strange words, all requiring a good memory and lots of perseverance, especially since the language hadn't been written down. With these challenges, stan had to learn on the go. At the same time, learning the language was one more way for Stan to solidify his connection to and his enthusiasm for the life and work of the mission. And it turns out he was really good at the language, and no doubt that was a growing affirmation of his commitment and his own self-assurance. His enthusiasm was reinforced in every way by the awakening realization of his unique abilities that was flowering among the people there. But more than anything else, stan's enthusiasm was most sustained by his understanding that he was discovering God's will at work in his life.
Speaker 2:Each person who pursues a deeper relationship with God explores the outlines of what God desires for him. But that isn't static as if a person could know what God wanted by reading a chapter in a book or receiving a message carved in stone. It's more relational than that. As in any relationship, knowledge is rendered from the struggle to listen and to understand, and all these things through the strivings of everyday life. All knowledge that is gained is fragmentary and conditional, because every new moment adds to and clarifies the previous moments. Each day is a different link in the long chain of preparation and practice that defines living. The believer comes to encounter God and God's will in these ways, through the dynamics of walking the journey of life.
Speaker 2:Stan's enthusiasm for his life grew as he began to see himself as a unique gift to the missionary life in Santiago. He began to understand that he had been called to this singular life and then had been gifted to it as a member of the team there. And we all know what that kind of enthusiasm is like when we're interested in and what we're interested in and what we're doing and all of the situation has to offer. When all of that comes together, in some the world seems like a new place. Now, it may only be for a moment, but there is a kind of energy in that congruence that makes our lives glow. We acknowledge it can be a kind of honeymoon moment, a time outside of time that's not available every day, but it does happen, and when it happens it's glorious. It's something like the contrast between paddling against the current or paddling with it. When we're against it, the force of the situation is contrary to where we want to go. Great, steady force is required to get anywhere, and any slackening of effort brings us up short or returns us to where we were or even below where we started. But going with the flow allows us to get where we're going with the minimum of energy. We're carried along by the current of things. That's the real moment of enthusiasm. Things, that's the real moment of enthusiasm. Blessed Stanley felt something like that as the currents of his life met to carry him onward in his ministry. It's no wonder he was enthusiastic.
Speaker 2:The second part of Stan's life was the magnitude of his failures. Unlike our fantasy of sanctity, holiness is no guarantee of endless success and ease in life. Some of the greatest saints endured some of the most humiliating failures, and not just in the periphery of their lives either. They were often unsuccessful at the heart of their ministry. Stan had to endure the counter-currents in his missionary life as well. Perhaps the most bitter of the failures was the breakup of the Santiago team.
Speaker 2:By the time Stan arrived, the great missionary effort of the Diocese of Oklahoma City and Tulsa, this effort that they put together, was coming undone. At the beginning, there were a group of priests, a group of laymen and women, as well as a number of sisters working in the village. Oklahoma had responded with enthusiasm to this missionary opportunity and invested its resources in making sure it would succeed. And it did for a time. But along with the uncertainties and changes that the 60s brokered in the Church of Oklahoma, there came confusions and changes in the original mission team. There came confusions and changes in the original mission team. It turned out not to be possible to sustain the effort in Guatemala with the same type of staffing as first envisioned. Now that wasn't a necessary sign of failure. After all, hardly any endeavor endures without changes. It's not a sign of crisis that alternative personnel decisions or consequent decision-making on the part of the people involved happen. There's a kind of rhythm to this sort of variation. But the changes in the Oklahoma team were radical. They hit home in a big way.
Speaker 2:In short order, the mission took on a different cast. From the inside, those who had begun the mission and had staffed it for the first several years began to leave. It didn't take long after Stan's arrival that he was the only Oklahoman left there. The sum of the work of pastoring passed into his hands alone. From the outside, the mission went from being the heart of the pastoral effort from Oklahoma when it was first established to becoming very much a back burner project for the church. Here Other needs and other priorities emerged those took everyone's eyes off of what was happening in Central America.
Speaker 2:Among those who served there, stan had the confidence to say yes to the invitation to become part of the original team, and upon his arrival and integration in the work there in Guatemala, he suddenly found himself wrapped up in this phase of its failure. The original vision was changing. The mission team was losing its confidence in itself and Oklahoma was altering its understanding of what it should do and what Santiago needed there. It was hard not to think of the whole project as teetering on failure. Watching the men and women of the mission team leave one by one, it was hard for Stan not to imagine that he had linked himself to a broken future.
Speaker 2:Now this sense of gloom was reinforced by two additional aspects. One was that Stan treasured his hope that he could contribute to the system of agriculture and support there in the village. He'd done some study of farming when he was in high school and he had, of course, grown up around the projects common to Oklahoma farmers. He hoped that sharing what he knew of them with the men and women of the village in Guatemala would be a breakthrough chance for them to improve their lives. So he got busy trying to do things there on a small scale, like they'd be done in Okarchi. It was a natural idea not to mention that it was something that he was personally good at and Stan's attempt was a resounding failure. The climate, the common diet of the people, what they preferred to do with their land all these things contributed to his project just fizzling out. He knew more about how to raise the crops and make the adjustments he had grown up around in Oklahoma than he knew anything else. But when he put plow to ground and seed to soil, it was with the highest hopes, but it all turned to dust figuratively, as he told me once I found out they knew a lot more about raising corn and beans than I did. When I found out they knew what they were doing, I shut up and let them go on and do it. It's a brave man whose ideas can take a beating and still stay upright, and Stan was just that way.
Speaker 2:The other great challenge to his contentment was the disagreement among the missionary team about how to live the life of leadership and service in the village of Santiago. Just about the time Stan arrived, some of those who'd been there a while were becoming convinced that all of their efforts were wrongheaded. They were living in the compound next to the church, two buildings that housed the priests and the sisters and the lay people there. It was modest by American standards but monumentally sophisticated by the standards of the people there. It was modest by American standards but monumentally sophisticated by the standards of the people there. They there in the compound had running water, electricity and beds with mattresses. The rest of the village lived in cornstalk houses with dirt floors for sleeping and stone hearths and open fires for cooking, and these contrasts, as stark as they were, were just a symbol for the distance between them and the people that they were attempting to evangelize.
Speaker 2:Some of the team was convinced that they had created an irreparable distance between themselves and the ones who were the objects of their concern. Unless that distance could be closed, they were afraid the message they were sending would never be authentic or adequate. In response to this contention, several of the team just moved out of their quarters and into the village itself. Whether this resulted in a greater sense of closeness and intimacy with the cycle of life there isn't really clear, but it did undermine the presumptions and the focus of the team. Suddenly, it appeared, no one was quite certain what needed to be done and how it ought to be accomplished.
Speaker 2:The premier concern was one that had not received an adequate answer in all of the missionary projects throughout the world up to now, and it was this Were they spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ in all of its power and purity, or were they mixing up, in their presumptions and prerogatives as middle-class Americans, with their proclamations and practice? If they were mixing all these things up, what were they to do to correct this crook in their outreach, or was it even correctable as an aspect of their lives there? Those questions were becoming more pressing each year, part of a burning concern to all those engaged in missionary work everywhere. Partly, these were a result of sophisticated evaluations of the whole missionary project throughout the world in the 1960s and in truth these questions have not yet been answered with complete adequacy. Wherever Americans go, we take our culture and our presumptions with us, and we seem unable to separate ourselves from them or even become aware of them as presumptions that are separable from ourselves. The more these issues pressed in on the team, the more the answers seemed inadequate, and the more this inadequacy shadowed the efforts there, the more complicated it became to carry out the premier work of being present to and witnessing to the people.
Speaker 2:In 1963, when the mission began, things seemed straightforward and easy. By 1968, the efforts began to complicate. Nothing, it seemed in the eyes of the Oklahomans, was as easy as it appeared. On the other hand, these complications contributed to the falling away from the thorough dedication to the mission effort. Those who chose to leave felt less certain and therefore less passionate about their work there. Less certain and therefore less passionate about their work there. Ironically, when Stan was left alone in the ministry there, with nothing but his own evaluation and his own notions of what ought to be done, the questions that had been raised became less urgent. That is, his solitariness of presence simplified the directness of his mission, he was left to do what he could do. It appeared that in the midst of the failure of the collective efforts of the Oklahomans, he prospered.
Speaker 2:The third aspect to note in Stan's mission was how he read the situation there. Stan didn't simply stand by and observe. He was an integral part of the life of his people. He had his opinions of how they lived and what they needed. Stan didn't float above the needs and practices of his people. He was involved and engaged with them.
Speaker 2:As part of the reflections on the life of Blessed Stanley, it has been widely reported that he was the least political of the Americans working in Guatemala. I personally heard several of the Americans who were there at that time describe him as the missionary least likely to intervene in any conversation about the politics of the situation. When others talked about the complications of the system and the evident corruption in every part of the politics there, stan didn't have much to say, and that made him notable. Odd, isn't it? I personally heard missionaries in Guatemala, albeit at a much later date than when Stan was there. I heard them talk directly about how they supported the overthrow of the government and how much they would like to see it happen. On the other hand, stan was widely noted for his non-political quietness, yet he was the one who was murdered by those opposing the insurgency against the government. It makesized with their sufferings from the injustice they lived with. More than once I heard him say that the people of Olkarchi would never have lived for a day with a stark unfairness the people of Santiago had to endure their entire lives.
Speaker 2:Stan knew the price the people there paid for being a part of the system they'd been born into, and he knew how important it was to change it. He insisted on change, that it was unacceptable for things to continue as they were. His only caveat was that it had to happen without violence. Violence will only lead to more violence, he said, and where there's an increase in violence, that's when the people suffer even more. Stan was not naive, he wasn't blind and he didn't presume to be above the fray when it came to the political intricacies of Guatemalan life.
Speaker 2:Blessed Stanley also knew that his presence there was part of the change there. His most famous statement about the complications there highlighted his awareness. He wrote once that to shake the hand of an Indian is a political act, and when we quote this sentence we leave out the most important fact, which was that when Stan wrote this, he was committed to shaking the hands of Indians as friends, as parishioners, as fellow believers and as fellow villagers. His life was intertwined with theirs and their struggles were part of his ministry to them. This awareness helped to inform his decision to be in Santiago Atitlan in the early morning hours of July 28, 1981. He was an American with a passport.
Speaker 2:Stan could have left the village any day, gone to Guatemala City and bought a ticket at the airport and simply flown out of danger for as long as he wanted. No one would have thought less of him for doing it. In fact, many of his friends and family were frustrated. He didn't do just that, but he was determined to stay. His presence, in his estimation, mattered. He also knew the price he risked paying by remaining present.
Speaker 2:In January of that year he had received a message that his name and that of his associate pastor had been placed on a death list of those to be killed. He and his associate left town immediately that afternoon to drive toward Guatemala City. It was only 30 minutes later, after they arrived, where they stayed overnight, that there were people who arrived in jeeps armed, seeking him out. He had escaped them only by 30 minutes. He was sanguine about the price of staying on in his village, but he also knew it mattered. I don't know what he might have known about his threats to his safety as the night of the 27th of July closed in on him, but we do know he was resolute in serving his people as much as he could. His presence in the rectory in the early hours of the 28th was not an accident. He was there not because he was courting death, but because he knew the truth of the situation that he was a part of. Stan's embrace of his cross made his missionary witness complete. In the history of missionary activity, there's nothing that changes people more than the example of the cross of Christ. That's what Stan offered.
Speaker 2:This anniversary of Blessed Stanley Rother's death highlights our responsibility to remember. We're a people dedicated to memory as it lights up our present and links us to our past. May we always find in Blessed Stanley's yesterday a key to our day. Blessed Stanley Rother, pray for us Back in just a moment.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to our final segment, faith in Verse. We have a poem today called there, at Last, do we prepare the final brief and the great and final judgment presume that our lives will be transparent in their full intent. So the subject of our actions and concerns will be obvious enough. Or will the evidence of motive or intent be ignored, sloughed off? Our concerns should be real to us as we face the great final scene a lifetime of deciding and acting, spilling out of files occupying reams. And how would we be defended in the sum of all our actions and thoughts? We could scarcely give an account of all we had taken or given or bought, and half the time we ourselves had no real, true knowledge of what we were doing in our deciding, especially while we were in love.
Speaker 2:How will the verdict be rendered on any of our lives as they were lived? Just how fine is the mesh of expectations through which they are sieved? We will have our advocate, the paraclete, standing in for us at the dock, plus the eternal shepherd, our promised forever standard, our rock upon whom we lean. Knowing how insubstantial our claims and how meaningless the sum of our accomplishments and gain, we will stand silent as another or as all others speak for us of love and mercy and hope. They will be our only witnesses. That's there at last. On this, the 44th anniversary of the death of Blessed Stanley Rother. Let us recall his missionary example and his martyrdom as we strive what he strove for the fullest encounter with the life of Christ. I hope you can join us in the weeks to come encounter with the life of Christ.
Speaker 1:I hope you can join us in the weeks to come. Living Catholic is a production of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City for Oklahoma Catholic Radio. To learn more, visit okcrorg.