‘God Chooses the Ordinary’

April 1, 2023

A new shrine honoring Blessed Stanley Rother, the first U.S.-born martyr, is dedicated in Oklahoma

By María Ruiz Scaperlanda

April 1, 2023

Nearly 300 clergy prepare to process into the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine in Oklahoma City. (Photo by Theresa Bragg/Sooner Catholic, Archdiocese of Oklahoma City)

History was made in Oklahoma City this winter with the solemn dedication Feb. 17 of the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine church, built in honor of an Oklahoma priest and America’s first martyr.

Stanley Francis Rother grew up on a farm in Okarche, Oklahoma, and was ordained in 1963. He later served for 13 years in Oklahoma’s mission in Guatemala until the country’s violent civil war reached his remote parish. Though his name was put on a hit list, he chose to remain with his parishioners. On July 28, 1981, unknown assailants murdered him in the church rectory. He was 46. Father Rother was declared a martyr by Pope Francis in 2016, clearing the way for his beatification, which took place Sept. 23, 2017, in Oklahoma City.

“He was a good shepherd,” Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City said in his homily at the shrine’s dedication Mass. “Long before Pope Francis coined the beautiful expression, Father Rother — or as he was known in Guatemala, Padre Francisco or Padre Apla’s — had already ‘taken on the smell of his sheep.’”

Knights in Oklahoma were involved in the capital campaign to build the $40 million shrine, and dozens of them served as volunteers at the dedication and at the events leading up to it; Knights have also been instrumental in funding the shrine’s Tepeyac Hill, which was dedicated in December. The Spanish colonial-style shrine church and Tepeyac Hill stand as bookends on the 53-acre campus, with a pilgrim center and museum in between.

The hill, a re-creation of the site in Mexico City where the Virgin Mary appeared to St. Juan Diego, is a fitting addition to the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine, Archbishop Coakley explained in December.

“Our Lady of Guadalupe has been called the Star of the New Evangelization. She appeared to Juan Diego near Mexico City in 1531 to inaugurate one of the most significant chapters in history in the spread of the Gospel,” he said. “Blessed Stanley’s parish church in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala, was established only 16 years after Mary’s apparition! Clearly that event provided a remarkable evangelical impetus, one we hope will be renewed here.”

PILGRIMAGE TO TEPEYAC

Thousands attended the dedication of Tepeyac Hill on Dec. 11, the eve of Our Lady of Guadalupe’s feast day. After Mass at the foot of the hill, a Fourth Degree honor guard led a procession to the top, where Archbishop Coakley blessed newly installed bronze statues of Our Lady and St. Juan Diego by Mexican artist Georgina Farias. Both of them are being funded by an ongoing project of the Knights in Oklahoma and Texas.

“We are very proud to have the Knights involved in this,” said Archbishop Coakley, who is a member of Oklahoma Council 1038 in Oklahoma City. “The Supreme Council made a significant gift to the development of the museum and pilgrim center, and we are grateful for the Oklahoma and Texas Knights for their work to fund the images of Our Lady and St. Juan Diego.”

Archbishop Paul Coakley blesses the statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe atop the shrine’s Tepeyac Hill on Dec. 11. Oklahoma and Texas Knights are funding the statue and its companion statue of St. Juan Diego. (Photo by Spirit Juice Studios)

Before they were shipped to Oklahoma, the larger-than-life-size statues were taken to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, where they were blessed by Msgr. Eduardo Chávez, the postulator for the cause of canonization for St. Juan Diego and a longtime Knight.

“It has been a privilege to work with national, state and local Knights to promote devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the unborn and of the Knights of Columbus,” said Leif Arvidson, executive director of the Rother Shrine and a member of Christ the King Council 12669 in Oklahoma City. “Many pilgrims are already finding great inspiration in visiting Tepeyac Hill, a beautiful site where they can honor Our Lady, our mother.”

Father Don Wolf, rector of the Rother Shrine and a member of St. Eugene Council 10822 in Oklahoma City, sees a strong link between Our Lady of Guadalupe and Blessed Stanley Rother’s missionary work.

“This hill recalls and celebrates the message of Our Lady of Guadalupe to Juan Diego, which is integral to the experience of evangelization in North America, and it also represents what Stanley Rother was doing in Guatemala,” Father Wolf said.

Noting that a large, growing community of Hispanic Catholics will call the shrine church their parish home, Archbishop Coakley said, “We hope that Mary’s presence here will attract pilgrims near and far to come and honor her, but also to learn about and venerate Blessed Stanley Rother.”

‘HOLY WEEK’

The week before the dedication of the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine church on Feb. 17 was an exceptionally holy — and busy — one for the Church in Oklahoma.

Five days prior, the casket holding Blessed Stanley’s body was exhumed from Resurrection Memorial Cemetery and brought to Oklahoma City’s Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help for an all-night vigil. Knights provided an honor guard for the casket from 3 p.m. Feb. 12 to 5 a.m. the next morning, as thousands gathered to pray for his intercession.

Larry Hallauer, a member of St. Mark’s Council 12108 and Father Elmer Robnett Assembly 2233 in Norman, was one of the Knights who escorted the casket into the cathedral and stood guard for the first shift. “It was an honor to be in the presence of his body, knowing his soul is with the Lord,” he said. “I knew that Blessed Stanley was with me.”

Father Brian Buettner, director of vocations for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, was moved by the joy and devotion he witnessed as people approached the casket with reverence — bowing, kneeling, kissing it, praying over it.

“I waited with hundreds of people for almost two hours to have the opportunity to kneel next to him,” said Father Buettner, a member of the Knights since 2007. “My prayer was one of thanksgiving for the life of this dedicated priest, and for young men to be encouraged to follow his example. We are so blessed to have this saintly example before us, inspiring each of us to strive for nothing less than heaven.”

State Deputy Dennis Kunnanz, who attended the vigil, affirmed that Father Rother is a particular inspiration to Knights in Oklahoma.

“He reminds us Knights that we are all called to spread the word of God and assist with the needs of our communities,” he said. “At our state meetings, we pray for the canonization of Blessed Stanley Rother as well as Blessed Michael McGivney. They both had a mission to serve the poor, to protect the families in their communities, and to promote our Catholic faith.”

After the vigil, Father Rother’s remains were brought to their final resting place inside the altar of the Rother Shrine chapel. The chapel was dedicated later that day with a Mass for Oklahoma priests.

Other significant events leading up to the church dedication included the blessing of the pilgrim center and museum; a Mass for all diocesan staff; and a preview of the shrine and pilgrim center for 37 visiting bishops.

Blessed Stanley Rother baptizes a baby at the Oklahoma diocesan mission in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala, where he served from 1968 until his martyrdom in 1981. (OSV News photo, CNS file)

A SHRINE FOR ALL PEOPLE

The dedication Mass on Feb. 17, celebrated by Archbishop Coakley, was standing-room-only. Two giant screens broadcast the Mass on the shrine’s plaza for the overflow crowd. Among the dozens of bishops present were Archbishop Christoph Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the United States and representative of Pope Francis, and Guatemala City’s Archbishop Gonzalo de Villa y Vásquez.

Archbishop Coakley observed in his homily that though the shrine honors Father Rother, “none of this, ultimately, is about Blessed Stanley.”

“We honor Blessed Stanley because we are giving glory to God,” he said. “The life of each and every saint in the history of the Church manifests something of the perfections of Christ, reveals God’s beauty, God’s truth and God’s goodness.”

Blessed Stanley was “an ordinary man from Okarche, Oklahoma, but God chooses the ordinary,” Archbishop Coakley noted. “God chooses the weak to make them strong.”

“The life of each and every saint in the history of the Church manifests something of the perfections of Christ, reveals God’s beauty, God’s truth and God’s goodness.”

Numerous members of the extensive Rother family were able to attend the dedication Mass, including Stanley’s own sister, Sister Marita Rother of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ in Wichita, Kansas. The shrine rector, Father Wolf, is also a relative of Blessed Stanley; in fact, Father Rother’s final trip to the United States from Guatemala in 1981 was for Father Wolf’s ordination.

Reflecting on his cousin, Father Wolf emphasized that Blessed Stanley’s example is important to the Church in Oklahoma because it is important to the Church universal.

“To have someone from among us who lived a life of faith, whose willingness to stand with his people cost him his life, who did not know what to do in the face of brutality and hatred other than persevere in his commitments to the Lord — it allows us to encounter faith as living truth,” he explained. “The shrine is the place where our grasp of Stan’s legacy allows us to be grasped by Christ.”

*****

MARÍA RUIZ SCAPERLANDA is an award-winning journalist and author or contributor to numerous books, including The Shepherd Who Didn’t Run: Blessed Stanley Rother, Martyr from Oklahoma.

Students and staff members of Holy Innocents School stand before custom-printed fencing screens donated by Msgr. John Cawley
Council 3629 in Lakewood, Calif., in 2022. The screens provide much-needed privacy to the playground of the school, which is
located in a busy urban neighborhood in Long Beach.

‘God Chooses the Ordinary’

PILGRIMAGE TO TEPEYAC

‘HOLY WEEK’

A SHRINE FOR ALL PEOPLE

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