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Let no one take it ill that in the light of God’s words read in our Mass we enlighten social, political, and economic
realities. If we did not, it would not be Christianity for us. It is thus that Christ willed to become incarnate, so that
the light that he brings from the Father may become the light of men and of nations.1
Archbishop Oscar Romero (1917–1980)
My study of the lives of the saints has taught me that these are marks of authentic spirituality:
The nearer you draw to God, the nearer you draw to others.
The better you come to know God, the better you know the needs of others.
The more you love God, the more you love others.
The more spiritual you become, the more active you become in serving others.
These principles hold true because as we open our hearts to God, he opens his heart to us. He reveals to us his passionate
concern for the well-being of his beloved human beings and he presses us to care for them in his behalf. As he showed in Scripture,
he especially calls us to serve people with great needs—orphans, widows, strangers, the sick, and the poor. He wants
those who have wealth, resources, and power to use them to support those who have none of these things.
Today we use the term social justice to name the divinely inspired impulse to act on behalf of marginalized people. The term
encompasses both one-on-one acts of service and corporate efforts to change oppressive social, political, or economic institutions.
Before the twentieth century, when the term was popularized, saints described their social justice activities as works of
charity. All saints performed personal service for people in need. And many dedicated themselves to reforming or establishing
institutions that we now would call social justice initiatives. Of these I think the life and accomplishments of St. Roque
González (1576–1628) may be most inspiring and instructive.
The first saints acclaimed by the church were martyrs. Local Christian communities honored men and women who gave their life
for the gospel because they were following Christ perfectly by conforming to his death. Beginning with Luke’s account
of the martyrdom of Stephen in Acts 6–7, Christian writers celebrated the similarity of martyrs’ deaths to Christ’s
by carefully selecting facts that resembled his passion and crucifixion. It came to be expected that the lives of martyrs
would include events that marked Jesus’ martyrdom, such as confrontations with accusers or unbelievers, voices from
heaven, trials before religious or civil courts, false witnesses, beatings, mockery, and so on. And sometimes when the historical
record left few facts to work with, biographers used their imagination to fill the gaps. They created legends to ensure that
no one would fail to see how closely their subject followed Christ in both life and death.
But the biographers of St. Roque González needed no fictions to portray his likeness to Christ. For three decades this great
seventeenth-century missioner and social activist laid down his life daily for his beloved Guarani of Paraguay. Roque endured
the hardships of traveling miles on foot through forests and bogs, extremes of heat and cold, the constant companionship of
mosquitoes, exhaustion, hunger, disease, danger from wild animals and enemies, and opposition from Spanish landholders. Imitating
his Master, he suffered all things, even death, in order to care for his people—to feed them, to heal their diseases,
to free them from slavery, to bring them the gospel, and to gather them into Christian communities.
Roque González de Santa Cruz was born in 1576 at Asunción, the capitol of Paraguay. His father, Bartolomé González, was a
conquistador, one of the thousands of adventurers who, with the encouragement of Spain and Portugal, conquered and colonized
the New World. Nothing is known about his mother, María de Santa Cruz, but some historians speculate that she may have been
part Indian. Roque’s family heritage provided him excellent credentials for his missionary work. Because Roque was a
native-born Paraguayan, he did not bear fully the stigma of his descent from conquistadors, the hated European oppressors
of the Indians. And from childhood he spoke the language of the Guarani, possibly a gift from his mother that opened a natural
relationship for him with the people he would ultimately serve.
By 1599, the year Roque was ordained a priest, the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of South America was nearly complete.
Lust for gold, land, and power drove the conquistadors, and armed with guns and mounted on horses—things the Indians
had never even imagined?—their superior forces easily prevailed. Spain had enacted laws that safeguarded the natives’
rights to their lands and prohibited slavery. At the same time Spain established the encomienda system as a way to encourage
its people to settle in South America. .Under this system, colonists and conquistadors were offered large land grants, to
be held in trust for the Indians. The encomenderos were supposed to protect the natives and arrange for their Christianization.
I In return, the natives were required to pay the encomenderos in the form of taxes and labor. But the system became corrupt
very quickly. The encomenderos forced the Indians to perform day labor that denied them their freedom and treated them as
slaves. And worse, Portuguese bandierantes from São Paulo, Brazil, captured thousands of Indians and sold them into slavery.
For an accurate depiction of this hideous oppression of the Guarani, you should view The Mission, even though the events depicted
in this movie happened 150 years after Roque González’s time. Recently, when I watched it, I was horrified at the brutal
treatment of the Indians that has persisted even to this day.
The greed and violence of the colonists obstructed the efforts of missionaries to attract the Indians to Christ and the Church,
and the oppression they witnessed made them advocates for social justice. A century before Roque González began his work,
Bartolomé de Las Casas, a priest and an encomendero, was so touched by the abuses he witnessed that he renounced his land
and freed his Indian slaves. Then he joined the Dominicans and became a passionate champion of justice for the Indians. Over
a half century he made numerous trips to the Spanish court to plead their cause to the king. In his appeals he identified
their sufferings with those of Christ. Once he wrote, “I leave in the Indies Jesus Christ, our God, scourged and afflicted
and beaten and crucified not once, but thousands of times.”2 The king of Spain did promulgate more humane laws, and
as early as 1537 the pope condemned the enslavement of the Indians. But Madrid and Rome were thousands of miles from America,
and the interventions of king and pope were ignored.
For three years after his ordination, Roque González was deployed as a missionary to Mbaracayú, an area near Asunción inhabited
by many conquered tribes that had been placed in the encomienda system. The Indians received him warmly. In the broadest sense
of the Spanish verb conquistar, he “won over” many of them to Christianity with his gentle persuasiveness and
service. He had come from conquistador roots, but his conquests were spiritual.3
In 1603 the bishop recalled Roque from his mission and appointed as rector of the cathedral at Asunción. Historians hypothesize
that powerful colonists pressed for Roque’s removal from Mbaracayú because he actively opposed their enslavement of
Indians to work on their tea plantations.4 Over the next six years the bishop came to rely on the gifted young priest. But
in 1609, when the bishop attempted to name Roque vicar general of the diocese, he declined the position. Motivated by his
missionary impulse and commitment to justice, he then joined the Jesuits, who were leaders in caring for the Indians.
The Jesuits were spearheading a significant, and now famous, social experiment in Paraguay. They were drawing the Guarani,
a large nomadic tribe, into a system of innovative communities called the reducción de Indios. Unfortunately, the word transliterated
into English as reduction, leading to confusion because of its association with the word reduce. While the Spanish verb reducir
normally meant “reduce,” in the mission field it had the technical meaning of “gather into settled communities.”5
The Jesuit reductions were independent Indian villages, self-governing and economically self-contained.
Roque González was a pioneering architect of the reductions. In 1611 he established the reduction of San Ignacio Guazú, named
for St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. He located the settlement in a fertile and forested area between two
rivers, the Tebicuary and the Paraná. In the following letter to his Jesuit superior in 1613, he described St. Ignacio, providing
a typical picture of life in the reductions:
The countryside near this little town is quite charming, and the climate is excellent, not nearly so apt to cause illness
as are some other areas. The fields are fertile, widespread, and large enough to keep some four hundred farmers busy. There
is no lack of water and firewood. Nearby forests offer opportunities for hunting, and all sorts of wild animals are plentiful.
All this makes it easy for the Indians to forget about fishing, their main occupation in their homeland. . . .
Last year there was already something of a harvest. This year there is an abundance, which makes the people very happy. In
this town there are some three hundred families, and in the vicinity some four hundred others, enough for another town. .
. .
This town had to be built from its very foundations. In order to do away with occasions of sin, I decided to build it in the
style of the Spaniards, so that everyone should have his own house, with fixed boundaries and a corresponding yard. This system
prevents easy access from one house to another, which used to be the case and which gave occasion for drunken orgies and other
evils.
A church and parish house are being erected for our needs. Comfortable and enclosed with an adobe wall, the houses are built
with cedar girders—cedar is very common wood here. We have worked hard to arrange all this. But with even greater zest
and energy—in fact with all our strength—we have worked to build temples to Our Lord, not only those made by hands
but spiritual temples as well, namely the souls of these Indians.
On Sundays and feast days we preach during mass, explaining the catechism beforehand with equal concern for boys and girls.
The adults are instructed in separate groups of about 150 men and the same number of women. Shortly after lunch, we teach
them reading and writing for about two hours.
There are still many non-Christians in this town. Because of the demands of planting and harvesting all cannot be baptized
at the same time. So every month we choose those best prepared for baptism. Among the 120 or so adults baptized this year
there were several elderly shamans.6
Influenced by Roque’s design at St. Ignacio and subsequent foundations over twenty years, reductions were generally
located near rivers or other fertile areas. The little towns were built around a central square with a church, rectory, a
home for widows and orphans, offices, and a storehouse situated opposite the houses of the Indians. The economy of the reductions
combined collective agriculture with private ownership—the Indians farmed the main crops together but maintained their
own gardens and animals.7 In these settlements the Jesuits provided for the spiritual and material needs of the Indians. They
introduced them to Christ and the Church, a primary missionary concern. But they also taught the Indians to read and write
and trained them in skills and crafts, such as masonry, carpentry, painting, sculpture, and music.
To guarantee the freedom of the Guarani and to protect their rights, Europeans were excluded from the reductions. The political
autonomy of these settlements enraged the colonists and conquistadors. The encomenderos abhorred the reductions because they
were safe havens for Indians. The settlements deprived them of labor and services to which they felt entitled. And they resented
that the Jesuits condemned the practices of the encomienda system as a form of slavery.
Roque courageously faced this angry opposition during all the years of his missionary service. In December 1614 he expressed
his views in a bold letter to his brother, Francisco, the lieutenant governor of Asunción, who sided with the encomenderos:
I have received your letter and understand from it and from other letters the strong feeling and complaints you have regarding
the Indians and especially the feelings you have against us.
This is nothing new, nor anything that started yesterday. The encomendero gentlemen and soldiers have long complained and
even gone further by stirring up strong opposition to the Society of Jesus. This, in fact, is a great honor to us.
I say this because the cause of the Indians is so just and because they have and have had a right to be free from the harsh
slavery and forced labor called personal service. Indeed, they are exempt from this by natural law, both divine and human.
These complaints grew even more serious after members of the Society fulfilled their obligation as faithful ministers of
God and vassals of his majesty the King and supported what he ordered most justly through his visitor that the Indians should
be free from the servitude in which they were kept.8
Roque championed justice for the Indians without fear of his enemies. He took the offensive and attacked their arrogant behavior
with a spiritual weapon, as he explained in the same letter to Francisco:
And because the encomenderos live in such a state of blindness, no God-fearing priest will hear their confessions. For my
part I tell you that I will not hear the confession of any one of them, for anything in this world, because they have done
evil and are not willing to admit it, much less to make restitution and amend their lives. In the next world their eyes will
be opened, to their great distress, unless they mend their ways now and make up with Indians in the sight of him who is infinitely
wise and cannot be deceived.9
If Francisco replied to Roque, his letter is lost. But we know that Roque’s aggressive stance affected him. In February
1605, just two months after receiving his brother’s blast, Francisco issued a document authorizing Roque and the Jesuits
to set up “three or four” new reductions and forbad anyone to obstruct or impede their establishment.10
During the dozen years from 1615 to 1627, Roque González established reductions in Paraguay, southern Brazil, northeastern
Argentina, and Uruguay. He lived with the Indians he loved. He ate their food, lived in houses like theirs, and worked side
by side with them building their towns and cultivating their fields. When their harvests failed, he starved with them until
he could arrange for relief from other reductions. He personally tended them when they were sick. For the Guarani, Roque González
was advocate of their rights, pastor, physician, architect, builder, teacher, and agriculturalist. He shines as an exemplar
of service evangelism: wining people to Christ by loving them and meeting their material needs.
In 1628 two young Jesuits, Juan de Castillo and Alonso Rodríguez, teamed up with Roque. On August 15 the three priests founded
a reduction at the Ijuhi River in Paraguay, and dedicated it to Mary because the Feast of the Assumption was celebrated on
that day. Roque left Juan in charge, and he and Alonso went to Caaró, at the southern tip of Brazil. There, on November 1,
they established a reduction and named it after that day’s feast of All Saints. Their intrusion into these areas triggered
the animosity of Nezú, a local medicine man, who decided to kill all the Jesuits in his territory. On November 15, one of
his men surprised Roque from behind, killing him with a single blow of a tomahawk. Then Nezú’s men killed Alonso and
dragged both bodies into the chapel, which they set on fire. In the next few days, Nezú’s henchmen murdered Juan de
Castillo and three other Jesuits.
Like the Master he had followed faithfully, Roque González culminated his life of selfless service in a bloody death.
Roque González played a key role in one of the most effective social justice movements in Christian history. The reductions
thrived in South America for one hundred fifty years and collapsed only after Spain expelled the Jesuits in 1768. Over the
years, 1,565 Jesuit priests and brothers had worked in the Paraguayan province. They built more than thirty reductions, each
housing two to four thousand Indians. By the time the Jesuits were expelled, the reductions were home to about 80,000 people.11
Voltaire, the cynical voice of the Enlightenment, recognized the significant achievement of the Jesuits. He wrote, “When
the Paraguayan missions left the hands of the Jesuits in 1768, they had reached the highest degree of civilization to which
it is possible to lead a young people.. . . In those missions, law was respected, morals were pure, a happy brotherliness
bound men together, the useful arts and even some of the more graceful sciences flourished, and there was abundance everywhere.”12
Some of us may be called to follow St. Roque and dedicate our lives to obtaining justice for marginalized people. But all
of us, if we are truly desire to become Spirit-filled women and men, must find ways to act in God’s behalf for the poor,
the sick, and the oppressed.
© Copyright 2009 by Bert Ghezzi
1 James R. Brockman, S.J., The Word Remains: A Life of Oscar Romero (Maryknoll, New
York: Orbis Books, 1982), 216.
2 Robert Ellsberg, All Saints (New York: Crossroad, 2001), 307.
3 C. J. McNaspy, S.J. and J.M. Blanch, S.J. Lost Cities of Paraguay. (Chicago: Loyola
University Press, 1982), 9.
4 C. J. McNaspy, S.J. Conquistador Without a Sword: The Life of Roque González, S. J.
(Chicago: Loyola Press, 1984), 51.
5 McNaspy, Conquistador, 53.
6 McNaspy, Conquistador, 93–95.
7 David Hugh Farmer, ed., Butler’s Lives of the Saints: New Full Edition; November (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical
Press, 1997), 126.
8 McNaspy, Conquistador,197.
9 McNaspy, Conquistador,204.
10 McNaspy, Conquistador,107.
11 McNaspy and Blanch, 10.
12 Farmer, 126.
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