A calendar of other commemorations (with biographical notes)

24 Oscar Romero martyr
When Oscar Romero became Archbishop of San Salvador in February 1977, the priests who were socially involved were unenthusiastic. Born in 1917 in Ciudad Barrios he had five brothers and two sisters. He was ordained in Rome in 1942 and began doctoral studies in ascetical theology but was called home from Fascist Italy. On route he made stops with another priest in Spain and Cuba. In Cuba they were placed in an internment camp for a time. He worked as a parish priest for 20 years in San Miguel. Romero rose gradually from parish priest, to secretary to a bishop, to auxiliary bishop, to finally an archbishop.

He was said to be a man of prayer but conventional in his outlook. His very installation was used by the authorities to step up their reign of terror in El Salvador. However, when a massacre took place, Romero indicated that he agreed with the sentiment of a message, which had been distributed among the crowd, which said: “The church is where it always should have been; with the people, surrounded by wolves.”

The martyrdom of Rutilio Grande, a Jesuit priest who had been totally identified with the peasant poor of the countryside, along with two friends, moved Romero deeply when he went to the scene. He urged the government to investigate the deaths but they ignored his request. He began to come in conflict with the repressive government. He spoke out against poverty, social injustice, assassinations and torture. On a visit to Europe he met Pope John Paul II and expressed his concerns at what was happening in his country. He criticised the US government for giving military aid to the El Salvadoran government. He encouraged the development of new liturgies and more meaningful modes of worship. Ministering in a revolutionary situation, he was criticised for his innovations and his call for the church to become the voice of those who had no voice. His broadcast sermon on a Sunday began to attract a large audience. Romero became known as a champion of the poor. He knew he was courting death. He hoped that through his death he would contribute to the transformation of El Salvador. In a sermon the day before his death he called on Salvadoran soldiers as Christians to obey God’s higher order and to stop carrying out the government’s repression and violations of basic human rights.

On 24 March, 1980 this small gentle man was saying the Mass. As he reached the words of the consecration: “This is my body given for you….this is my blood shed for you” a shot rang out and the archbishop fell to the ground, killed instantly by a bullet through the heart. A friend of the people, one who desired peace and justice, he had become an enemy of those in power. Oscar Romero is remembered as a champion of the poor, a person who lived and died for Christ, a martyr for God and the people. His voice and witness is heard today especially in contexts of oppression. He is an inspiration to all who would follow Christ and accept the cost of discipleship.

Contributed by Chris Walker
24 Paul Couturier reformer of the Church
With the Uniting Church’s commitment to ecumenism, the story of Paul Couturier and his commitment to seeking the unity of the church, is a welcome story and we are the richer for knowing it.
Fr. Paul Couturier was one of the great pioneers of the ecumenical movement. His vision and understanding of Christian unity were echoed in the documents on ecumenism in the second Vatican Council, and paved the way for the founding of the World Council of Churches in 1947.
He was born in 1881 in Lyon and ordained in the Society of St.Irenaeus in 1906, a company of mission and teaching priests. A graduate in physical sciences he became a teacher at the Society’s school where he remained until 1946.
As a result of an Ignatian retreat in his early twenties he was encouraged to take up some relief work among Lyon’s many Russian refugees, which in turn, introduced him to Orthodoxy and a hitherto unknown world of spirituality and Church life.
Metropolitan Platon Gorodetsky (1803-1891) of Kiev had a saying, that ‘the walls of separation do not rise as far as heaven’, which became a principle of Couturier’s ecumenical outlook. Strongly influenced also by the teaching of Dom Lambert Beauduin, he placed the prayerful celebration of the Church’s liturgy at the heart of his spiritual life.
Couturier believed that all Christians could unite in regular prayer and devotion, each according to their own tradition and insight, for the sanctification of the world and the unity of Christ’s people. So was born the idea of ‘the Invisible Monastery’, a spiritual community, beyond the earth’s ‘walls of separation’, where God’s vision of his Church’s unity could be realized.
Couturier was strongly influenced by Jesus’ prayer on the night before he died. He believed Jesus’ concern was not simply for his disciples’ unity, but so that the world might believe. He realized that the unity of Christians was therefore a reality in heaven and that overcoming worldly divisions through penitence and charity would be to offer a renewed faith to the whole world. Merely human efforts would not prevail.
Couturier believed that as people increasingly embody their different traditions, they will grow closer to Christ. If Christians could be aware of each others’ spirituality and traditions, they could grow closer to each other.
In January 1933, during the Church Unity Octave, Couturier held three days of study and prayer. The Octave had been founded in 1906 by the Reverend Spencer Jones and Fr. Paul Watson of the Friars of the Atonement (when still Anglicans) to pray for the reunion of Christians with the See of Rome. After the Friars became Roman Catholic, the observance was extended to the whole Church in 1916.
But Couturier wanted to build on the Octave something that could embrace in prayer those who were unlikely ever to become Roman Catholics but who nevertheless desired the end to separation and the achievement of visible unity.
In 1934, Couturier’s new form was extended to a whole week, and the modern Week of Prayer for Christian Unity was born. The annual celebrations in Lyon, with their important speakers and high level ecumenical participation, became famous, attracting attention throughout Europe.
In 1936, the Abbé Couturier organized at Erlenbach in Switzerland the first inter-confessional spiritual meeting, mainly of Catholic clergy and Reformed pastors, which was to meet in fellowship for many years and directly contributed to the foundations of the World Council. Two visits to England in 1937 and 1938 completed his initiation into ecumenism with the discovery of Anglicanism.
During the Second World War, largely on account of his extensive international contacts, Couturier was imprisoned by the Gestapo. This broke his health, but he identified his suffering as a cross which he was being called to take up in the service of the unity of Christians. He continued to pray the liturgy of the Church, to make arrangements for the Week of Prayer and to sustain friendships around the world.
He lived to rejoice in the foundation of the World Council of Churches in the aftermath of the Second World War. Although his own Church did not join the new body at that time, his hope that Rome could lead an appeal for convergence was heard by Pope Pius and doubtless informed the forthcoming Council. He died in Lyon on 24 March 1953.
Peter Gador-Whyte
26 Caroline Chisholm renewer of society
Caroline Chisholm arrived in New South Wales in 1838 with her husband Archibald, an Army officer on leave from service in India. She quickly became aware of the plight of many of the settlers, and especially of young girls who arrived from Britain after a long sea journey, sometimes seeking a husband or boyfriend who had been sent out as a convict or who had arrived earlier to find work. Often illiterate and impoverished, and without friends or contacts, many girls turned to prostitution in order to survive. Caroline established a home for them in an old barracks, launching an employment agency offering work with local families who, as part of the contract, gave them protection and care. Her work broke down prejudices against “convict girls” and helped to establish a sense of solidarity in the emerging colony.
Recognising that good work could be found in the emerging farms and homesteads; Caroline led wagon trains out into the bush, settling young people with jobs. She became famous as a matchmaker, as girls met and married farmers and founded homes of their own. A devout Christian, Caroline believed in the sanctity of marriage and family life, and saw the injustice of official government policy, which encouraged young men to settle in Australia but tried to block the arrival of women who were officially described as “encumbrances”.

Men who had been sent out as convicts begged her to find their wives or fiancées back in Britain, and she travelled to London to do this, eventually reuniting many families. Renting a modest home near the London docks, she started a Family Colonisation Society helping poor families to settle in Australia, commissioning ships with clean and adequate accommodation, and establishing a London hostel next to her own home where families could stay while waiting to sail. Former shipping arrangements had meant men and women sharing accommodation, and a complete lack of privacy: she established a scheme in which all young unmarried people were adopted into families for the voyage, which also ensured networks of friendship and practical assistance on arrival in Australia.

Sometimes subjected to insults because of her Roman Catholic faith, Caroline remained a good-humoured woman whose tact and discretion, especially when dealing with the poorest families, made her much loved. She became the first woman ever to give evidence to a British Parliamentary committee, addressing MPs examining the ending of transportation and the possibilities of family migration. Herself a farmer's daughter, she energetically promoted Australian farming, taking a sheaf of wheat from a New South Wales farm into Parliament to make her point.
Returning to Australia, Caroline worked to establish “Chisholm shelters” along the rough tracks leading out into the bush, opened a small school, and continued to lobby for the needs of settlers. Eventually settling back in London, she died in 1877 and is buried in her native Northampton where her grave names her as “The Emigrant's Friend”.
Joanna Bogle
31 Fred McKay faithful servant
Fred McKay was a great Australian with a record of achievement and service, both within the life of the Church and across the wider Australian community, that would be difficult to surpass. Like Rev John Flynn before him, Fred became a legend in the inland for breaking down the vast ‘tyranny of distance’ for people living in isolation. Whereas Flynn became known for creating a “Mantle of Safety” across the inland, McKay became known for creating a “Mantle of Caring”.

When Flynn died in 1951, Fred succeeded his old boss as Superintendent of the Australian Inland Mission of the Presbyterian Church (AIM), and served in that role for 23 years. His achievements in that time were incredible! Among them included the personal supervision of the building of the three main Uniting Church facilities in Alice Springs – the John Flynn Memorial Church, St Philip’s College and the initial building of the Old Timers Aged Care Home. There were nine new hospitals opened throughout these years, as well as pre- schools and hostels, and he played a major role in the planning and developing of Karratha in Western Australia, as the AIM sought to find creative ways of ministering to the burgeoning mining communities of the Pilbara.

He was Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in NSW and in 1970 began a three year term as Moderator General of the Presbyterian Church of Australia. When the Uniting Church came into being in 1977 he played a critical role in resolving some of the thorny property issues in NSW and with the division of assets of the AIM. Together with a team of negotiators he travelled to many locations in the state helping to determine which property would become part of the Uniting Church and which would be part of the Continuing Presbyterian Church. It was a tough time and called on all of Fred’s considerable negotiating skills.

Throughout his long life Fred McKay was regarded as a friend and confidante by thousands of Australians from all walks of life. He died aged 92 in March, 2000, in Richmond, NSW, and at his funeral service, and at subsequent memorial services held across the country, he was honoured by Prime Ministers and Governors General, parliamentarians, corporate and ecclesiastical leaders, battlers from the Outback, as well as members of the Australian Armed Forces who served overseas in World War 2. All regarded Fred as a personal friend, and he was their friend too, for he had genuine love of people and the great gift of making a person feel like the most important person in the world.

A great Australian he might have been, but he first and foremost a ‘man of God’. Born in 1907, one of nine surviving children, he grew up on a sugar cane and dairy farm near Walkerston in North Queensland. Throughout his life he had a strong sense of destiny and a powerful awareness of the Call of God on his life. When he was six years old he suffered a ruptured appendix and developed peritonitis which the doctor said was inoperable. His mother begged the doctor to operate and leaning over the bed said, “God, if you let my boy live, I will make him a minister for you”. Fred survived the complicated surgery and never wavered in carrying out his part in the covenant his mother made with God.

He attended Thornburgh College in Charters Towers, becoming school captain, and then attended Emmanuel College within the University of Queensland in Brisbane, graduating in 1932 with a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Divinity. He had the opportunity of studying for his Doctorate at the University of Edinburgh, but his destiny took a dramatic turn after meeting John Flynn. While working as a Home Missionary at Southport on the Gold Coast in 1933 he was visited by Flynn, and while sitting on the beach sifting sand through his fingers and talking about the Flying Doctor, Flynn famously said: “You know, Fred, the sand out at Birdsville is a lot lovelier than this!”

After much soul searching, he agreed, thus beginning one of the great stories of Christian ministry in inland Australia. He was ordained in December, 1935, and appointed to the vast Western Queensland Patrol centred on the Flying Doctor Base at Cloncurry, a patrol area of 452,000 square kilometres, and covering some of the toughest and most inhospitable country in Australia. Fred cut his teeth in ministry here! He arrived in Cloncurry in April 1936 and on his first patrol conducted an informal Church service to 17 perspiring shearers in a woolshed on Devoncourt Station. Fred would later say that he had no church, no home and no set program, but if someone died, or needed help with their children’s lessons, he would get a call on the radio and respond. He came to love the people!

Fred married Margaret Robertson in 1938 and together they forged one of the great ministry partnerships, with ‘Meg’, as she became known, bringing her own gifts and abilities as a nursing sister whenever they went out on patrol. They stayed five years before the war intervened and Fred joined the Armed Forces, becoming a revered RAAF chaplain in the Middle East and Europe. Fred had two brothers who also became ministers, and his brother Les would later take up the Western Queensland patrol for the AIM. After the war Fred was minister at Toowong for four years having the opportunity to spend time with Meg and their growing family. Together they raised four children: Margaret, Ruth, Bruce and Elizabeth. He was nominated as John Flynn’s successor in 1950 and became the second Superintendent of the AIM in November 1951, following Flynn’s death in May. Upon retiring from the AIM in January, 1974, he spent seven years as assistant minister at St Stephen’s in Sydney.

At the General Assembly of 1973, as he prepared to retire both as Moderator General and as Superintendent of the AIM, the new chairman of the AIM Board, Rev Colin McKeith, said of Fred:

“…a fortunate man in that he was blessed with so many talents: - a very effective witness for Christ, a leader among men, a business man of the highest calibre, a Public Relations expert with very few peers. And this had been all placed at the disposal of the AIM, so the Church owed him a great deal”.

Fred McKay was honoured on three separate occasions by Her majesty the Queen, with an MBE in 1953, an OBE in 1965, and the CMG in 1972. He received an AC in 1999.
Reference: “Outback Achiever” Fred McKay, Successor to Flynn of The Inland, by Maisie McKenzie, Boolarong Press, Moorooka, Qld, 1997
Rev John Lamont
31 Maria Skobtsova martyr
Maria Skobtsova was an Orthodox Christian nun in Paris in the early twentieth century. She encouraged hospitality and love of one's neighbour, often in the most uncompromising of terms. She considered this to be the foundation of the Christian gospel, and she embodied it in her life. She is often compared to Dorothy Day, an American Roman Catholic who founded the Catholic Worker movement. Maria Skobtova died in Ravensbrück prison. She was glorified as a saint by the Orthodox Church on January 16, 2004, along with her companions, the Orthodox Priest Dmitri Klepinin, her son George (Yuri) Skobtsov, and Elie Fondaminsky. They are commemorated on July 20 in the Orthodox Church.

Born to a well to do, upper-class family in 1891 in Latvia, she was given the name Elizaveta Pilenko. Her father died when she was a teenager, and she embraced atheism. In 1906 her mother took the family to St Petersburg, where she became involved in radical intellectual circles. In 1910 she married a Bolshevik by the name of Dimitri Kuzmin-Karaviev. During this period of her life she was actively involved in literary circles and wrote much poetry. Her first book, Scythian Shards, was a collection of poetry from this period. By 1913 her marriage to Dimitri had ended.

Through a look at the humanity of Jesus, "He also died. He sweated blood. They struck his face," she began to be drawn back into Christianity. She moved, now with her daughter, Gaiana, to the south of Russia where her religious devotion increased.

In 1918, after the Bolshevik Revolution, she was elected deputy mayor of the town of Anapa in Southern Russia. When the White Army took control of Anapa, the mayor fled and she became mayor of the town. The White Army put her on trial for being a Bolshevik. However, the judge was a former teacher of hers, Daniel Skobtsov, and she was acquitted. Soon the two fell in love and were married.

Soon, the political tide was turning again. In order to avoid danger, Elizaveta, Daniel, Gaiana, and Elizaveta's mother Sophia fled the country. Elizaveta was pregnant with her second child. They travelled first to Georgia (where her son Yuri was born) and then to Yugoslavia (where her daughter Anastasia was born). Finally they arrived in Paris in 1923. Soon Elizaveta was dedicating herself to theological studies and social work.

In 1926, Anastasia died of influenza, a heartbreaking event for the family. Gaiana was sent away to Belgium to boarding school. Soon, Daniel and Elizaveta's marriage was falling apart. Yuri ended up living with Daniel, and Elizaveta moved into central Paris to work more directly with those who were most in need.

Her bishop encouraged her to take vows as a nun, something she did only with the assurance that she would not have to live in a monastery, secluded from the world. In 1932, with Daniel Skobtov's permission, an ecclesiastical divorce was granted and she took monastic vows. In monasticism she took the name Maria. Later, Fr Dmitri Klepinin would be sent to be the chaplain of the house.

Mother Maria made a rented house in Paris her "convent." It was a place with an open door for refugees, the needy and the lonely. It also soon became a centre for intellectual and theological discussion. In Mother Maria these two elements, service to the poor and theology, went hand-in-hand.

When the Nazis took Paris in World War II, Jews soon approached the house asking for baptismal certificates, which Father Dimitri would provide them. Many Jews came to stay with them. They provided shelter and helped many escape. Eventually the house was closed down. Mother Maria, Fr Dimitri, Yuri, and Sophia were all taken by the Gestapo. Fr Dimitri and Yuri both died at the prison camp in Dora.

Mother Maria was sent to the camp in Ravensbrück, Germany. On Holy Saturday, the day before Easter in 1945, Mother Maria was taken to the gas chamber and entered eternal life. It is suggested that she took the place of another who had been selected for that death.

By Father Kyril

April
4 Martin Luther King Jnr martyr & social activist
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a product of southern black Baptist Protestantism in the United States. The son, grandson, and great-grandson of Baptist preachers, he was born in Atlanta, Georgia. Driven by an “inner urge to serve God and humanity,” he accepted the call to ministry and was ordained at age nineteen. From that point, King committed himself to an active and well-rounded ministry, a ministry that was spiritually satisfying, intellectually sound, and socially relevant.

King’s exposure to a social gospel began at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, a congregation pastored by both his maternal grandfather, Adam D. Williams, and his father, Martin Luther King, Sr. While at Ebenezer, and later at Atlanta’s Morehouse College, King studied the gospels and the entire biblical revelation, and concluded that biblically and theologically inspired Christians had a responsibility to pursue freedom, peace, and justice in the social, political, and economic realms of society.

The lessons King learned at Ebenezer and Morehouse were reinforced and provided more of an intellectual structure during his years at Crozer Theological Seminary and Boston University, where he immersed himself in the writings of the Social Gospel theologian Walter Rauschenbusch. Rauschenbusch advocated redeeming individual and corporate life by applying the biblical principles of love and justice to the church, the family, the state, and other institutions, and King found here “a theological basis” for the social concern he had already embraced during his upbringing at Ebenezer Baptist Church and studies at Morehouse College.

King’s application of Social Gospel principles began with the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama in 1955-56, his very first attempt at organized social protest. In Montgomery, King combined the teachings of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount with the nonviolent methods of Mohandas K. Gandhi, thus forging both a personal ethic and a social ethic that would guide him throughout the thirteen years of his leadership in the struggle for civil and human rights.

After the successful outcome of the Montgomery bus protest, King led civil rights demonstrations throughout the American South, achieving varying degrees of success. His efforts led to the elimination of structures and patterns of racial segregation, and also the achievement of basic civil and/or constitutional rights for black people.

From 1965 to 1968, the last three years of his life, King consciously shifted his focus beyond basic civil and/or constitutional rights for blacks to issues of economic justice and international peace. He called for a radical redistribution of economic resources for the benefit of the poor in America and abroad, and for a world without war and the stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction. At that point, King’s call for “a new South” and the fulfillment of “the American dream” had become thoroughly intertwined with his vision of “the great world house,” in which humans must learn to live together in peace and harmony despite differences in race, nationality, religion, and culture.

King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968, while involved in a strike with sanitation workers.
Lewis V. Baldwin

Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies

Vanderbilt University

Nashville, Tennessee