by Fr. Kenneth Borowiak
for the Register
Nicole Barrett of Lincoln, a cousin of Blessed Father Stanley Rother, will speak about the priest’s life at St. Michael Parish in Fairbury, Sunday, Nov. 9.
The hour-long presentation will begin at 2 p.m. in the parish’s Prellwitz Hall at 8th and E streets in Fairbury.
Father Rother, a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, was martyred July 28, 1981, at the Archdiocese’s mission in Santiago Atitlan, Solola, Guatemala, when armed men broke into his rectory. He was shot and killed.
Born on a farm in Okarche, Okla., in 1935, Father Rother was ordained in 1963. He volunteered to go to the diocese’s mission in Guatemala in 1968. He learned Spanish and the Tz’utupil language, an unwritten Mayan language, to serve his people. He translated the New Testament into Tz’utupil.
Father Rother’s service took place during a time of civil war. He went to his home state of Oklahoma after a death threat, but returned to Guatemala, knowing the dangers.
Before his last Christmas, the priest wrote to a parish in Oklahoma about the dangers in Guatemala: “The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger.”
His body was returned to Oklahoma for burial. At the request of his parishioners, his heart was removed and buried under the altar of the church in Santiago, Atitlan.
Father Rother was beatified as a martyr of the Catholic Church Sept. 23, 2017, at the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City. Twenty thousand people attended the Mass.
In 2023, a church and ministry complex was dedicated as a shrine to Father Rother in Oklahoma City. His body was moved and interred in the altar of a side chapel in the church.
Barrett will speak about her cousin Father Rother’s life during her talk in Fairbury.
Father Justin Fulton, pastor of St. Michael Parish, spoke of the courageous witness of Father Rother in the face of death.
“We are grateful to God for the heroic life of this priest to our south,” he said. “I invite everyone to join us to learn more about how Christ lived in him from his own cousin.”
The talk, which is free, is open to everyone.
