Octavio Ortiz Luna (March 22, 1944 – January 20, 1979) was a Roman Catholic priest in

El Salvador El Salvador (; , meaning " The Saviour"), officially the Republic of El Salvador ( es, República de El Salvador), is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south b ...

who was assassinated on January 20, 1979. He served under Archbishop

Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez Oscar or Oskar is a masculine given name of Irish origin. Etymology The name is derived from two elements in Irish: the first, ''os'', means "deer"; the second element, ''car'', means "loving" or "friend", thus "deer-loving one" or "friend of deer" ...

. His murder was characterized by Romero as part of a systematic persecution of the Catholic Church and oppression against efforts to reform a military dictatorship there to guarantee human rights for the poor masses.

Biography

Octavio Ortiz Luna was born on March 22, 1944 in a town called Agua Blanca in the Municipality of

Cacaopera Cacaopera is a municipality in the Morazán department of El Salvador. According to UNESCO: The community of Cacaopera is the sole surviving representative of an otherwise vanished ethnic group, variously referred to as Ulua, Matagalpa, or C ...

, in the northeastern Salvadoran province of Morazán. Ortiz was born to peasant parents, Alejandro Ortiz and Exaltación de la Cruz Luna. The Ortiz-Lunas lost four other children, in addition to Octavio, to the bloodshed of the

Salvadoran Civil War The Salvadoran Civil War ( es, guerra civil de El Salvador) was a twelve year period of civil war in El Salvador that was fought between the government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition or ...

. Ortiz prepared for the priesthood at the

San Salvador San Salvador (; ) is the capital and the largest city of El Salvador and its eponymous department. It is the country's political, cultural, educational and financial center. The Metropolitan Area of San Salvador, which comprises the capital i ...

's Seminario San José de la Montaña. He was ordained a priest by Msgr. Romero. Fr. Ortiz was Romero's first priestly ordination. Thereafter, Fr. Ortiz was sent to minister to the parish of El Despertar in the

neighborhood of Mejicanos. Ortiz took a special interest in young workers, whom he offered spiritual retreats and seminars. Apparently, Ortiz had been leading such a retreat the night before his assassination. At dawn on January 20, 1979, government troops burst into the retreat center, killed Ortiz and four youths, and arrested the rest. The government would claim that the retreat center was a guerrilla base. Archbishop Romero called the allegations "lies." It is suspected that the government placed the bodies in positions that would support the official version of events. The bodies were placed on top the house roof and with gun machines. The assassination has never been investigated. In a final insult, Ortiz's head was repeatedly run over by a military vehicle so that the priest could not have an open casket funeral. Romero would later say that Ortiz "gave his face to Jesus."

References

* 1944 births 1979 deaths Assassinated Salvadoran people 20th-century Salvadoran Roman Catholic priests People murdered in El Salvador People from Morazán Department 20th-century Roman Catholic martyrs Catholic martyrs of El Salvador 1979 crimes in El Salvador 1979 murders in North America 1970s murders in El Salvador {{ElSalvador-bio-stub