Alirio Napoleón Macías was a

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

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 4 August 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 A military dictatorship is a dictatorship in which the military exerts complete or substantial control over political authority, and the dictator is often a high-ranked military officer. The reverse situation is to have civilian control of the m ...

there to guaranty human rights for the poor masses.

References

1979 deaths Assassinated Salvadoran people 20th-century Salvadoran Roman Catholic priests People murdered in El Salvador Year of birth missing 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 {{RC-clergy-stub