The wound of confiscated land
On August 6, in front of the metropolitan cathedral, packed for the Solemnity of the Transfiguration of the Divine Savior of the World, Archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas did not deliver a homily for the occasion. From the steps of Plaza Gerardo Barrios, he addressed three specific requests to Heaven—and, through them, two clear warnings to the powers of this world. The first concerned the earth itself: that El Salvador be spared from «this very serious contamination and plundering» that the resumption of metal mining would entail. The second concerned the flesh of his dispersed compatriots: that the American authorities finally respect the dignity and rights of the Salvadoran migrant community. This is not a coincidence of the liturgical calendar. It is the voice of a pastor who refuses to separate what no Gospel ever separates: the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.
It is essential to understand what the law that reopened the door to gold and silver mining represents for the Salvadoran Catholic imagination. In 2017, El Salvador became the first country in the world to completely ban metal mining on its territory, a decision hailed at the time as a rare act of ecological wisdom in Central America. On December 23, 2024, the Legislative Assembly, under the leadership of President Nayib Bukele, repealed this law by a vote of 57 to 5 and adopted a new General Law on Metal Mining, which came into effect on January 7, 2025. This law grants the State sole monopoly on exploration and extraction, but authorizes it to operate through joint ventures, thus paving the way for partnerships with foreign capital without prior consultation with the affected communities.
What Bishop Escobar Alas has been denouncing for over a year and a half, with admirable consistency, is not an ideological opposition to economic activity. It is a warning about the effects of mining chemicals on water. The Lempa River, which flows through two-thirds of the country and supplies drinking water to a large part of the San Salvador metropolitan area, is directly exposed to the risks of contamination by cyanide, arsenic, and mercury used in gold mining processes. Environmental toxicology experts have warned that the first effects will be felt in terms of water stress, with, within about ten years, a possible resurgence of chronic kidney disease, certain cancers, and birth defects linked to the accumulation of heavy metal particles in the body. Approximately sixty percent of the Salvadoran population believes that their country is not suited to this type of extractive activity.
In his homily of August 6, 2025, a year before his most recent pronouncement, the archbishop had already asked members of parliament to restore to the people «the law that protects the environment, life, and the health of people, animals, and plants.» This prophetic continuity is not clerical stubbornness: it is fidelity to a profound theological intuition, one that recognizes creation as a gift entrusted to humanity to cultivate and preserve, not to plunder. The Book of Genesis expresses this with an economy of words that has lost none of its power: «The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it» (Genesis 2:15). In biblical Hebrew, “to keep” carries the meaning of watching over, of preserving from destruction—a verb that stands in stark contrast to the idea of plunder denounced by the archbishop.
15The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and to take care of it.
Looting as a sin against one's neighbor
What distinguishes Archbishop Escobar Alas's words from mere environmental rhetoric is his refusal to separate the mining issue from the social question. He explicitly called on policymakers to ensure "policies that favor the most vulnerable majorities" and to avoid mining in the name of justice owed to the poorest. This is a theology of integral ecology, the one developed by Pope Francis in his encyclical Laudato si', where he affirmed that we can never hear "the cry of the earth" enough without simultaneously hearing "the cry of the poor," the two being linked by the same disregard for short-term profit. The archbishop extends this insight to the concrete reality of a country where the rural communities closest to the deposits would be the first to suffer the health consequences of extraction, without deriving any lasting economic benefits—El Salvador having experienced two centuries of past mining without generating any real development for the local populations.
The prophet Isaiah, in a passage often overlooked in favor of more famous texts, denounces precisely this logic of accumulation that dispossesses the weak: «Woe to those who add house to house, who add field to field, until there is no room left, and who say they will be alone in the midst of the land!» (Isaiah 5:8). This text, twenty-seven centuries old, resonates with a disturbing relevance in the face of a law that authorizes the State to partner with private capital without a process of free, prior, and informed consultation with the communities directly affected. The prophetic approach of the Archbishop of San Salvador consists precisely in reminding us that the mineral wealth of the subsoil does not belong to those who hold the power to grant it, but to the entire people, particularly the poorest who have no other heritage than the land they inhabit.
8Woe to those who add house to house, who join field to field, until there is no more space and they dwell alone in the midst of the land.
The boundaries of the ecclesiastical body and the requirement of truth
But the words spoken on August 17 cannot be fully understood without their immediate context: that of a Salvadoran Church itself under strain. While Bishop Escobar Alas presided over the patron saint's festivities amidst popular fervor, groups of victims of sexual abuse committed by members of the clergy were demanding, from the sidelines of the celebration, a firmness that the institution has not always demonstrated. The Cultura Romeriana association and other organizations have been denouncing cases of sexual violence against women and children, attributed to priests, for over a decade, without the local Church hierarchy always responding with the required speed. One of the victims testified that she had presented the case of a twelve-year-old girl raped by a priest in a Catholic school three times—in 2011, 2023, and 2024—without receiving a satisfactory response from the bishop in question.
It was only in January 2026 that the archdiocese announced the removal of a priest, Jesús Orlando Erazo Gálvez, sentenced to fourteen years in prison for the rape of a minor, after a lengthy judicial and ecclesiastical process facilitated in part by the special commission established in June 2019 to investigate abuse complaints. This case illustrates both the institutional will to hold people accountable and the structural slowness that fuels victims' distrust. At a global level, a worldwide network of abuse survivors, present in fourteen countries across five continents, recently demanded that the Vatican adopt a zero-tolerance law, modeled on the accountability standards in force in the United States, which mandate irrevocable exclusion from the priesthood as soon as abuse is acknowledged or proven. El Salvador is not immune to this global demand for truth, which now permeates the entire Church.
This tension between the traditional prophetic role of the episcopate—denouncing external injustices, political corruption, and mining exploitation—and the internal need for purification demanded by the victims constitutes the most delicate crux of the current Salvadoran situation. The Apostle Peter, in his first epistle, reminds the elders of the Church of a requirement that applies as much to pastors as to the entire people of God: «Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but with good will» (1 Peter 5:2). An archbishop can legitimately raise his voice against mining plunder and migrant injustice; but this prophetic legitimacy, to remain credible, must be accompanied by unwavering transparency toward the sheep wounded by their own shepherds.
2Shepherd the flock of God entrusted to you, watching over it, not under compulsion, but willingly, not for selfish gain, but with devotion,
Salvadoran exile and the fate of the foreigner
The third focus of the archiepiscopal address, concerning Salvadoran migrants in the United States, is situated within a political context where the tightening of deportation and detention measures directly affects the Central American diaspora. For several years, Archbishop Escobar Alas has been directly appealing to American authorities to cease what he describes as the persecution of his compatriots living abroad, demanding respect for the fundamental right to migration. This request, reiterated on August 6, 2026, goes beyond mere pastoral compassion: it touches the very heart of biblical doctrine on welcoming the stranger, a doctrine that the Hebrew people themselves experienced firsthand during their exile.
The Book of Leviticus, in strikingly clear language, grounds this requirement in the very memory of suffering: «If a foreigner resides among you in your land, you shall not exploit him. The foreigner who resides among you shall be to you as your native-born; you shall love him as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt» (Lev 19:33-34). This precept is not just another humanitarian option: it structures the entire social ethic of the Old Testament, positing that the memory of exile must engender compassion for those who experience the same displacement today. Salvadorans fleeing poverty, past gang violence, or the economic consequences of contested political decisions are reliving, in a contemporary form, the biblical experience of dispersion.
33If a foreigner comes to stay with you in your country, you will not oppress him. 34You shall treat the foreigner residing among you as a native-born Israelite, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.
This demand for dignity for migrants resonates directly with the country's domestic political context. On July 31, 2025, the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly adopted a constitutional reform allowing for indefinite presidential re-election, extending the presidential term from five to six years, and eliminating the second round of elections—a reform passed without prior popular consultation. Nayib Bukele, who celebrated his seventh year in office in June 2026 with an approval rating of 87.8%, was confirmed as the presidential candidate by his party in July 2026. Archbishop Escobar Alas had explicitly called, in his homily of August 6, 2025, for the members of parliament to reconsider this constitutional reform, "approved without consultation," reminding them that "for a constitutional reform to be legitimate, the people must be consulted." This dual vigilance — on the mining issue and on the constitutional issue — paints the portrait of an archbishop who refuses to let political power act without moral counterweight, regardless of its popularity.
A theology of shared vigilance
What is ultimately striking about the trajectory of Archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas is the coherence of a thought process that rejects rigid compartmentalization. The land ravaged by mining, the migrant humiliated at the North American borders, and the victim of abuse ignored by their own institution all belong, in this vision, to the same wounded flesh of the ecclesial and social body. The Apostle Paul expresses this with rarely equaled intensity: «If one member suffers, all suffer together» (1 Corinthians 12:26). El Salvador, a country marked by decades of civil violence followed by fragile reconstruction under President Bukele, is today seeking a balance between security, economic growth, and respect for fundamental freedoms—a balance that the Church, through its primate, refuses to take for granted.
26And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with him; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with him.
It would be reductive to interpret this statement as mere political opposition. Rather, it stems from the conviction that the common good is never measured solely by gross domestic product or electoral popularity, but by how a society treats its most vulnerable members: rural communities threatened by mining pollution, undocumented migrants abroad, and children abused within their own parishes. By linking these three wounds in a single homily, the Archbishop of San Salvador did not simply comment on current events; he offered a coherent theological framework, where the sanctity of the land, the dignity of the stranger, and the truth owed to victims form a single call to the conversion of the powerful.
Lectio divina
«The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as a fellow citizen; you shall love him as yourself.» Leviticus 19:34
Perhaps you carry within you the memory of being uprooted, of a country left behind, of a land taken from you without your consent. Have you ever recognized in the face of the stranger knocking at your door the exact reflection of your own story of exile? What would you do if, tomorrow, it were you who were driven from the land you have always cultivated? Where, in your heart, does the border you have never truly crossed lie hidden?
Lord, you knew exile in Egypt even before you were born in Bethlehem. You know the taste of the dust of the roads and the thirst of the polluted river. Keep pure the water you have given us, keep pure the dignity of those who cross borders empty-handed. Teach us to recognize in the stranger the brother we have forgotten to love. May our lands remain gardens, not tombs.
A calloused hand plunges into clear water that still flows, untouched, between the stones of the river.
✝ Biblical references
5 passages · 5 books
If I do not have love, I am nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:2)
Unity of the Church, ethical problems and a hymn to charity for the Corinthian community.
→ Explore the Codex 1 Corinthians- Leo XIV and the gesture of Saint Ignatius of Antioch: when Rome learned to sing with one voice with the East
- Nepal underwater, the Church stands tall: when Rome's charity meets the prayer of the Dalits
- Nepal: When water sweeps everything away, the Church remains standing
- All of France is preparing to receive the bread of life, not just Paris, Lourdes, and Metz.
Cast all your anxieties on him, for you are precious in his eyes. (1 Peter 5:7)
Encouragement to persecuted Christians: hope, baptism and conduct in society.
→ Explore Codex 1 Stone- Moscow without a pastor: what Bishop Gallagher's mass reveals about a Church awaiting its shepherd
- The fifth accusation and the price of suspicion: what the Pfleger case reveals about ecclesiastical justice
- They will cage us: when the American Church chooses to descend into the dungeons of exile
- When Africa sits at the Vatican table: Lucy Afandi Esipila and the theology of the periphery that governs
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)
First book of the Bible: creation of the world, fall, patriarchs from Abraham to Joseph.
→ Explore the Genesis Codex- Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord: from your graves I will raise you up, O my people (Ezekiel 37:1-14)
- It was because of your hardness of heart that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives. But from the beginning it was not so (Mt 19:3-12)
- We carry in our body the death of Jesus (2 Cor 4:7-15)
- God saw all that he had made, and it was very good (Genesis 1:1–2:2)
- The creation of man and the original sin (Gen 2:7-9; 3:1-7a)
He has given us a child, a son has been given to us. (Isaiah 9:5)
The great prophet of salvation: judgment, consolation and announcement of the Suffering Servant.
→ Explore the Isaiah Codex
Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy. (Leviticus 19:2)
Holiness code, liturgical laws and purification rituals of the people of Israel.
→ Explore the Codex Leviticus- The stranger knocking at the door in September: what the Church says when two hundred and seventy voices rise up for El Salvador
- Ceuta, Rome, Madrid: when the word of the bishops becomes a rift between sister nations
- When Caesar believed he spoke on behalf of Peter: the prophetic freedom of the first American pope
- Why did Leo XIV enter Paris through the Gate of Exiles?
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In El Salvador, approximately 47% of the population still identifies as Catholic, but the Church is caught between the memory of martyrs and contemporary challenges. Evangelization began in the 16th century with the Franciscans and the Dominicans…
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With over 70 million members, the United States is home to one of the world's largest Catholic communities in absolute numbers, even though Catholics represent only 21% of the population. Evangelization began...
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