The pilgrimage destination that remains the most powerful for me, however, is what I call Via Crucis or the Via Dolorosa of San Salvador, El Salvador. The capitol city of this small Central American country of 6.6 million people has at least four stations that pilgrims can visit: Divina Providencia, the city cathedral, the University of Central America and the central park.

Any pilgrim in San Salvador will go to the little hospital, Divina Providencia, where Archbishop Oscar Romero lived and was assassinated while he said Mass on March 24, 1980. In his little house of three rooms, one sees his vestments, stained with his blood, complete with the single hole of the bullet that ripped through his heart.

In 1994, his crozier still rested on his bed. I understood what it meant for medieval pilgrims to touch a relic: Romero's crozier was such a relic for me as I lovingly traced my fingers on the ivory medallion set in the middle of the staff. I always will associate gardenias with Romero's house because the sisters had a bowl of sweet-smelling gardenias in the hallway between the sitting room with the display cases of his belongings and his bedroom.

Pilgrims next go to the Catedral Metropolitana de San Salvador, where Romero's body lies. In 1994, the cathedral was still an unfinished building and closed to the public. At the time, Romero's body was upstairs. But in the late 1990s, when the cathedral was finished and repaired after the 1986 earthquake, his body was transferred to the downstairs crypt where it was laid in a large tomb. This tomb became a place of prayer, not just for foreign pilgrims, but also for Salvadorans.

Every time I have gone to Romero's tomb to pray, I have done so in the company of men, women and children. I have seen weeping people lay their heads on the tomb, children light votives at the foot of the tomb, and others hold hands as they pray out loud. I always found strength by placing my hands on his tomb. Romero's presence still is very alive for Salvadorans -- they already call him "San Romero" as well as simply "Monseñor."

Memorial garden
After visiting the cathedral, pilgrims cross the capitol city to the University of Central America, where on November 16, 1989, six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter were shot to death with AK47s by the elite military corps of the Salvadoran Army, the Atlacatl Battalion. Their bodies were discovered in a garden behind their residence.

To this date, the garden blooms with hundreds of roses on the rose bushes that were planted alongside the memorial plaque with their names. Pilgrims typically pick up a rose petal or two to take home with them as a reminder of that holy place.

More recently, in the large central park of San Salvador, Parque Cuscatlán, a portion of the 75,000 disappeared or murdered war victims is remembered on a granite wall, Nombres para no olvidar (Names not to be forgotten), that is very reminiscent of the Vietnam Memorial. No one name stands out -- they all are etched in the same size font. The Anglican Episcopal Church of El Salvador, with help from members of the Diocese of Vermont, contributed to its construction.
Just as in Washington, D.C., people come to trace their loved one's name, to tape a plastic flower to the wall by the person's name or simply to walk the full length of the mural to take in the country's loss. At present, only 5,000 names are up; there are at least eight blank panels for future additions as the money is raised.

Wherever one travels in El Salvador, one can feel the blood of the martyrs seeping up through the dusty dirt. I always have been reminded of the Hebrew rendering for "bloodshed" [damîm], which is simply the word, "blood" (dam) put into the plural, as though the millions of drops of blood spilled onto the land of El Salvador have multiplied into a cry that one feels by traveling to these sites of remembrance.

My life has been altered by discovering these pilgrimage places. Consequently, as long as I am able to return to El Salvador, I will return to these places, because they remind me of what it means to witness to God. They remind me of the worst of humankind's actions -- the capacity to kill; and the best of humanity's actions -- the capacity to forgive. They remind me of the great communion of saints, "the whole family of God, the living and the dead, those whom we love and those whom we hurt, bound together by Christ and sacrament, prayer and praise" (BCP, Catechism, 862). They are bound to me as I to them.