The Catholic Patriotic Minute #56: Blessed Stanley Rother
Catholics For Catholics Special Edition | July 27th, 2026
Blessed Stanley Rother: The First U.S. Born Catholic Martyr
In Okarche, Oklahoma, Stanley Francis Rother was born on March 27, 1935. Stanley was raised on his family’s farm, which he worked with his father. He lived his whole childhood in his hometown of Okarche, and farming was a core part of it, as he became the president of the Future Farmers of America in his high school. The Rother family’s parish was Holy Trinity Catholic Church, where Stanley served as an altar server.
Stanley discerned the vocation of the priesthood during high school. He attended Assumption Seminary in San Antonio, Texas. However, he had to leave Assumption Seminary because of his difficulty with Latin and philosophy. Yet, some Oklahoma priests tutored Stanley, assisting him with his academic struggles. Thereafter, he completed his seminary studies at Mount St. Mary’s in Emmitsburg, Maryland.
On May 25, 1963, Rother was ordained a priest in the Diocese of Oklahoma City and Tulsa. On this day, Father Rother adopted St. Augustine’s motto, “For my benefit I am a Christian, for the benefit of others I am a priest.”
At first, Father Rother ministered to parishes in Oklahoma for five years. But, he felt called to answer Pope John XXIII’s call for missionaries to serve the Catholics in Latin America. The Holy Father recognized the problem in Latin America, where there was one priest to every five-thousand Catholics, while in North America there was one priest to every seven-hundred Catholics.
In 1968, Father Rother was assigned to care for the Tz’utujil people at the Oklahoman mission in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala, where he was the pastor at St. James the Apostle Church. He came to understand Spanish very well, even though he previously battled with learning Latin. And, he conquered the Tz’utujil language even more.
In their language, Father Rother said Mass and also assisted in translating the New Testament for them. At times, he said up to five Masses on Sunday in four different locations. He administered up to one-thousand baptisms per year.
Stricken with poverty, the Tz’utujil people were living in single-room huts. Father Rother helped them tend to their farming land and gather crops. He constructed an irrigation system for them, as well as a small hospital and radio station. He ate with them and treated the sick and elderly with medical care. The Tz’utujil people loved and honored Father Rother. They named him “Padre A’Plas” and treated him as one of their community elders.
While Father Rother was serving in Santiago Atitlán, the Guatemalan Civil War was raging through the country. By the year 1980, it reached Santiago Atitlán. The Tz’utujil people were caught in this war between the government and the leftist guerillas. Rother would obtain the bodies of the murdered Tz’utujil and give them a Catholic burial. He took care of the abandoned widows and orphans among his parishioners.
Due to his aid to the vulnerable, Father Rother’s name made it on a death list. Briefly, Father Rother returned to Oklahoma for the safety of himself and his associate but was determined to go back to his parish in Santiago Atitlán.
In a 1980 letter to his diocese, Father Rother wrote,
A nice compliment was given to me recently when a supposed leader of the church and town was complaining that “Father is defending the people.” He wants me deported. This is one of the reasons I have for staying in the face of physical harm. The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger. Pray for us that we might be a sign of the love of Christ for our people, that our presence among them will fortify them to endure these sufferings in preparation for the kingdom.
Father Rother understood his return would likely bring about his death. He moved back to Guatemala in March of 1981.
On July 28, 1981, at about one o’clock in the morning, three men raided Father Rother’s rectory. Rother fought them back silently, not wanting for the nuns nearby to come in and face the same death. The only thing a witness heard him say was, “kill me here!”. The three men could not take the Oklahoman priest out of his church, and so they shot him right then and there.
His body was returned back to Okarche, Oklahoma, to be buried at his home parish. But his heart, as requested by the Tz’utujil people due to their custom, is enshrined at St. James the Apostle Church, his church in Santiago Atitlán.
The cause for Father Rother’s canonization was opened in the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City in October 2007. The Vatican recognized Rother officially as a martyr in June of 2015. Father Stanley Francis Rother was beatified on September 23, 2017, in Oklahoma City. During the homily of his Beatification Mass, Cardinal Angelo Amato proclaimed,
The 13 years Blessed Rother spent as a missionary in Guatemala “will always be remembered as the glorious epic of a martyr of Christ, an authentic lighted torch of hope for the church and the world. Formed in the school of the Gospel, he saw even his enemies as fellow human beings. He did not hate, but loved. He did not destroy, but built up. This is the invitation that Blessed Stanley Francis Rother extends to us today. To be like him as witnesses and missionaries of the Gospel. Society needs these sowers of goodness. Thank you, Father Rother! Bless us from heaven!
By September 23, 2017, Blessed Stanley Rother became the first U.S.-born priest and the first U.S.-born man to be beatified, in addition to the first U.S.-born martyr.
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