Blessed Stanley Rother, Martyr

Saturday, July 28, 2018

Location: All Parishes - Diocese of Little Rock

This optional memorial may be celebrated in the Diocese of Little Rock unless impeded by a celebration of higher precedence on the liturgical calendar. Learn more about this new feast day.

Father Stanley Rother, the first American-born martyr, was beatified in Oklahoma City on Sept. 23, 2017. Bishop Anthony B. Taylor concelebrated the beatification Mass. Blessed Rother, an Oklahoma native, was ordained a priest in 1963. Five years later he was sent by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City to serve its mission in Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala. While stationed there, he helped build a small hospital, a school and its first Catholic radio station. On July 28, 1981, he was brutally murdered in his parish rectory. The archdiocese opened a cause for sainthood for Father Rother in 2007. Bishop Taylor was the episcopal delegate for Father Rother's cause from 2007 until he was named the bishop of Little Rock in 2008. Learn more.