When Archbishop Paul Coakley was a seminarian and first learned of Father Stanley Rother’s martyrdom, he immediately considered the Oklahoma priest a role model. Decades later, on July 28, Coakley, now the archbishop of Oklahoma City, attended the premiere of the new film “American Martyr: The Stanley Rother Story” and spoke to EWTN News about how America’s first martyr has remained a source of inspiration.
Rother, who grew up on a farm in Oklahoma, became a diocesan priest and went to work with the Indigenous Tz’utujil people of Santiago Atitlán in Guatemala, which ended with his murder in 1981. He was beatified on Sept. 23, 2017.
Rother attended Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, where Coakley studied some years later. The archbishop recalled being in his third year of seminary when he received word that Rother had been killed.
“From the very beginning, from the earliest two days, when the news was still getting out about the death of this American missionary from Oklahoma, I was curious and inspired,” he said.
“At that stage of my own formation, I was looking for role models and witnesses and Stanley Rother appeared on the horizon as somebody that I was very attracted to. So, for all of those years ever since then, Iʼve read everything, Iʼve learned everything I could possibly find that was being produced about him.”
Coakley explained that when he received the phone call that he would be the next archbishop of Oklahoma City — due to the retirement of Archbishop Eusebius Beltran, who opened Rother’s cause for canonization — he knew he would be the one to carry Rother’s cause forward.
“When I had been appointed archbishop, but before it was even announced, I received that phone call telling me I was coming here; I disguised myself quite literally,” he recalled. “I was the bishop in Salina, Kansas, and I drove down to Okarche, Oklahoma [Rother’s birthplace], one Saturday morning, incognito, to pay my respects and to lay my ministry at the feet of Stanley Rother and pray for his intercession. So, heʼs been my companion all along the way since 1981, all these years.”
While Coakley said he believes many Catholics are still “becoming acquainted” with Rother’s life, his story resonates with those who do encounter him due to the fact that he was “just an ordinary priest, with ordinary struggles.”
“He struggled academically in seminary and yet he put his gifts at the service of others. He cultivated his gifts and he used his gifts as the Lord gave him the opportunity to do so,” he said.
Coakley added: “I think the one thing we can take from the life of Blessed Stanley … is to cultivate the gifts that God has given us. We donʼt need to go to Guatemala. We donʼt need to go anywhere. God has endowed each one of us with particular gifts. Develop those gifts, be generous in sharing those gifts, and thatʼs the way God is glorified.”
The archbishop also pointed out the impact Rother has had on vocations in Oklahoma City.
“Heʼs a very attractive figure I think for young men who are considering seminary for sure. We have seminarians that visit the shrine regularly from all over the country, actually,” he said. “But I think for our seminarians and priests here in Oklahoma, thereʼs a great sense of pride that heʼs one of us. He was formed by this local Church and he inspires us by his ordinary and yet heroic life.”
When speaking about the film, Coakley said the most important reason behind making it was to “make Blessed Stanley Rother more widely known to the wider Church.”
“Weʼre aware of him here in Oklahoma and we think we have a beautiful figure, an authentic, inspiring, attractive role model for priests and for all of the faithful, but we want more people to know about Blessed Stanley Rother,” he explained. “So, itʼs really in the interest of advancing his cause, introducing him to a much, much wider audience that we wanted to produce this documentary film.”
Coakley said he hopes viewers will leave the theater after watching the new film reminded that “all of us are called to holiness.”
“Stanley Rother would not have been the one in high school in the yearbook that said ‘most likely to become a saint’ … And yet all of us are called, it’s our vocation if you’re baptized, you’re called to be a saint. All of us are called to be saints. And Stanley Rother gives us a hope that for each one of us that is a possibility that is real.”
“American Martyr” will be shown in English in theaters Aug. 25 and 26 and in Spanish on Aug. 27.
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