$50M shrine to honor slain priest, first U.S. Catholic martyr

OKLAHOMA CITY >> The birth of Stanley Francis Rother was by all accounts ordinary, aside from the weather. The Catholic farm boy came into the world during an Oklahoma dust storm.

But in life — and in death — he was extraordinary.

The 46-year-old priest, shot to death in Guatemala in 1981, became the first person born in the United States to be declared a martyr by the Catholic Church.

Now a $50 million shrine built to honor the slain missionary — killed by three masked assassins who entered his rectory during Guatemala’s civil war — is expected to draw thousands of pilgrims to his home state.

“People from all over the world can come and know more about him and really ask for his intercession,” said María Ruiz Scaperlanda, author of “The Shepherd Who Didn’t Run,” a 2015 biography of Rother.

A dedication Mass set for Friday will mark the official opening of the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine in Oklahoma City. The Spanish colonialstyle structure incorporates a 2,000-seat sanctuary as well as a visitor center, gift shop, museum and smaller chapel that will serve as Rother’s final resting place.

The shrine grounds also will feature a re-creation of Tepeyac Hill, the Mexico City site where Catholics believe the Virgin Mary appeared to an Indigenous Mexican man named Juan Diego in 1531. An artist created painted bronze statues of Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Juan Diego — each weighing thousands of pounds — for the Oklahoma site.

Catholic donors funded the shrine, which was constructed debt free, Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul S. Coakley said.

“I think there are a lot of different things that will draw people to the campus, whether to honor Mary or Juan Diego or Blessed Stanley Rother,” Coakley said. “We hope it’s an opportunity for people to experience faith and grow in their relationship with the Lord.”

The Oklahoma complex joins nearly 120 Catholic national and diocesan shrines in 27 states and the District of Columbia, according to the National Association of Shrine and Pilgrimage Apostolate.

Prior to becoming the Rother shrine’s executive director in 2020, Leif Arvidson oversaw the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin, for a decade. About 75,000 pilgrims visited each year, Arvidson said.

He declined to estimate how many visitors the Rother shrine might attract.

“We’re still somewhat of a minority here,” Arvidson said of Oklahoma’s Catholic population.

Evangelical Protestants make up the largest share of the Bible Belt state’s adults at 47%, according to the Pew Research Center. Mainline Protestants follow at 18%. Catholics are next at 8%.

“I think he’ll be really special not only to Catholics but to Oklahomans and just people who will recognize the beauty of the virtues that he exhibited — of service and humility and dedication to God’s call in a person’s life,” Arvidson said.

Zac Craig, the Oklahoma City Convention and Visitors Bureau president and a Southern Baptist, echoed Arvidson’s assessment.

“It really adds to the cultural mix of diverse attractions that we have. … I think it’s going to be appealing to all,” said Craig, citing the city’s new First Americans Museum as well as the national memorial for the 1995 bombing of a federal office building.

Rother’s story begins with his 1935 birth in Okarche, a small town about 40 miles northwest of Oklahoma City.

While he served as an altar boy at his hometown Holy Trinity Catholic Church, Rother seemed destined for farm life. He studied vocational agriculture in high school, while his brother, Tom, took a Latin course — a language long associated with Catholicism.

Family members couldn’t help but chuckle when Stan — not Tom — later became a clergyman. But the road to the priesthood proved a struggle. He dropped out of his first seminary but eventually graduated from another before his ordination in 1963.

He served several Oklahoma parishes before volunteering for mission work in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala, in 1968.