Romero Days 2026: Paths of Violence and Nonviolence

William Cavanaugh
DePaul University

Bill Cavanaugh is professor of Catholic studies and director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology at DePaul University, where his work focuses on the Catholic Church in the global South. His research examines the Church’s social and political presence amid violence and economic injustice, informed by his experience working with the Church in Chile under military dictatorship and by his scholarship on Catholic social practice. He is the author of nine books, most recently The Uses of Idolatry (Oxford, 2024).

Will Cohen
University of Scranton

Will Cohen is professor of theology and co-founder of the campus group Christians for the Common Good at the University of Scranton where he leads the Peace & Justice Studies program.  He has written a monograph and numerous articles on ecclesiology and ecumenism with a focus on Catholic-Orthodox relations, as well as both popular and scholarly essays on issues of faith in public life, especially through the lenses of St. Óscar Romero, John Courtney Murray, SJ, and Catholic social teaching.  As chair of the university’s General Education review committee from 2023-2025, he led a collaborative curricular revision process by which the university came to approve its new Ignatian Core Curriculum with a projected implementation date of Fall 2027.    

Kevin Coleman
University of Toronto

Kevin Coleman is a historian whose research and teaching focus on capitalism, photography, and Catholicism in twentieth-century Latin America. He is the author and editor of multiple books on visual culture and political violence in the region and the writer and director of Stolen Photo, a documentary film examining photography, power, and historical memory.

Carlos Colorado
Attorney

Carlos Colorado is a Salvadoran American attorney and writer in Southern California. He rose to prominence among Romero followers after publishing a blog tracking Romero’s canonization cause for twelve years between 2006-2018, providing inside information and insights regarding the obscure church process. Colorado’s blog was called “Super Martyrio,” the name of the church’s official final report on a martyrdom cause. Colorado studied journalism at Boston University and obtained a law degree from the University of Southern California School of Law. He practices civil litigation in Long Beach, California.

Fabio Javier Colorado
Jesuit School of Theology

Born and raised in El Salvador, Fabio Colorado holds a bachelor’s degree in sacred theology from the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in El Salvador and a master’s degree in sacred theology (biblical concentration) from the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley. He is currently pursuing doctoral studies, where his research focuses on the homilies of St. Óscar Romero and their relationship to socio-political transformation and contemporary applications. Colorado teaches in the Spanish-language theology program at the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University. He has also given talks about St. Romero, including at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Jorge Cuéllar
Dartmouth College

Jorge Cuéllar is a son of Salvadoran migrants. He is an interdisciplinary scholar who focuses on the histories, politics, and daily life of modern Central America. Cuéllar is presently finishing his first book, Everyday Life and Everyday Death in El Salvador (with Duke University Press), a grounded study of the Central American nation's turbulent postwar to "post-postwar" transition. Cuéllar is appointed Assistant Professor of Central American Studies in the Department of Latin American, Latino & Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College and is a member of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) Editorial Committee.

Sarah DeMarais
University of Notre Dame

Sarah DeMarais is a PhD student in peace studies and theology at the University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. She holds Master's degrees in theological studies, education, and clinical mental health counseling. DeMarais has served violence-exposed youth in post-Katrina New Orleans and has facilitated theological ethics education of Catholic sisters in Eastern Africa. Her work promotes social healing in communities after traumatic violence. Her writing has been published in the Journal of Moral Theology, International Journal of Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement, and counseling journals. 

Theresa Denger
Central American University José Simeón Cañas

Theresa Denger teaches theology at the Central American University (UCA) in El Salvador. As part of AGIAMONDO's Civil Peace Service (CPS), she works on historical memory processes, with a special focus on the legacy of Monsignor Óscar Romero. She holds a PhD in theology from the University of Freiburg (Germany), where she wrote her thesis “Love is Stronger than Death: Jon Sobrino's Theology of Martyrdom and its Consequences for Soteriology” (Grünewald 2019). She has published several articles in academic journals and international media on the theology of martyrs, the spirituality of Romero and Ellacuría, and feminist and ecological perspectives in contemporary theology.

Janna Hunter-Bowman
Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary

Janna L. Hunter-Bowman is associate professor of peace studies and Christian social ethics at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. Her research explores agency under duress, political theologies, and analyzes the historical development of peace theologies, advocating for self-reflective engagement with issues of power, justice, and historical complicity. She is author of the book Witnessing Peace: Becoming Agents Under Duress in Colombia (2022), which is rooted in a decade of peacebuilding work and research in Latin America, and articles appearing in the Journal of Moral Theology, Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, Political Theology, the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, and Mennonite Quarterly Review, among others. Current collaborative research with US migrant-led movements in the United States is supported by Louisville Institute’s Sabbatical Grant for Researchers and finds expression in her book authored with Movimiento Cosecha, tentatively titled Mobilizing the Dead: Migrant-led Movements Re-member the Crucified Body.

Rossy Iraheta Marinero
Ecclesial Base Communities of El Salvador

Rossy Iraheta was born in Tierra Blanca, Jiquilisco, in the department of Usulután, El Salvador. She holds a degree in psychology from the University of El Salvador and is currently a student in the Master’s in Latin American Theology program at the Central American University José Simeón Cañas. Iraheta is a leader among the Ecclesial Base Communities in the Bajo Lempa region of El Salvador, a core member of the leadership team of the Continental Articulation of Ecclesial Base Communities, a coordinator of the “Bendita Mezcla” school for narrative liberation theology, and a companion and support for the Committee of Family Members against the State of Exception in the Bajo Lempa. She is the author of public-facing and scholarly pieces.

Gema Kloppe-Santamaría
University College Cork & George Washington University

Gema Kloppe-Santamaría is a Nicaraguan-born sociologist and historian. She is a lecturer of sociology at University College Cork, Ireland, and associate research professor of Latin American history at George Washington University. Her work examines the intersections of violence, religion, gender, and the state in modern Latin America, with a particular focus on Mexico and Central America. She is the author of In the Vortex of Violence: Lynching, Extralegal Justice, and the State in Post-Revolutionary Mexico (University of California Press, 2020) and lead editor of Violence and Crime in Latin America: Representations and Politics (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017) and Human Security and Chronic Violence in Mexico: New Perspectives and Proposals from Below (Porrua Ediciones, 2019). Her current work is on the relationship between religion, secularism, and contentious politics during Latin America’s long Cold War.

Michael E. Lee
Fordham University

Michael Lee is director of the Francis & Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham University, where he is a professor of theology and a member of the Latin American and Latino Studies Institute. He researches and teaches courses in Roman Catholic theology and history, liberation theologies, Latin American and US Latine theologies, Christology, and spirituality. He has served as president of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States (ACHTUS). He is the author of Revolutionary Saint: The Theological Legacy of Óscar Romero (Orbis, 2018) and Bearing the Weight of Salvation: The Soteriology of Ignacio Ellacuría (Herder & Herder, 2010), and editor of Ignacio Ellacuría: Essays on History, Liberation, and Salvation (Orbis, 2013).

Laura Matamala Lienlaf
Universidad Pontificia de México

Laura Matamala Lienlaf holds a Master’s degree in social anthropology from the Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City. She is an adjunct professor at the Pontifical University of Mexico and collaborates in the coordination of formative processes within the Continental Articulation of Ecclesial Base Communities. For several years, she has accompanied collectives of families in the search for their disappeared relatives and is a member of the Churches and Spiritualities Working Group of the National Search Brigade. Her research interests include the anthropology of violence and memory, the relationship between anthropology and activism, and the anthropology of religion, as well as Christology, ecclesiology and ministries, and narrative theology.

Armando Marquez Ochoa

Armando Márquez Ochoa is a theologian, educator, and writer whose work is rooted in Catholic faith, social commitment, and community formation. A former Marist religious with advanced theological studies in Rome, he has taught theology across Central America and authored numerous books and articles on the life and teachings of St. Óscar Arnulfo Romero, while remaining actively engaged with faith-based foundations and community organizations serving marginalized populations.

Eli McCarthy
Georgetown University

Eli McCarthy is a lecturer in the Program on Justice and Peace and in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University. His scholarship and advocacy focus on Catholic social teaching, just peace ethics, the virtue of nonviolence, and nonviolent responses to violence, including his books A Just Peace Ethic Primer and Becoming Nonviolent Peacemakers, alongside extensive policy and grassroots peacebuilding work with Franciscan Action Network, Pax Christi International, and the DC Peace Team.

Laurel Marshall Potter
University of St. Thomas (Minnesota)

Laurel Marshall Potter is assistant professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Working between systematic and constructive theology, she studies the contemporary development of NuestrAmerican liberation theologies toward intercultural, interreligious, and decolonial horizons, with a current focus on the extraordinary liturgical expressions of Ecclesial Base Communities in El Salvador today. Potter's work has appeared in several academic and public-facing publications, including the co-authored book Re-membering the Reign of God: The Decolonial Witness of El Salvador's Church of the Poor (Lexington Books, 2022, with Elizabeth O'Donnell Gandolfo).

Todd Walatka
University of Notre Dame

Todd Walatka is director of the Latin American-North American Church Concerns (LANACC) program and a teaching professor in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, where he specializes in contemporary Catholic systematic theology. His research focuses on the interpretation and reception of Vatican II, influential Latin American thinkers including Gustavo Gutiérrez, Jon Sobrino, and St. Óscar Romero, and the European theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. Much of his work seeks to build bridges across theological divides and create dialogue between differing theological approaches. His two most recent books are Words of Life: The Preaching of St. Óscar Romero (Orbis Books, 2026) and Óscar Romero and Catholic Social Teaching (ed., Notre Dame Press, 2024).

Matthew Philipp Whelan
Duke University

Matthew Philipp Whelan is associate research professor of theology at Duke Divinity School. His research and teaching focus on Catholic social teaching, Latin American and liberation theologies, and ecological theology and ethics. He is the author of Blood in the Fields: Óscar Romero, Catholic Social Teaching, and Land Reform (Catholic University of America Press, 2020) and Christianity and Agroecology (Cambridge University Press, 2025). Whelan’s articles have appeared in Modern Theology, Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, International Journal of Systematic Theology, Journal of Catholic Social Thought, Journal of Moral Theology, Communio, Nova et Vetera, Crosscurrents, among other venues.