Activist US priest slain in Guatemala

Activist US priest slain in Guatemala
May 26, 2009

Father Larry Rosebaugh, OMI, was slain during a May 18 carjacking in Guatemala. The 74-year-old missionary was one of the “Milwaukee 14” who had spent time in prison for stealing and burning thousands of draft cards in 1968. In the 1980s, he served another prison sentence following a protest at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia.

http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=3029

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Slain Appleton native Rev. Larry Rosebaugh was activist, 'saint'
74-year-old sacrificed life, freedom in service to poor
By Ed Lowe • Post-Crescent staff writer • May 25, 2009

When it comes to activist Catholics, few may have put their freedom and safety on the line more persistently than the Rev. Larry Rosebaugh, an Appleton native.

Rosebaugh, a priest and missionary, was shot and killed during a carjacking last Monday in Guatemala, where he lived on the streets providing aid to the homeless and ill.

Rosebaugh, a member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a Catholic order serving the world's destitute in 72 countries, was 74.

Though much of Rosebaugh's career was spent in obscurity helping the destitute, "Lorenzo" Rosebaugh made international headlines more than once for anti-war activism in the United States. He was jailed several times and spent years in prison as a result of organized protests and defiant bids to help the poor and powerless.

"Lorenzo's violent and unexpected death has given us another saint," the Rev. Vincente Louwagit, the order's provincial leader in Mexico, said in a letter quoted by the Associated Press.

Rosebaugh's family moved from Appleton to the St. Louis area when he was a boy. His return to Wisconsin as an Oblate priest would establish him as a national newsmaker and, in some eyes, an enemy of the state.

Rosebaugh was among 14 Vietnam War protesters who stole thousands of draft records from a federal office and set them ablaze in a bonfire in downtown Milwaukee on Sept. 24, 1968. He spent 20 months in prison for that role as one the so-called Milwaukee 14.

In the early 1980s, he spent another 18 months in prison for a demonstration at the Army base at Fort Benning, Ga. The base was the site of the School of the Americas, a military school that had trained Latin American soldiers implicated in the murders of a Salvadoran archbishop and four Catholic churchwomen.

The school, since renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security, is now the site of annual peace vigils attended by thousands and each year drawing participants from the Fox Cities. Del Schwaller, 84, of Appleton, typically attends.

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http://www.postcrescent.com/article/20090525/APC0101/905250490/1003/APC01/Slain+Appleton+native+Rev.+Larry+Rosebaugh+was+activist+++saint+

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