Nicole Barrett, a Lincoln resident and cousin of Blessed Father Stanley Rother, is scheduled to speak about the late priest’s life at St. Michael Parish in Fairbury on Sunday, November 9. The event will take place at 2 p.m. in Prellwitz Hall, located at 8th and E streets.

Father Stanley Rother was a priest from the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City who was killed on July 28, 1981, during his service at the mission in Santiago Atitlan, Solola, Guatemala. Armed men entered his rectory and shot him. Born in Okarche, Oklahoma in 1935, Father Rother was ordained in 1963 and volunteered for missionary work in Guatemala starting in 1968. He learned both Spanish and Tz’utupil, an unwritten Mayan language, and translated the New Testament into Tz’utupil.

His time in Guatemala coincided with a period of civil war. After receiving death threats, he briefly returned to Oklahoma but later chose to go back to Guatemala despite the risks. Before his final Christmas there, he wrote to an Oklahoma parish: “The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger.”

After his death, Father Rother’s body was brought back to Oklahoma for burial. At the request of parishioners from Santiago Atitlan, his heart was buried under their church altar.

On September 23, 2017, Father Rother was beatified as a martyr by the Catholic Church during a Mass attended by approximately twenty thousand people at the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City. In 2023, a new church and ministry complex dedicated as a shrine to Father Rother opened in Oklahoma City; his body was moved and placed within the altar of a side chapel there.

Barrett’s presentation will focus on her cousin’s life and legacy.

Father Justin Fulton, pastor of St. Michael Parish, commented on Father Rother’s example: “We are grateful to God for the heroic life of this priest to our south,” he said. “I invite everyone to join us to learn more about how Christ lived in him from his own cousin.”

The event is free and open to all.