The Song of the Poor

And other stories from El Salvador

Fr Tommy Greenan

978 1 915412 38 6
Hardback |208 pp |198 x 126 mm

Price: £19.99

‘This is an extraordinary book. Greenan has taken Sam Goldwyn literally – he starts with an earthquake and builds! These brilliant snapshots of life in El Salvador build piece by piece into something overwhelming – a picture of faith that survives the most volcanic upheavals.’

Frank Cottrell-Boyce, screenwriter, novelist, Children’s Laureate

‘A passionate and moving elegy which gives names to the nameless and voice to the voiceless. Tommy plunges us into the lives of a crucified people, the poor WITH spirit of the Beatitudes.’

Clare Dixon, Co-Chair of the Archbishop Romero Trust

‘With compassion, righteous anger, even humour, Tommy shares stories of people whose names and struggles should be known. It is impossible to read this book without being moved, humbled and inspired. A powerful cry for justice for the world’s poor today.’

Revd Canon Andrew Bain, Emmaus Community of St Benedict, Edinburgh

Tommy Greenan was a young Scottish priest who chose to live and work among the poorest of the poor in civil war-torn El Salvador in the 1980s and early 1990s, shortly after the altar assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero, whose ministry to the victims of state repression had greatly inspired him.

Tommy shared the poverty, fears and grief of the communities in which he lived. Death was an everyday reality, and priests who sided with the poor were considered subversives, enemies of the regime. Amid the danger and his pastoral duties, he wrote hundreds of reflections, stories and meditations that gave true witness to the daily life of his friends and neighbours. Together they represent a passionate voice for the voiceless, a memorial to short lives that would otherwise have been unknown and unseen.

Following Tommy’s death, The Song of the Poor collects an exceptional selection of his writings from El Salvador, presented in beautiful, often shattering, short chapters. They are intense and moving, yet often humorous, ranging from colourful human encounters to profound meditations on personal, political and religious matters. They provide an unforgettable chronicle of the life of the poor and of a remarkable individual in a time of conflict and terror.

Fr Tommy Greenan known to most as Tommy, was born in Edinburgh in 1956 and after training for ordination in Scotland and Spain served as a priest to the parishes of Holy Cross, Edinburgh, and St Andrew’s, Livingston, in the early 1980s. Between 1986 and 1994, and from 1996 to 2001, he worked on mission among some of the poorest rural communities of El Salvador. The memoirs collected in this book were written during the first of these missions, at a time of brutal civil war in the country. From 1994 to 1996, and 2001 to 2005, he researched a doctorate on the life and ministry of Archbishop Óscar Romero at Comillas University in Madrid. In 2005 he returned to mission, this time living among the poor in Guatemala. Following the onset of dementia and traumatic events in his parish, Tommy returned to Scotland where he died peacefully in 2020.

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The Song of the Poor

And other stories from El Salvador