Alirio Napoleón Macías was a

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

priest in

El Salvador El Salvador, officially the Republic of El Salvador, is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south by the Pacific Ocean. El Salvador's capital and largest city is S ...

who was assassinated on 4 August 1979. He served under Archbishop

Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez Oscar or Oskar is a masculine given name of English and Irish origin. Etymology The name is derived from two elements in Irish: the first, ''os'', means "deer"; the second element, ''car'', means "loving" or "friend", thus "deer-loving one" or "f ...

. His murder was characterized by Romero as part of a systematic persecution of the Catholic Church and oppression against efforts to reform a

military dictatorship A military dictatorship, or a military regime, is a type of dictatorship in which Power (social and political), power is held by one or more military officers. Military dictatorships are led by either a single military dictator, known as a Polit ...

there to guaranty human rights for the poor masses.

References

1979 deaths Assassinated Salvadoran people 20th-century Salvadoran Roman Catholic priests People murdered in El Salvador Year of birth missing 20th-century Roman Catholic martyrs Catholic martyrs of El Salvador People murdered in 1979 {{RC-clergy-stub