Father Stanley Rother is seen in an image from the documentary "American Martyr: The Stanley Rother Story."
Father Stanley Rother is seen in an image from the documentary "American Martyr: The Stanley Rother Story," which is scheduled to be released in theaters nationwide Aug. 25-27, 2026. Credit: OSV News photo/Archdiocese of Oklahoma City

When Stanley Rother was assassinated in 1981, the first Guatemalan villagers on the scene immediately began collecting his spilled blood. “They already knew this man was a martyr to his faith,” says Rother’s biographer, María Ruiz Scaperlanda, “that he had died for them, for the people he was serving. To them, it was part of what they were going to do to honor him.” That the villagers used pickle jars was the kind of homely touch that would have made the humble Rother smile.

Directed by Derek Watson and narrated by actor Martin Sheen, “American Martyr: The Stanley Rother Story” is intended as a tribute to the Blessed Stanley, as well as something of a campaign ad. Beatified in 2017 and the first U.S.-born priest and martyr to be so recognized, Rother served early in his career in the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, which produced the film. (It is being presented by Fathom Entertainment for two nights only in English, Aug. 25-26, and one night only in Spanish, Aug. 27). Oklahoma City is also home to the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine and, judging by the documentary, many supporters of Rother’s canonization.

What will that take? “It’ll take a miracle,” says the Most Rev. Paul S. Coakley, the city’s archbishop. He says it with a smile. But he’s not kidding.

In the meantime, “American Martyr” makes a case, not for sainthood necessarily but for the character and devotion of its subject to what might have been a divine plan for a young priest’s life. The story does not gloss over Rother’s shortcomings, if that’s what they were. Having grown up an Oklahoma farm boy, Rother decided after high school to enter the priesthood. But after six years at Assumption Seminary in San Antonio, Tex.—where he practiced many of the skills he would need in backwater Guatemala—he was more or less drummed out because of academic failings, mostly in Latin. This is, as the film points out, curious: When Rother was posted to his Guatemalan mission in Santiago Atitlán, he learned the Tz’utujil language of its indigenous people. Also, Spanish. A facility for languages was apparently not the problem.

Neither was courage: The Guatemalan Civil War, waged by a genocidal government against various rebel groups, was not Rother’s concern, we’re told, not in a political sense. But he was dedicated to his Guatemalan congregation, his “family” as he often described them to friends and relations in Oklahoma (many are interviewed here). Among the “offenses” Rother committed was founding a regional radio station and championing the human rights of poverty-stricken people who were viewed as the natural enemies of a repressive regime—one that abducted, tortured and killed Mayan people by the thousands. Father Rother eventually was warned that his name was on a death squad assassination list, at which point he returned to Oklahoma. But not to stay.

He felt “he belonged with the people” of Guatemala, said the Most Rev. Eusebius Beltran, the now-deceased former archbishop of Oklahoma City. Rother told his cousin, Msgr. Don Wolf, that he had promised his flock he would be back in Santiago Atitlán for Holy Week. “I don’t think he spent a lot of time in the midst of an existential crisis about ‘where do I belong,” Wolf says. Rother had already decided, “I belong there,” despite the very real—and realized—fear that he would die. His brief return to Oklahoma, Ms. Scaperlanda says, was “his Garden of Gethsemane.” He didn’t seek death. Nor did he run from it.

The Sheen narration and the script of “American Martyr” are rather perfunctory and made to seem more so by the very real eloquence of the people who knew Rother then and revere him now. And the tone of the film is actually enhanced by the limited amount of film-friendly material Rother left behind. There are a few snippets of footage, some limited recreations, letters read in voiceover and many, many photographs of a man who appears, well, beatific. But the minimalist tack director Watson takes in creating his portrait preserves Rother’s dignity while also making him something of a puzzle. Mysterious. Maybe even saintly.