Lawrence "Larry" Rosebaugh (also called Lorenzo) (May 16, 1935 – May 18, 2009) was an American streetwise priest, peace activist, and missionary from Wisconsin who spent many years working in Central and South America and was murdered by masked gunmen in Guatemala in 2009.
Early life
Rosebaugh was born in Appleton, Wisconsin on 16 May 1935, the son of Donald and Mildred (O’Gorman) Rosebaugh. His father worked as an insurance claims adjuster and was eventually transferred to the St. Louis area, where Rosebaugh attended Catholic elementary and secondary schools. Pursuing membership in the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, he attended St. Henry’s Seminary in Belleville, Illinois, and completed his theological studies at Our Lady of Snows Scholasticate, the Oblate seminary in Pass Christian, Mississippi. He made his perpetual vows as a member of the Oblates in August 1960, and was ordained to the priesthood in March 1963.
Milwaukee
After a brief parish assignment and several years of teaching high school in Duluth, Minnesota and Chicago, he moved to Milwaukee in 1968 to work at Casa Maria Hospitality House, a facility linked with the Catholic Worker movement which gives shelter to homeless families and women. Soon after his arrival he became one of the Milwaukee Fourteen, a group of anti-Vietnam War peace activists (including six Catholic clergy) who in September 1968 broke into Milwaukee draft board offices, removing and burning some of the files in a nearby plaza while holding a prayer service. In his autobiography, Rosebaugh summed up the group's intentions, "The whole purpose of our action had been to get the issue of whether the war in Vietnam is moral or immoral, just or unjust and whether the United States should be at war there into the public eye ..."
The Milwaukee Fourteen were found guilty of theft, arson, and burglary. Most members of the group would be eligible for parole in fourteen months, but Rosebaugh served an extra ten months in prison for his principled refusal to work while incarcerated. He explained, "As much as I wanted to be free, I was now more than ever convinced that there was a moral question at stake here, the immorality of our military presence in Vietnam, and so I once again said that I would do no work while doing time in prison."
Brazil
In 1975, Rosebaugh hitchhiked from St. Louis, Missouri to his new assignment in Recife, Brazil, where he worked with the poorest of the poor at the request of Archbishop Dom Helder Camara. In 1977, Rosebaugh and a Mennonite lay worker were arrested by police on the fabricated charge that they had stolen the cart they were pushing. Rosebaugh explained, "It appeared a ruse simply to get us off the city streets where we were witnesses to the many abuses against the women, children and men forced to take up their existence there for lack of any alternative." During their four-day detention, they were beaten and held without clothing in a cell with about thirty other men. They were released due to a persistent effort by Dom Helder Camara. U.S. First Lady Rosalynn Carter later met and spoke with the missionaries while on a goodwill tour of Latin America.
Return to the United States
Rosebaugh returned to the United States in August 1980 to rest and recover from hepatitis.
In the summer of 1981 he became one of a group of six nonviolent anti-nuclear protestors at the Pantex plant near Amarillo, Texas. They climbed a fence and prayed before being arrested. Held for two months before trial, Rosebaugh was visited by Bishop Leroy Matthiesen, who soon after urged Catholic workers at the nuclear assembly plant to find other employment. Eventually, Rosebaugh began a ten-month sentence at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana but again refused to work and was sent to the federal prison in Chicago. He was released in February 1982.
Throughout the period from 1982 to 1986, Rosebaugh was affiliated with the Catholic Worker House in New York City.