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 there to guarantee human rights for the poor masses.
Octavio Ortiz Luna was born on March 22, 1944, in a town called Agua Blanca in the Municipality of Cacaopera, in the northeastern Salvadoran province of Morazán.
Ortiz was sent to minister to the parish of El Despertar in the San Salvador neighborhood of Mejicanos.
At dawn on January 20, 1979, government troops burst into the retreat center, killed Ortiz and four youths, and arrested the rest.
In a final insult, Ortiz's head was repeatedly run over by a military vehicle so that the priest could not have an open casket funeral.