Archbishop Óscar Romero and Pope Paul VI are made saints
ROME — Thirty-eight years after being gunned down in a hospital church in El Salvador, Archbishop Óscar Romero was named a saint on Sunday to cheers in St. Peter’s Square, while thousands watched the ceremony on video monitors in the Salvadoran capital.
Pope Francis also canonized Pope Paul VI, who is credited with continuing the work begun by Pope John XXIII and bringing the church into the modern era with a series of reforms wrought from the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.
In his homily, Francis said Romero “left the security of the world, even his own safety, in order to give his life according to the Gospel, close to the poor and to his people.” Of the pope, he said, “Even in the midst of tiredness and misunderstanding, Paul VI bore witness in a passionate way to the beauty and the joy of following Christ totally.”
In all, Francis canonized seven people at the ceremony, which was attended by 70,000 people in St. Peter’s Square, according to the Vatican.
Francis, the first pope from Latin America, had made clear from the start of his papacy, in 2013, that he would champion the canonization cause of Romero, who will now be known as Saint Óscar Romero.
On Sunday, Francis wore the bloodstained cincture of the martyred archbishop, who was killed by a right-wing death squad on March 24, 1980, while celebrating mass. The pope also used a cloak, staff and chalice belonging to Pope Paul VI.
“Paul VI spent his life for Christ’s Gospel, crossing new boundaries and becoming its witness in proclamation and in dialogue, a prophet of a Church turned outward, looking to those far away and taking care of the poor,” Francis said Sunday.
Romero’s path to sainthood was strewn with obstacles, including strong opposition from some in the church to what were perceived as his political motivations. Those reservations had sidelined previous attempts by his supporters to have him recognized by the Vatican.
But that had not prevented others from acclaiming him as a hero. Every March 24, the United Nations celebrates a day to promote human rights on which
“the important work and values” of Romero are recognized. In July 1998, a statue of the archbishop was unveiled at Westminster Abbey in London, one of 10 “modern martyrs.”
For decades, Romero’s legacy was obstructed because several powerful prelates saw him as a proponent of liberation theology, a movement focused on the poor that had been spawned by the church’s discussions on social justice in the 1960s. For conservatives, the movement was a thinly veiled adaptation of Marxist ideology manipulated by communists to foment revolution in Latin America.
The argument played out against the geopolitical backdrop of the Cold War, which saw the United States backing the government and right-wing forces in El Salvador against left-wing rebels, justifying the ensuing brutality as a necessary bulwark against encroaching communism. Some have called the archbishop a martyr of the Cold War.
“Romero wasn’t communist; he wasn’t a man of the guerrilla; he was a pastor,” said Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life and the promoter of the archbishop’s cause. “And yet he was accused of being political, just as Jesus was,” he said.
He noted that it was “extraordinary” that: “Romero and Paul VI are being canonized together because, in effect, it is like theory and practice, uniting in one, and that is a great truth for today, putting the poor and the weakest first,” he said.