Sainthood for Romero, Paul VI

VATICAN CITY (AFP/AP) – Slain Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero and Pope Paul VI, Catholic giants who sparked controversy during their lifetimes, will join the church’s highest rank Sunday with an elevation to sainthood.

Pope Francis will wear a bloodstained rope belt which belonged to Romero, who was murdered at the altar, as he leads the ceremony in front of some 60,000 pilgrims and heads of state from across the world.

The Pontiff will also use a chalice and pastoral staff belonging to Paul VI in a canonization being seen as a reminder of Francis’s call for “a poor church for the poor.”

Both men have been hailed by Francis for their courage in turbulent times and their dedication to social justice and the downtrodden.

Their giant portraits were unfurled on St. Peter’s Basilica along with those of five other new saints, including an orphaned youth and a German nun.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis on Saturday defrocked two more Chilean bishops accused of sexually abusing minors, and to show greater transparency about how he’s responding to the church’s global sex abuse crisis, he publicly explained why they were removed.

The Vatican’s unusually detailed statement announcing the laicization of retired Archbishop Francisco Jose Cox Huneeus and retired Bishop Marco Antonio Ordenes Fernandez signaled a new degree of transparency following past missteps by Francis that showed he had grossly underestimated the gravity of the abuse scandal.

The statement said the two were defrocked for abusing minors with evidence so overwhelming that a canonical trial was unnecessary. The Vatican said the decision cannot be appealed.

Cox, 87, and suffering from dementia, is a member of the Schoenstatt religious order and had served as a bishop in Chillan, Chile before becoming the No. 2 official at the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Family, a highprofile position during St. John Paul II’s papacy.

He returned to Chile and became bishop in La Serena until he left in 1997 under unclear circumstances, but took on administrative jobs in Rome and at the Latin American bishops’ conference in Colombia.