Romero, Paul canonised
Pope Francis makes saints of slain Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero and Paul VI
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis yesterday praised two towering figures of the 20th-century Catholic Church as prophets who shunned wealth and looked out for the poor as he made saints of Pope Paul VI and martyred Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero.
Francis canonised two men at a mass in St Peter’s Square before some 70 000 Salvadoran pilgrims who travelled 000 faithful, a handful of presidents and 5 to Rome to honour a man considered a hero to many Latin Americans.
Tens of thousands more Salvadorans stayed up all night at home to watch the mass on giant TV screens outside the San Salvador cathedral where Romero’s remains are entombed.
In a sign of the strong influence that Paul and Romero had on the first Latin-American pope, Francis wore the blood-stained rope belt that Romero wore when he was gunned down by right-wing death squads in 1980, and also used Paul’s staff, chalice and pallium vestment.
Paul, who was pope from 19631978, presided over the modernising yet polarising church reforms of the 1960s. He was the pope of Francis’s formative years as a young priest in Argentina and was instrumental in giving rise to the Latin-American church’s “preferential option for the poor” that Francis has made his own.
Francis also has a close personal connection to Romero, and like him lived through the terror of right-wing military dictatorships when Francis was in Argentina. Francis was responsible for eventually declaring Romero a martyr for his fearless denunciations of the military oppression at the start of El Salvador’s 1980-1992 civil war.
In his homily, Francis called Paul a “prophet of a church turned outwards” to care for the faraway poor. He said Romero gave up his security and life to “be close to the poor and his people”.
For many Salvadorans, it was the culmination of a fraught, politicised campaign to have the church formally honour a man who spoke out for the rights of landless peasants and the poor at a time when the US-backed right-wing government was seeking to quash a leftist rebellion.
“We couldn’t stay home on this historic day,” said Jose Martinez, who, with his wife and two young children, joined the crowds outside the San Salvador cathedral. “I want my children to know Monsignor, our saint, that he was a great man who raised his voice to defend his pueblo, and for that they killed him.”
Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, was murdered as he celebrated mass on March 24, 1980, in a hospital chapel. A day before he was killed, he had delivered the latest in a series of sermons demanding an end to the army’s repression – sermons that had enraged El Salvador’s leaders. Almost immediately after his death, Romero became an icon of the South American left and is frequently listed along with Martin Luther King jr. and Mohandas Gandhi as one of the world’s most influential human rights campaigners.