Romero, Pope Paul VI become saints
Francis wears rope belt that Romero wore when he was gunned down by right-wing death squads
Pope Francis yesterday praised two towering figures of the 20th-century Catholic Church as spiritual leaders 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 faithful, a handful of presidents and 5,000 Salvadoran pilgrims who travelled 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 1963-1978, presided over the modernising yet polarising church reforms of the 1960s.
He was the pope of Francis’ 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.