Archbishop Romero and Pope Paul VI to be canonised on 14 October 2018
Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, assassinated by a right-wing death squad as he said Mass, and Pope Paul VI will be made saints on 14 October in Rome, Pope Francis announced on Saturday.
Described as a simple man close to the poor, Romero stood up for peasants' rights in the face of a right-wing backlash that painted him as a radical supporter of "liberation" theology in impoverished central El Salvador. His killing during a mass in March 1980 shocked the world at the start of a bloody civil war that claimed some 75,000 lives between 1980 and 1992. Some three million people fled the country. A United Nations investigation concluded that Romero's murder was ordered by Roberto D'Aubuisson, then commander of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena).
Francis - the first Latin American pope - beatified him as a "martyr" in 2015. Francis had previously expressed his admiration for Romero as a champion of the poor. Saturday saw the weekly vigil in San Salvador Cathedral, where Romero preached each Sunday, and it anticipated the announcement from the Vatican. Last week, Cardinal Rosa Chávez of San Salvador met Pope Francis and gave him images of his friend, the martyred Archbishop Romero. And a bust of Romero was placed in the HQ of Caritas Internationalis in Rome, after being blessing by Cardinal Tagle of the Philippines, Caritas president.
Pope Paul VI, who served from 1963-78, pushed through the Vatican II reform programme launched by his predecessor Pope John XXIII to modernise the church in a fast-changing world. He was beatified in late 2014.