The Beatifiation of Oscar Romero

*The beatification of Archbishop Oscar Romero has been the center of controversy. He sympathized with liberation theology, was slain while celebrating Mass in San Salvador in 1980. Two Pope’s have blocked the canonization and Pope Francis gave the light for it to go forward. VL

By Carlos Dada, The New Yorker

On  May 23rd, thirty-five years after his assassination, Óscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador, will be beatified. The ceremony is the step just prior to sainthood, so a big celebration is expected in El Salvador, although the cheer will not be unanimous. The country is still deeply divided between the rightist and leftist political forces that emanated from its civil war, in the nineteen-eighties, and Romero, identified with the poor, was a divisive figure who declared war on inequality and a criminal military regime.

Beginning in March, 1978, Romero sat in front of a microphone almost every night and recorded a diary, offering his reflections on a variety of subjects, from his regular ecclesiastical duties to the political turmoil and violence that were engulfing El Salvador. This diary, along with the transcripts of his homilies, his pastoral letters, and his correspondence with the Catholic Church hierarchy in Rome, constitute the main body of work studied by the Congregation for the Cause of the Saints, which is in charge of the process of canonization.

… on March 24, 1980, Romero became the first Catholic bishop killed in a church since Thomas Becket was murdered in Canterbury, in 1170.

His assassination was organized by a paramilitary death squad headed by Mario Molina (the son of the former President Colonel Arturo Molina) and a former intelligence officer named Roberto d’Aubuisson.

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