Salvadorans delighted by canonisation of archbishop
119 views · Published 19 October 2018 · 1:49 · Indexed 4 October 2026
Channel: AP Archive · 2018 · News & Politics
(14 Oct 2018) Thousands of faithful attended a ceremony outside San Salvador's cathedral early on Sunday morning to watch on large screens the canonisation of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero. Pope Francis officially canonised Romero in a ceremony in the Vatican on Sunday. Romero was murdered as he celebrated Mass on March 24, 1980, in a hospital chapel by El Salvador's right-wing death squads. 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 the country'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. The United Nations commemorates the anniversary of his death each year. But his popularity with the left led to a decades-long delay in his saint-making cause at the Vatican, where right-wing cardinals led by Colombian Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo warned his elevation would embolden Marxist revolutionaries on the continent. Eventually Pope Benedict XVI unblocked the cause and Francis saw it through to its conclusion on Sunday, including his determination that Romero was a martyr for the church - killed out of hatred for the faith and for preaching the Gospel, even though his assassins were Catholics like him. Romero's influence continues to resonate with El Salvador's youth as the country endures brutal gang violence that has made the Central American nation one of the most violent in the world. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/ You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/2b2a44a74dfab22065a944014c3e2d5f
