Salvadoran bishops released details on the January beatifications of Rutilio Grande, Manuel Solórzano, Nelson Rutilio Lemus and Cosme Spessotto, but also encouraged participation locally, to curb COVID-19 infections.
Chalatenango, El Salvador, is said to have been the setting of more than 50 mass killings during the country's 12-year civil conflict, and almost all of the survivors lost family members in other attacks.
The saintly designation tends to obscure the saint's ordinary flesh-and-blood reality. It is a tendency to resist at all costs when commemorating the 40th anniversary of the assassination of St. Óscar Romero.
The University of Dayton, a Catholic school in Ohio, plans to present its Romero Human Rights Award April 11 to three individuals who have worked to investigate those responsible for the El Mozote Massacre.
Days after the Catholic Church declared Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero a saint, a judge in El Salvador issued a capture order for a former military captain suspected of killing the religious leader in 1980 as he celebrated Mass.
Eleven children of parents who are in the United States under Temporary Protected Status traveled to Rome to meet Pope Francis ahead of the canonization of St. Oscar Romero.
We say: Remarkably, Archbishop Óscar Romero and Pope Paul VI shared a martyrdom that built the bridge that supports a single trajectory, inspired by the Holy Spirit, that will renew the church and reveal again the mystery of Jesus as the engine of history.
Conventional wisdom has it that Archbishop Romero was dramatically transformed into a defender of the oppressed when his friend Fr. Rutilio Grande was killed. Conventional wisdom is gravely mistaken.
Commentary: Martyrdom was once a very restricted idea, but today we recognize that Christian faith must influence all we do — and Archbishop Romero exemplified that.
