A champion for social justice at the beginning of country's civil war, Romero was killed during mass nearly 40 years ago
San Salvador - Nearly four decades after his assassination, Father Oscar
Romero, the former Archbishop of San Salvador who was killed by
suspected right-wing paramilitaries in 1980, will be proclaimed a saint
by Pope Francis in Rome on Sunday.
Romero will be canonised along with six others.
His canonisation is widely celebrated by the people of El Salvador.
Images, art, and graffiti of the archbishop mark nearly every street
across the capital city.
"We have waited many years for this," Maura, a 67-year-old woman from
Suchitoto, Cuscatlan who declined to provide her last name for security
reasons, told Al Jazeera. "From the day he was killed, we said [Romero]
was a saint."
Who was Archbishop Oscar Romero?
Romero was born in 1917 in Ciudad Barrios in the department of San
Miguel in southern El Salvador. The Roman Catholic Church ordained him a
priest at the age of 25, prior to his return to El Salvador in 1943.
He was appointed as the Archbishop of San Salvador in February 1977
after nearly 20 years working as a priest in San Miguel, the capital of
the department bearing the same name. El Salvador’s ruling elite viewed
Romero as someone who would deter the growing Liberation Theology.
Yet as tension continued to escalate in the country, Romero became known
as a staunch advocate of human rights and the plight of the poor,
consistently denouncing the violence carried out by the Salvadoran
military and paramilitaries against civilian populations.
His words gained Romero many enemies within the dictatorship. He was
assassinated on March 24, 1980 while holding mass in the Church of the
Divine Providence in San Salvador.
The day before his funeral, he delivered a powerful sermon in which he spoke directly to Salvadoran soldiers.
"In the name of God … I beg you, I beseech you, I order you to stop the repression," he said.
Romero’s funeral, attended by thousands, was also targeted by snipers. At least 40 people were killed.
His death marked the beginning of El Salvador’s 12-year-long civil war,
which killed more than 75,000 people and disappeared thousands more.
"Romero is an international icon for those who work for peace and
justice," Domingo Solis, a Franciscan priest in San Salvador, told Al
Jazeera. "We are called to follow and put in practice his example."
No one prosecuted
Any attempts to prosecute the intellectual authors of the murder in El
Salvador were derailed in 1993, with the passing of an amnesty law,
which provided amnesty for those of committing war crimes. The law
subsequently closed all investigations into crimes committed during the
civil war.
In 2016, the amnesty law was declared unconstitutional by the country’s
Constitutional court. The repeal of the law permitted the reopening of
the investigation and prosecution of war crimes, including the
assassination of Romero, which was reopened in 2017.
While no one has been prosecuted in El Salvador for the assassination in
the country, Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, a former death squad leader and
founder of the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance party, or
ARENA, is widely seen as being the one who ordered the assassination of
Romero. D’Aubuisson died in 1992 from cancer at the age of 48.
Alvaro Saravia, a former captain in the Salvadoran air force who was
recruited by D’Aubuisson, was also named as one of the participants in
the assassination. In 1987, he faced extradition from the United States
and prosecution in El Salvador for his part in the murder, but the
extradition order was later withdrawn.
Ahead of Sunday’s canonisation, more than 100 Salvadorans from a diverse
group of organisations, marched through the streets of San Salvador to
demand the advancement of the investigation into the assassination of
Romero.
Ovidio Mauricio, the director of Tutela Legal MarĂa Julia Hernandez, a
San Salvador based human rights organisation, said they wanted to case
solved as quickly as possible.
"Romero was someone who always struggled against injustice and for
social justice," Mauricio told Al Jazeera. "This is why the people
respect him, and why was a saint long before."
SOURCE: Al Jazeera News
by Jeff Abbott
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