The author of a new book about the men who killed Archbishop Oscar Romero while celebrating Mass 37 years ago says the subject is still dangerous to talk about.
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador - On the occasion of the beatification of El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero, Pope Francis sent a note that was read to those present for the May 23 ceremony.
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador - Some thought this day would never arrive. Others hoped and some always knew it would.
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- The use of modern media to move and consume news of the beatification of Oscar Romero might be a fitting tribute to the Salvadoran archbishop.
VATICAN CITY - Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero's preferential love for the poor "was not ideological, but evangelical," said Cardinal Angelo Amato, the prefect of the Congregation for Saints' Causes.
VATICAN CITY - Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, to be beatified in San Salvador May 23, has become a symbol of Latin American Church leaders’ efforts to protect their flocks from the abuses of military dictatorships.
VATICAN CITY - A panel of theologians advising the Vatican's Congregation for Saints' Causes voted unanimously to recognize the late Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero as a martyr, according to the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference.
Tourist route commemorates Romero
SAN SALVADOR - The Salvadoran government will open a tourist route in honour of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was killed by death squads in March 1980.
The initiative, which will begin next year, aims to boost tourism in the country and at the same time remember the legacy of Archbishop Romero, a staunch defender of human rights and the poor who was hated by the military and oligarchs.
The tour should ensure that “his life and thought are known by foreign visitors and also by new generations of Salvadorans,” El Salvador President Mauricio Funes said from Archbishop Romero’s crypt in the Metropolitan Cathedral, where he announced the plan.
The route will include sites like the cathedral, where the archbishop denounced the injustices that occurred in this country in the late 1970s. On the steps of the cathedral, dozens of people participating in the archbishop’s funeral were massacred by government forces March 30, 1980.
It also will include the Romero Centre and Martyrs Museum, both on the campus of Central American University. They display objects belonging to the archbishop, to the Jesuits murdered in 1989 and to Jesuit Father Rutilio Grande, the first priest executed by death squads, in 1977.
The tour includes the Museum of the Word and Image and Divine Providence Hospital, where Archbishop Romero was shot dead while celebrating Mass.
The Truth Commission, created in 1993 to investigate political crimes committed during the 1980-92 civil war, established that Archbishop Romero’s assassination was carried out by a right-wing command led by Maj. Roberto D’Aubuisson, founder of Nationalist Republican Alliance. D’Aubuisson died of cancer in 1992.