What Óscar Romero’s Canonization Says About Pope Francis
For The Atlantic, Paul Elie writes about the recent canonization of Óscar Romero, an El Salvadorian bishop and leftist reformer who was assassinated in 1980 for speaking against the country’s militant government. Elie writes, “As the murdered man became the face of a ‘people’s Catholicism’ in Latin America – a saint by acclamation – Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI slow-walked the official canonization process, precisely because of what the archbishop represented.” He adds, “The canonization also forces us to consider Francis in a different light – as a figure scarred by Latin American politics and his own encounter with fear and violence, compromise and complicity.”