Assassinated Archbishop Oscar Romero cleared for sainthood by Pope Francis, says Vatican

'Those who surrender to the service of the poor through the love of Christ, will live like the grains of wheat that dies'

Devotees parade a portrait of Oscar Romero in San Salvador on Friday (EPA)

Almost 40 years after he was assassinated – shot as he performed mass and was speaking about sacrifice – Archbishop Oscar Romero is to be named a saint, the Vatican has announced.

The Vatican said in a statement Pope Francis had given final approval to several sainthoods, including for Romero, and the late Pope Paul VI, who reigned from 1963 to 1978. The Pope personally announced Pope Paul’s canonisation last month.

Romero, who was known as a champion of El Salvador’s poor and whose name has become intertwined with liberation theology, was shot on the evening of 24 March 1980 in San Salvador’s Chapel of Divine Providence.

“Those who surrender to the service of the poor through the love of Christ, will live like the grains of wheat that dies,” he had told those who were gathered.

“It only apparently dies. If it were not to die, it would remain a solitary grain. The harvest comes because of the grain that dies.”

Shortly after Romero had completed his sermon, a single shot echoed in the chapel and the 63-year-old priest fell to the floor, blood seeping from a small hole in his chest. Outside, a man armed with a .223 high-velocity weapon, sped from the scene in a four-door Volkswagen.

Romero had spoken out against repression by the army at the beginning of El Salvador’s 1980-1992 civil war between the right-wing government, and leftist rebels. He also often criticised the US, which supported the government of El Salvador and those of other Latin American countries in their so-called dirty wars.

The day before his assassination, he had delivered a now famous speech in which he told the government’s soldiers and police officers that they were not required to obey an order that was “against the law of God”.

“In the name of God, and in the name of this suffering people, whose laments rise to heaven each day more tumultuous, I beg you, I beseech you, I order you in the name of God – stop the repression,” he said.

Reuters said Romero’s path to sainthood had stalled under two previous popes, reflecting concerns by some that he was overly political. It was revived by Francis who is also from Latin America.

“The long delay in recognising the obvious fact that Romero was obviously a martyr was shameful,” Father James Martin, a US author and editor-at-large of the Jesuit magazine America, said on Twitter.

Mr Martin called the pope’s decision “an immense step forward for the Church”.

Romero’s murder was one of the most shocking in the long conflict between a series of US-backed governments and leftist rebels in which thousands were killed by right-wing and military death squads.

El Salvador’s government, headed by a former leader of the leftist guerrillas, said in a statement that Romero had left an “invaluable legacy” of work for the neediest and that the canonisation was a tribute to his devotion and sacrifice.

The civil war claimed some 75,000 lives before it ended with a peace agreement in 1992.

No one was ever brought to justice for his killing but last year a Salvadoran judge reopened the case. The main suspect is a former soldier whose case was reopened after the country’s constitutional court repealed a previous amnesty.

An investigation by a UN Truth Commission concluded in 1993 that Romero’s assassination had been ordered by the late Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, an El Salvador army officer who had studied at the notorious School of the Americas, a US military college in Fort Benning, Georgia, which was renamed in 2001 after a series of scandals. Mr D’Aubuisson had also been the founder of the El Salvador’s right-wing Republican Nationalist Alliance.

In 2004, a court in California found Mr D’Aubuisson’s former right-hand man, Alvaro Rafael Saravia, a retired El Salvadoran air force captain, who had lived in the US for more than 20 years, responsible for organising the killing and ordered him to pay $10m in damages.

The case, which relied on the 1991 Torture Victim Protection Act which allows suits to be brought against foreign nationals accused of summary killings and torture, was brought by the California-based Centre for San Francisco-based Centre for Justice and Accountability.

Romero was beatified, or declared a “blessed” of the Church, in 2015 after a ruling that he was a martyr killed in hatred of the faith. That ceremony in San Salvador brought together former Marxist guerrillas and their former enemies.

Francis ruled that Romero could be declared a saint after a Vatican theological and medical commission approved a miracle attributed to him, Reuters said.

The Church teaches that only God performs miracles but that saints who are believed to be with God in heaven intercede on behalf of people who pray to them. A miracle is usually the medically inexplicable healing of a person.

No date was given for the sainthood ceremony, which is expected to take place this year, most likely at the Vatican.