SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — To some he was a champion of the poor, a defender of human rights during some of El Salvador’s darkest days. Others called him a supporter of armed revolution, a Marxist guerrilla clothed in a cleric’s cassock.
Thirty-five years after a right-wing death squad assassin’s bullet pierced his heart, Roman Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero will join the hierarchy of the blessed on Saturday even as conservative corners of El Salvador and the Vatican still harbor his critics.
The beatification of Romero stands to officially bring his legacy in from the cold as state and church officials portray him as a force for healing wounds remaining from an era when left-leaning clergy were targeted by military regimes in Central America and censured by the Holy See.
“He becomes a symbol of an El Salvador in a new era that could unite the Salvadoran people,” said Enrique Lopez Oliva, a historian of religion at the University of Havana.
At a time when Latin American Catholics celebrate having one of their own as pope in the Argentine-born Francis, the beatification further bolsters the church’s standing in the region, he added.
At least 250,000 people are expected to gather in the Plaza El Salvador del Mundo for the ceremony of beatification, a first step toward canonization and sainthood.
Romero, known as “the voice of the voiceless,” was named archbishop of San Salvador in 1977 with the blessing of El Salvador’s government, which signed off because Romero was seen as a friend of the elite and the armed forces, according to his biographer, Monsignor Jesus Delgado.
A month later, a death squad killed the Rev. Rutilio Grande, a fellow priest and Romero’s friend, greatly affecting the newly minted archbishop. Before long, Romero rededicated his archdiocese to serving social justice. He sought to mediate labor disputes, established a human rights office and opened the doors of the church to give refuge to poor farmers fleeing persecution in the countryside.
On March 23, 1980, Romero boldly admonished the military government to end abuses of civilians: “In the name of God and this suffering population, whose cries reach to the heavens more tumultuous each day, I beg you, I beseech you, I order you, in the name of God, cease the repression.”
A day later, he was gunned down as he celebrated Mass in a cancer hospital chapel in San Salvador.
