The Deacon's Bench
According to the AP (bold type is my addition):
The monsignor who spearheaded the saint-making process for El Salvador’s slain Archbishop Oscar Romero said Wednesday it was Pope Benedict XVI— and not Pope Francis — who removed the final hurdle in the tortured, 35-year process.
Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia told reporters Benedict “gave the green light.” Speaking a day after Francis declared that Romero died as a martyr for the faith, Paglia said Romero’s beatification would likely be within a few months in San Salvador.
I don’t know about you, but the narrative I always heard and accepted was that Oscar Romero did good work, but was a little hinky in his leanings, and so the more conservative element in the Church didn’t want to touch his cause for beatification; but Francis is enough of a free-wheeler to cut through that red tape and get this thing moving. I’m not saying that’s what you thought; I’m saying that’s what I thought, without thinking about it much.
During a May 2007 news conference with reporters, Pope Benedict XVI said, “Archbishop Romero certainly was a great witness to the faith, a man of great Christian virtue.” However, he said, “there is the problem that a political side wants to take him for itself as a banner, as an emblematic figure, unjustly.”
Archbishop Paglia said that in December 2012 during his first and only private audience with Pope Benedict, the pope informed him that he had decided to “unblock” the cause and allow it to move forward.
“The martyrdom of Romero has given meaning and strength to many Salvadoran families who lost relatives and friends during the civil war,” Archbishop Paglia said, and the church in El Salvador is beginning to collect information and testimony about their faith with the idea of proposing more saints’ causes.
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