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LatinNews Regional Monitor: Caribbean & Central America - 19 October 2018

EL SALVADOR-REGION: Romero enters pantheon of saints

Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero, who was assassinated in 1980 for daring to condemn state-sponsored violence in El Salvador, and order soldiers not to kill innocent civilians, was canonised on 14 October. The 38-year delay in his elevation to sainthood owes to internal political differences within the Holy See. Romero has been venerated as a saint in El Salvador by the poor majority ever since he was gunned down while delivering mass, accused of being a Communist sympathiser. The intellectual author of his murder, according to a United Nations truth commission report published shortly after the end of the bloody civil war (1980-1992), Major Roberto d’Aubuisson, is still revered by the right-wing party he founded, Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (Arena), now the main opposition. Romero’s canonisation was a cause of great celebration for many but there is a concern it will compound the misappropriation of his image and his words.

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