Archbishop Paglia: Upcoming Romero beatification "providential"

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Tuesday approved the decree of martyrdom for Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated while celebrating Mass on March 24, 1980. The declaration clears the way for his beatification.

Archbishop Romero had campaigned against repression by the army at the beginning of El Salvador's civil war, and the day before he was murdered told the government's police and soldiers that no one is ever obliged to obey an order that is ``against the law of God.''

 “There is something providential in the fact that Romero will be declared Blessed by the first Pope from South America, a Pope who asks for a poor church for the poor, which is what Romero lived to the point of shedding his blood,” said Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, who also serves as postulator of the cause of beatification of Archbishop Romero.

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“He Romero  was a man of prayer, a man of God, a man of the Church, a man of the Sacred Scriptures, a man of profound traditions, a believer – who chose to be among the poor, knowing that the Kingdom of God, as Jesus said, is among the poorest, and those who accompany them,” he told Vatican Radio.

“This binds the figure of Romero, and many contemporary martyrs, to Pope Francis, who has tried to get us all on a journey of closeness and love for the poorest,” he continued.

When asked to sum up Romero in one sentence, he related an anecdote about the San Salvador Archbishop.

“When he was asked to leave his diocese … he said the shepherd is with his people, especially when the people are oppressed, he never flees, even at the cost of life,” Archbishop Paglia said.