A world renowned Jesuit theologian claimed on Thursday that Salvadoran
Archbishop Óscar A. Romero would be beatified next year.
But in further developments that day, a Salvadoran Church official identified with the canonization cause denied the information and the source has retracted the story. The vicar of the San Salvador Archdiocese, Msgr. Rafael Urrutia, has stated that while the cause continues to progress satisfactorily, there is no official announcement and no definitive result to report from Rome or San Salvador. He also said that the beatification could well occur in 2015. The Church is simply not ready to say it yet.
The original news was reported
by Jesuit theologian Jon Sobrino, who said that Archbishop Jose Luis Escobar Alas had told priests attending meeting of the clergy on Tuesday that “during his stay in Rome, Pope Francis communicated to him that Archbishop Romero will be beatified the coming year.” (Escobar Alas was recently in Rome for the Synod on the Family.). On the day of the clergy’s meeting, the San Salvador Archdiocese posted a message to its Twitter account calling on the faithful to keep praying for Romero’s beatification. The “news” posted by Fr. Sobrino was picked by national and international media.
In an interview over local Jesuit radio, Fr. Sobrino has since admitted that he did not attend the meeting of the clergy where the Archbishop made the announcement, but got the information second hand from someone who conveyed incorrect information. In particular, Fr. Sobrino clarified that Archbishop Escobar did not speak to Pope Francis but to Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the postulator of the cause; and that the message conveyed was not that the beatification would definitely be in 2015 but that it would "possibly" be in 2015, which varies signaficantly from the facts he reported.
The news and retraction constitutes the second time this year that the a leaked beatification report regarding Romero turns out to be unfounded. Earlier this year, there was fevered speculation that Archbishop Escobar was about to make a major announcement which also proved to be only hype. Reading in between the lines this time, it appears that Archbishop Escobar made the announcement on Tuesday, but intended it to be confidential because the word from the Vatican was merely tentative. That is, Urrutia confirmed that Escobar had made an announcement, did not deny that Escobar had received positive news in Rome, nor did the retraction come until the end of the day after the news had been broadly reported. Meanwhile in Rome, Pope Francis has received the Nuncio to El Salvador in a private audience, which may be related to the reported developments.
Technically speaking, of course, Fr. Sobrino’s post had been in no way an official beatification announcement. The process is still continuing in the Vatican, where theologians are reviewing a recently submitted «Positio Super Martyrio,» that lays out the case for Romero as saint. Fr. Sobrino acknowledged that no date or other relevant details have been established. The newsworthiness of the story stems solely from the high placed source--the Pope himself, though Fr. Sobrino has retracted that detail.
The fact that there have now been two misfires highlights the difficulty in interpreting and reporting news about such an arcane process. Often, the news media do not understand how the beatification process works and therefore are unable to discern the details that should raise red flags in a purported beatification report. It helps to keep in mind what a real beatification announcement looks like. In the first place, the confirmation typically comes from Rome, from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, when the Prefect of the Congregation meets with the Pope and delivers a beatification decree for the Pope's approval. Usually, the approval of the beatification is announced immediately after the meeting during which the Pope approves. In high profile cases, the news could be leaked before the meeting with the Pope. In such cases, what would be leaked is that the theologians and cardinals have given their approval and their report will be submitted to the Pope. Typically, the source of such leaks is the postulator of the case. In some instances, the local bishop of the diocese from which the saint comes may reveal news that he has received from the postulator. Anything outside of those circles, and the circumstances just described, should be suspect.
Here, the source of the leak was a respected Jesuit scholar, therefore the news was accorded some credibility. However, people familiar with the Salvadoran Church politics would know that Fr. Sobrino has a bit of a reputation as a maverick and an activist. It seems to be in his character to want to promote transparency by making public what he thought was an important piece of news. Critics might say that Fr. Sobrino demonstrated insufficient deference to the hierarchy, including the two men who would normally claim the right to make the announcement--the Archbishop of San Salvador and the Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. In the case of the latter, the current Prefect, Cardinal Angelo Amato has a prior history with Fr. Sobrino. Cardinal Amato was one of the Church officials who signed a 2006 Church reprimand of Fr. Sobrino regarding the orthodoxy of his scholarship.
In fact, Fr. Sobrino has an interesting history with respect to the canonization cause. By his own admission, Fr. Sobrino has been seen as a bit of a drag on Archbishop Romero’s cause, because of Fr. Sobrino’s reputation as a theologian who works at the outer edges. Sobrino worked with Romero and the scope of their collaboration was investigated by the Vatican in vetting Romero’s qualifications for the sainthood (the outcome of that investigation appears to have been positive). Additionally, Sobrino has repeated expressed reservations about canonizing Romero on the theory that the Church will so throroughly “scrub” Romero to promote him as a holy man that they will promote an inaccurate and two-dimensional understanding of his figure. Buried in his bungled announcement was Fr. Sobrino’s declaration that he now recognizes the value and validity of canonizing Romero. “My fear that they will beatify a watered down Archbishop Romero has disappeared,” Sobrino said in his post. “It is more difficult to manipulate him now.”
If it had been true, the beatification announcement
would have capped a 33 year process of seeking Romero's beatification after he was shot down
saying mass on March 24, 1980 in San Salvador.
His death is considered to mark the beginning of a 12 year civil war in
his native country, pitting a right wing military defending a feudal oligarchy
against Marxist insurgents seeking to topple decades of dictatorships. Romero served three years as Archbishop of
San Salvador, the capital city, becoming a vocal critic of military rule. The political dimensions of his acts
complicated the Church's analysis of whether Romero was killed in hatred of the
faith (a requirement for martyrdom), as Romero's critics maintained that he was
killed because of the political views he espoused. In finding that his assassination qualifies
as a martyrdom, the Church has concluded that the views for which Romero was
killed constituted the approved social doctrine of the Church, which promotes
social justice and a preferential option for the poor.
The
authorization of Romero's beatification after years of stagnation would have owed largely
to personnel changes at the Vatican. The
approval of Romero's cause early in the pontificate of Pope Francis would fulfill a
top priority of Roman Catholicism's first Latin American pontiff, who was
familiar with Romero and reportedly admired his example. Before becoming Pope, Francis told Salvadoran
clerics that if he were in St. Peter's throne, “the very first thing” he would do would be to order Romero's canonization
to go forward. With the announced
approval, it seems Francis has carried out his promise. But the fast-tracking of Romero was also
facilitated by the arrival of Msgr. Gerhard Ludwig Müller as Prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) half a year ahead of
Francis. Müller, a friend of Liberation
Theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, also admired Romero and had been to San Salvador
for Romero commemorations. Müller sped
up the process of releasing the Romero file from the archives of the CDF, where
it had been bureaucratically held up for several years.
Although
Romero always figured as a high profile canonization cause, and was thought to
be destined for fast-tracking, it ran afould of geopolitical considerations as
well as internal Church politics. It
drew the involvement of three successive popes.
St. John Paul II, who was Pope when Romero was killed, believed that the
archbishop died a martyr, but he asked Salvadoran Church authorities to
hold-off on initiating the canonization process until such time as it could be
assured of a positive reception. In
fact, the process was not started until the late pope signed off on the timing:
even though the cause “did not sit well
in some Vatican dicasteries ... John Paul II, personally and in spite of this,
gave his approval,” says Sobrino, who knew Romero. According to Sobrino, it was John Paul who
gave the Romero sainthood drive the greatest boost when the Pope visited and
knelt at Romero's grave during the Pontiff's war time visit to El Salvador in
1983.
Romero also
received worldwide notoriety as a result of a Hollywood film, financed in part
by the Catholic church, which portrayed his life. “Romero” (1989) starred Raul Julia in the
title role and portrayed the archbishop as a shy and quiet man who rises to the
occasion when he discovers the grave situation of injustice that his countrymen
were living in. This becomes obvious to
him after a priest he knows is killed.
Romero's canonization cause was announced the year after the film was
released, although, due to the civil war, the movie not allowed to be shown in
El Salvador for many years. The first
leg of the canonization cause, called the diocesan phase in canon law, went
smoothly, wrapping up in two years. In
1997, the Vatican accepted the documentation from the diocesan phase,
recognizing it as valid. Since 1998,
the “Roman phase” of the process has been pending. Bishop Vincenzo Paglia, a high ranking
prelate, known for his diplomatic efforts and proximity to the Sant Egidio
movement, was named the postulator of the cause by Pope John Paul II. There was talk of a quick beatification for
Romero.
However,
Latin American cardinals though to include the Colombian Alfonso Lopez
Trujillo, raised objections that twice derailed the canonization cause and sent
it for a detour to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: first, for a
study of the writings, sermons, and speeches of Archbishop Romero to ensure
that they were free from doctrinal error(2000-2005) and, subsequently, for a
review of Romero's pastoral actions, reportedly also requested by the same
cardinals. While some were raising
objections to proceeding to canonize Romero too quickly, there were visible
efforts to keep the cause moving. Most
significantly, John Paul, who had asked for the process to be instituted, also
insisted that Romero's name be inserted into a Year 2000 Jubilee ceremony at
the Colosseum honoring 20th century martyrs.
The following year, Bishop Paglia, the postulator of Romero's cuase,
held a special congress in Italy, bringing together experts and theologians to
rehabilitate and promote the figure of Romero.
In 2005, the
Congregation for the Causes of Saints came very close to doing what it is doing
today in authorizing Romero's beatification, but the process was short
circuited by the second Latin American cardinals' objection and the unexpected
death of Romero's great benefactor, Pope John Paul II. Under the new pope, Benedict XVI, new
beatifications slowed to a trickle and Romero's cause soon found itself in the
back burner. Benedict made it clear that
he believed Romero's cause was worthy, and he met with Salvadoran president
Antonio Saca, a former Romero altar boy, to discuss the cause's progress. Two years later, Benedict spoke openly--and
glowingly--about Romero during his first trip to Latin America. “That Romero as a person merits
beatification, I have no doubt,” Benedict told reporters aboard the Papal
plane. “Archbishop Romero was certainly
an important witness of the faith, a man of great Christian virtue who worked
for peace and against the dictatorship, and was assassinated while celebrating
Mass. Consequently, his death was truly 'credible', a witness of faith.”
Although
Benedict, of his own accord, cited Romero publically on two other occasions,
his emphasis in recovering Europe's diminishing Christian identity appears to
have focused pastoral energies on other projects. The Pope himself stopped presiding over
beatification ceremonies, delegating the task to the Prefect of the CDF, except
for cases that fit his thematic priority, such as the beatification of English
Cardinal John Henry Newman--and, of course, John Paul II. Subsequently, the Romero beatification
process stalled, apparently neglected by the competent authorities. The Italian newspaper «La Stampa» would
later refer to it as “the lost cause.”
The sea
change brought about by the election of Pope Francis dramatically reorganized
the priorities of the church in ways that were seen to favor Romero, beyond the
obvious fact that the new Pope personally admires Romero and intervened to
kick-start his beatification. Where Pope
Benedict wanted to focus on Europe, Pope Francis who came from Latin America,
announced that he desired “a poor church
for the poor,” which resonated with Romero's perfile. “Romero
is the symbol of the Church that Pope Bergoglio wants to project to the
geographical and existential peripheries,” Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di
Montezemolo told «La Stampa.» And
Cardinal Achille Silvestrini told the same outlet that “there is an [‘identity
of thinking’] between the magisterium of Pope Bergoglio and the witness of
faith offered by Romero to the point of making the ultimate sacrifice, which
springs from a common origin in a Church such as a the Latin American Church,
which has suffered and still suffers in order to maintain its fidelity to the
message of Christ.”
Having
outlived the Cold War and much of the power arrangements of that era, to pass
through palace intrigues of clerical factions and the preferences of three
modern popes, Archbishop Romero emerges like the phoenix to be redeemed by the
Church process and the memory of El Salvador's humble peasantry, who hold him
in such high esteem that some who had grown impatient with the Church's process
had dismissively said it was enough that Romero had already been canonized by
his countrymen. As Romero himself warned
those who would take his life, “If they
kill me I shall arise in the Salvadoran people.” And he shall rise to the altars, too. Just not on the timeframe some would wish for.
