BEATIFICATION OF ARCHBISHOP ROMERO,
MAY 23, 2015
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The Salvadoran
Church will invite Pope Francis to come to El Salvador and, while he is there,
to canonize Blessed Oscar Romero and to beatify Servant of God Rutilio Grande. The Pontiff has already made it known he
plans to visit Mexico and possibly Colombia in 2016, so that trip seems to
present the perfect opportunity to visit El Salvador. I’ll even throw in this tantalizing
tidbit. One scenario has Francis going
to Colombia for a peace treaty that may be signed on March 23rd. This raises the prospect of Francis going to
El Salvador to canonize Romero on or near the March 24th anniversary of his
martyrdom! Except that I don’t see it
happening.
The problem is
that the Romero canonization and the Grande beatification are both contingent,
open-ended processes that a papal trip is nearly impossible to plan around, and
that there might not be enough time to finish what remains to be done on time
to include it in the next papal Latin America jaunt. Take the Romero canonization. The Salvadoran Church thinks it has the miracles required for canonization. But
they still have to be investigated by an independent medical commission, their
findings approved by a commission of theologians, the theologians’ decision
affirmed by a commission of cardinals, and that decision approved by the
Pope. Even if we imagine a fast track:
two months for the doctors, one month for the theologians, and one month for
the cardinals (the soonest they likely can move to each next step requires one
month due to the need to fall into the monthly schedules of the various
groups), that itself would take us to February.
It is just impossible to wait until then to have clarity on whether
Francis will have a reason to go. That
doesn’t even take into account the need to move the Grande cause along.
This all
reminds me of the excitement that built around the idea earlier this year that
Francis would go to El Salvador to beatify Romero. That is considering that the prospect being
considered was for Francis to go to El Salvador as a part of his trip to North
America that brought him to the United States this past September. Even for a trip that late in the year, the
moving parts of the Romero beatification proved too much uncertainty to work
around.
Nothing would
please me more than for Blessed Romero to be canonized the year after he was
beatified, but perhaps a more surefire way to make sure he is canonized by the
Pope in El Salvador is to shoot for a 2017 canonization, around the time of the
centenary of his birth (August 15, 2017).
Francis did promise in Brazil that he would return to Aparecida in 2017,
so there should be a Latin America trip in 2017 as well.
* * *
Yes, we can!: In order not be entirely negative, I want to acknowledge that if the Holy Spirit (and the Holy Father) really intend for the trip and the canonization to happen in 2016, it can be done. Two obvious ways come to mind: (1) the equipollent canonization of Romero, which skips over the requirement for a miracle (as was done with St. John XXIII and St. Junipero Serra ... but if there are three miracles, why not wait for another year?); and (2) planning for the trip late enough in the year (I think August/September would be feasible, as the main thing that hindered the visit to El Salvador in September this year was mostly papal preferences).
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