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JUBILEE YEAR for the CENTENNIAL of BLESSED
ROMERO, 2016 — 2017
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| Romero at St. Peter's, as a priest and as archbishop. The next time he will be there as a saint. |
Oscar Romero,
the martyred archbishop from El Salvador, will be canonized in Rome on October 14 of this year. Pope Francis so decided it in a consistory of cardinals, as had been anticipated. Archbishop Romero will be raised to the altars alongside Pope
Paul VI and other new saints during a synod of bishops that will be held that
month in the Vatican. The announcement, which came on the morning of Saturday
May 19, ends weeks of anticipation and speculation about the canonization of a
man many already called “St. Romero of America.”
The news bursts
out in a festive atmosphere in the saint’s homeland, where the Archdiocese of
San Salvador ordered that “at 6:00 a.m.
on Saturday the 19th, when the news of the place and the date of the
Canonization are made known, the bells of all the parishes ring as a sign of
joy for the news.” Other dioceses
circulated similar instructions. The night before the announcement, San
Salvador Archbishop Jose Luis Escobar Alas celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving
for the consistory in the Crypt of the Metropolitan Cathedral where Romero’s
remains rest, and later the faithful held a vigil in the place, with tamales
and prayers allusive to the martyred bishop.
The consistory
marks the end of the approval process for Romero's sainthood, which was long
and complicated. From a technical point of view, the consistory is the “easiest”
step in the entire process; nobody doubted that Romero would make the cut. No
one who reaches that level stops there. In fact, some even say it is a legal
fiction. However, the symbolic value is enormous because it means that
everything is complete. The Romero case fascinates because it presents a great reversal
of fortunes. Romero had been abandoned, his fellow bishops were against him, he
died under harsh accusations, his funeral was a catastrophe, and several
successive governments of his own country wanted to relegate him to oblivion.
But his fame has been steadily growing, and now there are books, a Hollywood
movie, a statue in London inaugurated by the Queen, and even an airport and an
asteroid are named after him. This process symbolizes the grand finale of his
great comeback.
The selection
of Rome as the site for the ceremony will undoubtedly disappoint some of Romero’s
followers in El Salvador, who obviously wanted him to be canonized there. The
Salvadoran bishops’ conference sent a letter to Pope Francis urging that Romero,
known as a champion of the poor, should be canonized along with the poor of his
nation. Last Monday, Francis summoned one of those bishops, Cardinal Gregorio
Rosa Chavez, to the Vatican presumably to explain why it would be preferable to
convert the Salvadoran into “San Romero of the World” by canonizing him in
Rome.
The Roman
scenario is different from what a Latin American canonization would have been
in several respects. First, the combination of a Latin American Pope, a Latin
American popular saint, in Latin American lands, would have raised the event to
a continental celebration. Second, a canonization in El Salvador would have
meant that only Romero would be canonized in the ceremony, making the
canonization intensely Romero-centered. By contrast, in Rome, Romero will be
one of six saints and will not be the central reference, since Paul VI outranks
him. In addition, in the practice of Pope Francis, the homilies during
canonizations usually make only brief references to the canonized saints. Undoubtedly,
the prevailing judgment is that the Church needs to make Romero more universal
and less a Salvadoran or Latin American phenomenon.
Now he belongs to the worldwide Church.
Now he belongs to the worldwide Church.
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