VATICAN CITY — A Jesuit priest who was murdered on the threshold of the Salvadoran civil struggle and who in demise grew to become a icon for human rights in rural Latin America was moved a step nearer to sainthood by Pope Francis on Saturday.
The Vatican stated the pope had authorized a decree recognizing that Rutilio Grande and two lay Salvadorans had been killed “in hatred of the religion.”
This implies they are going to be beatified with out the customary want for a miracle to be attributed to them. Beatification is the final step earlier than sainthood.
Grande, who was outspoken in his protection of the poor, was shot greater than dozen instances together with an aged man and an adolescent on March 12, 1977 by a right-wing demise squad in rural El Salvador whereas they had been using in a jeep.
The assassination of Grande, who had organized peasants to battle for his or her rights, was so horrific that it satisfied the then archbishop of the capital San Salvador, Oscar Romero, to take up Grande’s mantle as defender of the poor.
Romero, who had been much less outspoken till then, was himself killed by a demise squad whereas he was saying Mass within the chapel of a hospital in San Salvador in 1980. Pope Francis made Romero a saint in 2018.
The murders had been among the many most surprising within the lengthy battle between a sequence of U.S.-backed governments and leftist rebels in El Salvador which hundreds had been killed by right-wing and army demise squads.
Some 75,000 folks had been killed and eight,000 went lacking within the 1980-1992 struggle.
Each Romero and Grande grew to become icons for Latin America’s poor, showing on T-shirts much like these bearing the picture of Che Guevara.
However earlier than Francis grew to become pope in 2013, their sainthood causes bumped into stiff opposition within the Vatican and amongst highly effective conservatives within the Latin American Church who thought each figures had been too political.
No date was given for the beatification ceremony however it’ll doubtless happen in El Salvador.
The Catholic Church teaches that solely God performs miracles however that saints who’re believed to be with God in heaven intercede on behalf of people that pray to them. A miracle is normally the medically inexplicable therapeutic of an individual.
For the three to be declared saints, miracles must be attributed to them. (Reporting by Philip Pullella Enhancing by Frances Kerry)