Pope Francis approves martyrdom for slain Salvadoran archbishop

Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, slain in 1980 by a paramilitary death squad while celebrating mass in San Salvador, died as a martyr and thus deserves beatification, Pope Francis decreed on Tuesday.

Francis approved a decree that Romero had been killed “in hatred of the faith,” supporting recommendations by theological experts and a commission of cardinals. Francis unblocked Romero’s sainthood process shortly after his election in March 2013. Romero’s beatification will take place in El Salvador, but the Vatican did not provide a date.

The Vatican has stalled Romero’s sainthood for years — under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI — due to the archbishop’s association with liberation theology, a religious tradition that contends that Jesus’s teachings require followers to fight for social and economic justice. Romero, already an unofficial saint to much of Central America, was considered by El Salvador’s military to be an intellectual leader of the country’s guerrilla movement, which was locked in a 1979-1992 civil war with the United States-backed government that ultimately claimed 75,000 lives.

Shortly after Romero’s murder, Salvadoran judge Atilio Ramírez launched an investigation that accused Roberto d’Aubisson, founder of the right-wing Republican Nationalist Alliance party, of hiring the archbishop’s assassins. Ramírez, who also accused the national police and the attorney general’s office of covering up the crime, fled El Salvador shortly after the investigation amid death threats.

In 2004 a California judge ruled that Álvaro Saravia, a retired Salvadoran air force captain living in the U.S., was liable for Romero’s assassination and ordered him to pay $10 million. During the trial, Saravia, a close associate of d’Aubisson, was accused of acquiring the assassin’s gun and driving to the chapel in San Salvador.

Just days before his death, Romero, an outspoken critic of U.S. economic support for the Salvadoran government, had petitioned President Jimmy Carter to halt aid. The U.S. funneled more than $4 billion in aid during El Salvador’s civil war, with the military receiving roughly one-quarter of that sum. A 1993 United Nations report found that an overwhelming amount of atrocities during the war were committed by the U.S.-backed armed forces and allied death squads.

Francis does not overtly embraced liberation theology, but he has expressed concern for the poor, the marginalized and for social justice issues throughout his papacy — issues championed by Romero.

Last year Francis told reporters that Romero's case had been "blocked out of prudence" by the congregation, but that it had been "unblocked" because there were no more doctrinal concerns.

Francis has selected Cardinal Angelo Amato, head of the saint-making office, and Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, the prelate who for decades has spearheaded Romero's cause, to celebrate the beatification. Paglia was to meet with reporters Wednesday to discuss the historic case.

Unlike regular candidates for beatification, martyrs can reach the first step to possible sainthood without a miracle attributed to their intercession. A miracle is needed for canonization, however.

The decree signed Tuesday by Francis makes clear that Romero was a martyr in the classic sense, killed out of hatred for the faith.

But in discussing Romero's cause this past summer, Francis suggested that the definition of martyr could be expanded. Martyrs are typically killed in acts of anti-Catholic persecution, such as those slain during the Spanish civil war.

With news services