Salvadorans urge sainthood for martyred archbishop [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

Mar 24, 4:07 PM EDT
Salvadorans urge sainthood for martyred archbishop
By MARCOS ALEMAN
Associated Press

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) -- Salvadorans marched through the streets of San Salvador on Palm Sunday to honor the slain Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero and express hope the new Pope Francis will advance him along the path to sainthood.

Hundreds were forced to stand outside during services at the thronged hospital chapel where Romero was shot in the heart as he said Mass on March 24, 1980, by a gunman linked to the military government of the time. Some carried signs calling him "Saint Romero of America."

Church leaders say they believe Francis' accession to the papacy will help their effort to win beatification and eventual sainthood for Romero, who was killed after his increasingly strident defense of Central American nation's poor and denunciations of government violence. His killing was one of the triggers that set off a civil war that left nearly 90,000 people dead or missing over the next 12 years.

"We are more hopeful that at last Romero will be beatified. He is a martyr. He is a saint," said Lucia Escalante, a retired schoolteacher of 65 who attended the Mass at the hospital which treats patients with terminal cancer.

"They killed Romero for defending the weakest, the poorest, for saying the truth, for denouncing injustice, and he is a martyr of the church," she said.

More:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_EL_SALVADOR_REMEMBERING_ROMERO?SECTION=HOME&SITE=AP&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[center]~~~~~[/center]
School of the Americas:
School of Assassins, USA

[center] " We routinely had Latin American students at the School of the Americas (SOA)
who were known human rights abusers, and it didn't make any difference to us."

Major Joseph Blair (retired), former SOA instructor[/center]

Graduates of the SOA have been among the most repressive tyrants in Latin America, and their actions have been some of the most cruel and violent. In El Salvador, in 1989, a Salvadoran army patrol executed six Jesuit priests as they lay face-down on the ground at Central America University. According to the United Nation's Truth Commission Report on El Salvador in 1993, 19 of the 27 officers who took part in the executions were trained at the SOA.

In 1990, in El Salvador, populist Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated. Three-quarters of the Salvadoran officers implicated in the killing were trained at the SOA. Roberto D'Aubuison, the late leader of El Salvador's Death Squad, was implicated in the plot to assassinate Archbishop Romero. He also participated in numerous murders, including a massacre in the village of El Mazote, where more than 900 men, women, and children were killed. He graduated from SOA as well.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/SOA/SOA.html