It's Sunday

Pope Francis has formally ratified the martyrdom of the Salvadoran archbishop Óscar Romero, who was shot to death at the altar as he was saying Mass in 1980 in an act of “hatred for the faith,” the Vatican said on Tuesday.

[...]

The Vatican began considering Archbishop Romero for beatification in 1997, but his cause made little progress during the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI because of his perceived association with liberation theology, Vatican watchers said. That movement, popular among some Catholic clergy in Latin America, called for the church to work for the social and economic liberation of the poor; some conservatives in the church rejected it as akin to communism.

  NYT

Yes, especially the some who were in the Vatican calling the shots.

The step opens the way for Archbishop Romero to be beatified.

[...]

At the beginning of the civil war in El Salvador, Archbishop Romero angered the country’s right-wing military government by calling on soldiers to disobey orders to murder political opponents. He also wrote a letter to President Jimmy Carter pleading with him to cut off American military aid to El Salvador.

That didn’t happen, of course. Jimmy may have wanted to, who knows? But he wouldn’t have been able to get that passed. We are unrepentantly and eternally in support of ruthless right-wing regimes and rabidly against any damned commie leftists. And, soon enough, Romero was gunned down by a right-wing death squad.

Lutherans celebrate him as a saint on the anniversary of his death, March 24, and Anglicans consider him a martyr.

[...]

Pope Francis unblocked Archbishop Romero’s cause in 2013, immediately after he succeeded Benedict, and he has spoken admiringly of the archbishop since then. In a general hearing in early January, Francis quoted one of Archbishop Romero’s last speeches, saying: “Giving life doesn’t only mean to be killed. Giving life, having the martyr’s spirit, means giving while doing our duty, in silence, in prayer, while we honestly fulfill our duty.”

Francis likes to skate the thin edge. He may end up a martyr himself one day.

UPDATE:

The Pope's decision to honor Óscar Romero reminds me of a story about Salvardorian death squads & the New Republic.

In November 1989 the Salvadoran military (trained by USA) committed a large massacre that included 6 Jesuit priests. Morton Kondracke, New Republic staff writer, went on TV trying to pin the blame for the massacre on leftists rebels.

The thing is, Kondracke knew that the spin he was making was a lie: in pages of TNR he wrote [an] editorial which laid bare true facts.

Beyond Kondracke, there's a larger story here. Salvadoran military did horrific things -- rape, mass murder in the tens of thousands. In committing their crimes, the Salvadoran right had a vast army of American apologists among conservatives and some liberals. The apologists for Salvadoran war crimes included many self-proclaimed Catholics [including] William Buckley, [Danesh] D'Souza, Michael Novak.

Pope Francis is a Jesuit, the order that bore the brunt of the violence against the Catholic church in Latin America.

Francis knows all too well what happened in the 1970s-1990s. And is making some effort to come to terms with it.

As Francis tries to grapple with what happened in Latin America, someone should ask D'Souza, Novak & others if they have any remorse. Of course I'm not dim. I know D'Souza & Novak have no remorse and no conscience. But I want this on the record.

In 1981, three American nuns, of the Maryknoll order, were shot in the head by [a] Salvadoran death squad. [The] Reagan administration went into overdrive to denigrate [the] nuns and suggest that they deserved their fate. Jeanne Kirkpatrick [said the] murdered women "were not just nuns, they were political activists."  Novak joined in [the] pile-on. Said nuns were promoting "Christian Marxism."

  Jeet Heer Twitter account

And we good Americans, scared to death of communism, went about our lives, dismissing the murders and villifying leftist leaders in Central and South America, where they're just trying to get the poor people something to eat, a place to live, and a little dignity, just the way we do to this day.