Pope Francis’ move to sainthood for Archbishop Romero praised by farm worker movement
Pope Francis’ recent action unblocking the process of making martyred Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero a saint is welcomed by the farm worker movement. The process of declaring him “blessed,” or beatification, is a necessary step towards full sainthood in the Catholic Church. Archbishop Romero, a champion of the poor and an outspoken critic of the brutal military regime that ruled El Salvador during that country’s bloody civil war, was murdered while celebrating Mass in 1980. Pope Francis called the late archbishop “a man of God” and expressed the hope that the beatification “is done quickly.”
Efforts to make Archbishop Romero a saint began in 1997, 17 years after his murder by agents of the Salvadoran government, but it was held up by the Vatican. The reversal by Pope Francis, who has made concern for the poor a mainstay of his papacy, is seen as a change in perspective at the heart of the church.
Throughout its struggles, the United Farm Workers received significant support from Catholic clergy in the United States and also established relationships with Catholic activists for the poor from Central and South America, including Nicaragua and Brazil. Dom Helder Camara, Catholic archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Brazil and an another outspoken advocate for the poor, visited with Cesar Chavez in the 1970s at the farm worker movement headquarters at La Paz in Keene, Calif. and at the movement’s Forty Acres complex in Delano.