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VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis embodied Sunday two of the most controversial figures of the Catholic world in the twentieth century: the assassinated Salvadoran archbishop, Oscar Romero and Pope Paul VI, who ruled over one of the eras the most tumultuous of the Church and have devoted her opposition to contraception.
At a ceremony in front of tens of thousands of people in St. Peter's Square, Francis said the two holy men, along with five other lesser-known people, born in Italy, Germany, and Spain in the 18th and 19th centuries centuries.
Romero, who was wounded by a death squad at Mass in 1980, and Paul, who guided the Church in the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965, which was in the process of modernizing, were contested personalities inside and outside the church.
Both were naturally timid men, pushed to the forefront of history by the convulsive political and social changes of the twentieth century and who had a lasting influence on the present pontiff, Francis, first pope of Latin America .
In his homily, with tapestries of images of the seven new saints hanging behind St. Peter's Basilica behind him, Francis described Pope Paul as "a prophet of an outgoing church" who opened it in the world. He congratulated Romero for neglecting his own life "to be close to the poor and his people".
Romero, who had often denounced repression and poverty in his homilies, was shot dead on March 24, 1980 in the chapel of a hospital in San Salvador, capital of El Salvador, a poor country in Central America.
The assassination of Romero is one of the most shocking of the long conflict between a series of US-backed governments and left-wing rebels, during which thousands of people have been killed by military and military death squads. of right.
He was widely believed to have been commanded by Roberto Aubuisson, major of the army and founder of the right-wing ARENA party.
Romero has consistently denounced the violence perpetrated by Salvadoran military and paramilitaries against civilians and urged the international community to end the oppression.
In his last homily, a few minutes before he was touched to the heart, Romero had spoken of spreading "the benefits of human dignity, brotherhood and freedom on earth …".
Romero became an icon for the poor Latin American, appearing on T-shirts similar to those carrying the image of Che Guevara, but his cause of holiness was met with stiff opposition to Vatican and among the powerful conservatives of the Latin American Church.
Both feared that Romero had become too political in life and even more so in death.
The process has languished for decades. Francis accelerated after his election in 2013 and in 2015 the Vatican declared that Romero had died a martyr, killed by hatred of faith.
Paul VI, a timid man described by biographers as a hamlet-like figure sometimes indecisive and tormented, guided the Church in the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council begun by his predecessor and in the implementation of his reforms. He was elected in 1963 and died in 1978.
Francis often quotes Paul, showing that he is engaged in Council reforms, which allowed the Mass to be spoken in local languages instead of Latin, declared respect for other religions and launched a historic reconciliation with the Jews.
Even today, the ultra-conservatives of the Church do not recognize the teachings of the Council and accuse Paul of having begun what they view as a decline of tradition.
Despite his many reforms, Paul is probably best known for his 1968 encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae (The Human Life), which enshrined the prohibition of artificial birth control by the Church, stating that nothing was to prevent the possible transmission of human life.
The ban, which Paul issued against the advice of a papal commission, became the most controversial church decision of the 20th century and is still largely ignored by Catholics.
Paul also became the first modern day pope to travel out of Italy to see devotees, ushering in a practice that has become synonymous with papacy.
Paul is the third pope that Francis has made a saint since his election in 2013. The others are John XXIII, who died in 1963, and Jean Paul, who died in 2005.
