At the Vatican, Pope Francis has named Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero a saint, 38 years after he was murdered by a right-wing death squad at the beginning of the brutal U.S.-backed campaign in El Salvador. Only weeks before his assassination, Romero wrote a letter to President Jimmy Carter, calling on him not to provide military aid to the right-wing Salvadoran military government. In the archbishop’s final and now-famous sermon, he made a direct appeal to Salvadoran soldiers to lay down their weapons.
Archbishop Oscar Romero: “In his name and in the name of our tormented people who have suffered so much and whose laments cry out to heaven, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: Stop the repression!”
The next day, Romero was fatally shot from a car at the church where he was giving mass. We’ll have more on Óscar Romero’s canonization later in the broadcast.