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| Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero 'a martyr' - Pope Francis | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Pope Francis has ruled that Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero died as a martyr, paving the way for his beatification. | |
| Beatification is the step before sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church. | |
| An outspoken critic of the military regime during El Salvador's bloody civil war, Archbishop Romero was shot dead while celebrating Mass in 1980. | |
| For years, the Church blocked the process because of concerns that he had Marxist ideas. | |
| Unlike other candidates for beatification, martyrs can move to the beatification stage without a miracle attributed to them. A miracle is needed for canonisation, however. | |
| After his election in 2013, Pope Francis, the first Latin American pontiff, unblocked Romero's sainthood process. | |
| The Church restricts the martyr designation to people who were killed out of hatred for the Catholic faith. | |
| A question about whether he was killed for his politics in support of the poor or for his faith was one of the reasons his case was stalled. | |
| No date for the beatification has been set. |