Did You Know?

 

Catholic Church will officially recognize the sainthood of two significant 20th century members of the hierarchy, Pope Paul VI and Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador on Sunday, October 14th. Both are among a group of six beatified who will be canonized as saints by Pope Francis during this month’s Synod of Bishops Meeting on Youth being held in Rome (October 3-28).

 

In his 1975 exhortation on evangelization, Evangelii Nuntiandi (On Proclaiming the Gospel), Blessed Pope Paul VI wrote that the Church itself “has a constant need of being evangelized,” and “that people today listen more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if they do listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.”

 

Archbishop Oscar Romero was outspoken against military oppression during his country’s bloody civil war in the 1980s along with the role that the United States played in it. In February 1980, he sent a letter to U.S. President Jimmy Carter in which he urged America not to send military aid to El Salvador: “You say that you are Christian. If you are really Christian, please stop sending military aid to the military here, because they use it only to kill my people.”

His death is considered by the Catholic Church to have been in “odium fidei,” meaning “in hatred of the faith.”