Martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero was beatified on May 23 in El Salvador with hundreds of thousands of people present for the occasion. “Romero, friend, the people are with you,” the congregation chanted at a square in San Salvador. Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, presided over the beatification Mass. Read more
Martyred Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero is to be beatified on May 23 in San Salvador. The ceremony will be in Plaza Divino Salvador del Mundo, said Italian Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the chief promoter of the archbishop’s sainthood cause. Archbishop Paglia called the beatification a gift for the world, but particularly for the people of El Salvador. In February, Pope Read more
At the beatification of Blessed Pope Paul VI, Pope Francis has urged the Church to be open to new ways. Speaking to 70,000 people at St Peter’s Square on October 19, Francis said Catholics must “not fear the new” and must be open to previously “unexpected paths”. Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, who was made a Read more
The cause for beatification of American evangelist Archbishop Fulton Sheen has been suspended indefinitely because of a spat between two US dioceses. In a September 3 communiqué, the Diocese of Peoria, where Archbishop Sheen was born, announced that the cause was suspended “for the foreseeable future” and would be assigned to a Vatican archive. This Read more
Bishop Alvaro del Portillo, the first successor to St Josemaria Escriva as leader of Opus Dei, is to be beatified in Madrid on September 27. The ceremony is expected to attract 100,000 people from at least 50 countries. Some 3000 families will open their homes to those travelling to Madrid from abroad and 2000 young Read more
Pope Francis has assured the bishops of El Salvador that the cause for sainthood of murdered Archbishop Oscar Romero is proceeding well. The bishops reportedly asked him to come to El Salvador to preside personally over the archbishop’s hoped-for beatification. Archbishop Jose Escobar Alas said he and three other Salvadoran bishops met the Pope at Read more
Pope Francis is to beatify his predecessor Pope Paul VI on October 19, the Vatican has confirmed. The Vatican announced that Francis has approved a decree attributing a miracle to the intercession of the Italian pope, and his beatification will take place at the conclusion of the bishops’ synod on the family. On May 6, Read more
The Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints has reportedly approved a miracle attributed to the intercession of Pope Paul VI. The miracle was the healing in the United States of an unborn baby from an otherwise incurable illness. Doctors forecast the baby would die in the womb, or be born with severely damaged kidneys. Read more
A Dominican friar killed at the Dachau concentration camp in 1945, after he was arrested for helping Jews, has been beatified. Blessed Giuseppe Girotti, OP, was beatified in Alba, Italy, the day before the canonisations of St John Paul II and St John XXIII. In 1995, Israel’s Yad Vashem holocaust memorial declared him “righteous among Read more
It would be wrong for me to anticipate the mind of the Church, but I personally believe that one day Oscar Romero will be declared a Saint of the Church. These were the carefully-chosen words of Cardinal Basil Hume in a tribute to Archbishop Romero at a memorial service in Westminster Cathedral the week after his assassination Read more