El Salvador's Catholic Church said a preliminary investigation showed Msgr Jesus Delgado had sex with a minor aged between 9 and 17.

The female victim, who is now 42, presented the allegations to the Salvadoran government.

Msgr Delgado is suspended from all his priestly duties, including that of being vicar-general of San Salvador archdiocese.

"We will not cover up cases of abuse of minors," said Msgr Rafael Urrutia, chancellor of the Archdiocese of San Salvador.

He added that Msgr Delgado had acknowledged the abuse and was ready to ask the victim's forgiveness.

Msgr Delgado is suspended from his role in Blessed Romero's canonisation process.

Msgr Urrutia said the victim, who has not been named, had asked "only that he [Delgado] leave the priesthood and apologise".

El Salvador's attorney general has not commented on the case.

But Msgr Delgado,77, may not be pursued in the country's courts because the alleged crime happened more than 20 years ago.

Blessed Archbishop Oscar Romero was shot by a right-wing death squad while celebrating Mass in 1980.

He was a vocal critic of the human rights abuses of the repressive then-Salvadoran government, and he spoke out on behalf of the poor and the victims of the government.

No one has ever been arrested for his murder.

Pope Francis unblocked his beatification process in 2013.

Francis authorised the promulgation of a decree recognising the martyrdom of Archbishop Romero, paving the way for his beatification, which happened in May.

Msgr Delgado attended several high-level meetings with Vatican officials to request the ceremony.

In February this year, Msgr Delgado said: "Thank God a Pope has come along who knows this situation in Latin America well and who unblocked everything, opening the path to justice and truth."

Pope Francis has criticised conservative clergy and bishops who he said "defamed" Romero.

Sources

• Reuters
• Associated Press
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Remolacha

Among the welcome news coming on the heels of Pope Francis' election was an April announcement that the canonization cause of Archbishop Óscar Romero of El Salvador has been, in the words of Italian Msgr. Vincenzo Paglia, who leads the effort, "unblocked." Romero's path to official recognition as a martyr—he has long been a "popular" saint among many Catholics—officially commenced way back in 1997, 17 years after his murder by Salvadoran government agents as he led the Eucharist. His association with liberation theology has unfortunately complicated his cause, as both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI looked unfavorably on that movement's connection to Marxism.

Romero's rehabilitation is no doubt a signal of a change in politics at the Vatican. We might also hope it calls to mind not only Romero's death but all those lost in El Salvador's civil war of the 1980s, of which Romero was only one victim. Less than a year after his March 1980 death, three religious sisters—Maura Clarke, Ita Ford, and Dorothy Kazel—along with laywoman and missionary Jean Donovan were raped and murdered in December, suffering the victimization shared by so many women in times of war.

At the end of the decade in 1989, six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter suffered a similar fate on the San Salvador campus of the University of Central America. The priests were killed for their activism in service of the country's poor; mother and daughter Elba Ramos and Celia Marisela Ramos were, like so many poor working people, caught in the crossfire. By the war's end in 1992, some 75,000 Salvadorans shared their fate. Continue reading

Sources

• Bryan Cones in U.S. Catholic
• Image: Maurice Broaddus

Bryan Cones is a writer living in Boston.

The Congregation for the Causes of Saints has been examining Romero's cause since 1996.

Bishop Gregorio Rosa Chavez, Auxiliary Bishop of San Salvador, has said he knows Pope Francis personally "and I know he is absolutely convinced that Romero is a saint and a martyr. Everything points to his beatification being on the cards, although we follow God's time frame which is not the same as ours."

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