Saint Óscar Romero

Óscar Romero was born in 1917 in Ciudad Barrios, El Salvador, and was ordained a priest known initially for a cautious, traditionally conservative approach to Church affairs. Appointed Archbishop of San Salvador in 1977, he was widely expected to maintain a low profile, but the murder of a close friend, a Jesuit priest working among the poor, shortly after his appointment marked a turning point in his ministry. As violence, repression, and severe poverty escalated in the lead-up to the Salvadoran Civil War, Romero used his Sunday homilies, broadcast nationally by radio, to document human rights abuses and directly appeal to soldiers to stop carrying out killings and repression ordered by the government. On March 24, 1980, the day after one such appeal, he was shot and killed while celebrating Mass at a hospital chapel. He was canonized in 2018, and is recognized as a martyr for the faith by the Church.