The Associated Press reports:
VATICAN CITY — Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, the outspoken church leader who was killed in 1980 as he celebrated Mass, has become as polarizing in death as he was in life.
The campaign to make him a Roman Catholic saint appears to be languishing, as Vatican officials privately debate whether Romero was a martyr for the faith or for the political left.
The sensitivity of the issue was clear in remarks last May by Pope Benedict XVI, as he was flying to Brazil — his first visit to Latin America as pontiff.
Benedict told reporters that “Romero as a person merits beatification,” but Vatican officials removed that quote in an official transcript, keeping only the pope’s general praise of the slain prelate as a “great witness to the faith.”
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