Salvadorans journey to Rome for Archbishop Oscar Romero's canonization as Catholic saint

“He’s not going to be a saint on that day,” said a Salvadoran woman reflecting on Romero's life. “He’s been a saint since the beginning."

by Reynaldo Leanos, Jr. / Oct.13.2018 / 7:02 AM EDT

Esther Chavez vividly remembers the day in 1980 when a voice through a university loudspeaker delivered the news: San Salvador's Catholic Archbishop, Oscar Arnulfo Romero, had been fatally shot.

“Everyone went crazy,” said Chavez, a New Jersey-based community activist who left El Salvador decades ago. “I didn’t go directly home to my family; I went to be with the nuns and when I got there they already had the news that he was killed.”

The assassination of the popular Archbishop reverberated around the world, but it had a deep, personal impact on Salvadorans like Chavez.

Now almost forty years later, Chavez is one of many Salvadorans and Catholics who traveled to Rome to witness what they have long been waiting for — on Sunday, the late Romero will be canonized by Pope Francis as a Catholic Saint.

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