A Latin American pope, a Latin American martyr

“We had to wait for the first Latin American pope to beatify Oscar Romero.”

That’s how Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia described the long wait for the Vatican’s green light for the beatification of the Salvadoran archbishop.

“There’s a connection between the pontificate of Pope Francis and the beatification of Romero, which I would sum up in the phrase: ‘a church that is poor and for the poor,'” Archbishop Paglia said, citing Francis’ remark shortly after his election in 2013. Archbishop Romero, an outspoken defender of the poor and a critic of human rights abuses, was murdered in 1980.

Archbishop Paglia, the postulator for Romero’s sainthood cause, spoke at a Vatican press conference Wednesday. He said Romero is expected to be beatified in San Salvador sometime later this year — the earlier the better.

Pope Francis’ decision to approve the martyrdom of Archbishop Romero, announced Tuesday, fit well with the Argentinian pope’s vision of the church’s place in society, the role of the bishop and the process by which sainthood is recognized. It also underscores some similarities and a few important differences with his two predecessors, Benedict XVI and John Paul II.

Re-reading some of Romero’s writings and homilies, one immediately senses an affinity with Pope Francis’ emphasis on a church that is close to the people, especially the poor, and that is not afraid to be socially and politically involved.

Archbishop Romero: “When we struggle for human rights, for freedom, for dignity, when we feel that it is a ministry of the church to concern itself for those who are hungry, for those who have no schools, for those who are deprived, we are not departing from God’s promise. He comes to free us from sin, and the church knows that sin’s consequences are all such injustices and abuses. The church knows it is saving the world when it undertakes to speak also of such things.”

Pope Francis in his document Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel): “If the just ordering of society and of the state is a central responsibility of politics, the church cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice.”

As it happens, Pope Francis was quoting Pope Benedict in that particular passage. Pope Benedict once said Romero deserved beatification, and Pope John Paul II once prayed at Romero’s tomb. But both Benedict and John Paul II were hesitant to promote his sainthood cause. Pope Benedict feared that a “Saint Romero” would be politically manipulated in Latin America, and one presumes John Paul II had the same apprehensions. On the other hand, according to Paglia it was Benedict who unblocked Romero’s cause late in 2012, little more than a month before the German pope resigned.

Over the years, Archbishop Paglia recounted, strong opposition was expressed to Romero’s beatification. A “mountain” of paper arrived in Rome with objections, including accusations of doctrinal errors that needed to be investigated by the doctrinal congregation. The strongest objections were that Archbishop Romero was too political.

Pope Francis does not appear to be intimidated by political fallout when it comes to such causes. I think that’s because he expects the church to be deeply involved in the lives of the people, even if that creates waves and provokes criticism – or, as he said famously in Brazil, “a mess.” He also wants bishops to be closer to their flocks, sharing their suffering.

It was interesting that on the same day he approved Romero’s beatification, Pope Francis also signed off on the martyrdom of three priests killed by the leftist guerrillas in Peru in 1991. It was as if to say that “hatred of the faith” can come from anywhere along the ideological spectrum.

Francis has spoken of the price Christians must sometimes pay for witnessing the faith.

“The disciple is ready to put his or her whole life on the line, even to accepting martyrdom, in bearing witness to Jesus Christ, yet the goal is not to make enemies but to see God’s word accepted and its capacity for liberation and renewal revealed,” the pope said in Evangelii Gaudium.

Archbishop Romero, who was killed at the altar by a gunman believed linked to right-wing death squads, once said, “I don’t want to be an anti, against anybody. I simply want to be the builder of a great affirmation: the affirmation of God, who loves us and who wants to save us.”

In general, Pope Francis seems to have an implicit trust in Catholics to recognize saints, relying less on Roman procedures to verify a life of holiness or martyrdom. He has several times waived the miracle requirement for canonization. In that sense, I think the strong conviction among many Latin American Catholics that Archbishop Romero was a saint helped move his cause forward once Francis assumed the papacy.

Vatican, religious sisters urge global mobilization against human trafficking

The Vatican today presented details on the first International Day of Prayer and Awareness Against Human Trafficking, calling for a global mobilization to assist victims and strengthen laws against traffickers.

It’s the latest in a long series of church efforts against what Pope Francis has called a “crime against humanity.” Although accurate statistics are hard to obtain, some experts estimate that more than 2 million people are trafficked each year, nearly half of them for prostitution. For traffickers and pimps, it is a $32 billion a year industry.

The day of prayer is scheduled for Feb. 8, the feast of Saint Josephine Bakhita, a Sudanese kidnaped by slave-traffickers when she was nine years old and who, after she was freed, joined a Catholic religious order.

Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said the prayer initiative was designed to expand awareness “to the very depths of this evil and its farthest reaches.”

The press conference featured a number of women religious, whose orders have taken up the fight against human trafficking by organizing assistance centers around the world. Maltese Sister Carmen Sammut said the anti-trafficking network known as Talitha Kum, established by religious order, now works in 81 countries, helping victims and working for more effective policies against trafficking.

“We are here because we want to encourage all people of good will to join forces so that this terrible global phenomenon can be stopped. Today thousands of children, women and men are sold into slavery, forced labor, prostitution, trafficking of organs,” she said.

It is common, she said, for shady organizations to lure young people into believing they will find jobs abroad, and then trap them in abusive modern forms of slavery.

Several of the speakers said that while such evils are often publicly denounced, the level of trafficking in many countries is increasing. In Italy, for example, the number of street prostitutes on the rise, and those involved are increasingly younger.

Last December, Pope Francis and leaders of other churches and faiths signed a joint declaration calling for the end to all forms of human slavery. The pope also denounced human trafficking in his World Peace Day message for 2015.

Vatican conference to examine new approaches to women’s issues

Even before it began, this week’s Vatican-sponsored meeting on “Women’s Cultures: Equality and Difference” sparked debate on a variety of issues: women’s specific characteristics, the meaning of “generativity” vs. “maternity,” and even whether plastic surgery represents a form of aggression against women.

At a press conference Monday, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, whose Pontifical Council for Culture is organizing the conference, waded into these and other controversies. He was navigating difficult waters. It is problematic, I think, for any Vatican official to talk about women’s equality when Vatican decision-making remains an all-male, all-clerical domain.

Nevertheless, Ravasi has opened some new and interesting areas of discussion. The meeting’s working document, for example, suggests that the church’s traditional image of women “does not correspond to reality” today, and that some women may be leaving the church as a result.

“Why with their great presence have women had so little impact on the Church’s structures? In pastoral praxis, why are we giving women only those tasks of a somewhat rigid scheme, the fruit of ideological and ancestral left-overs?” the document asked.

It concluded: “A realistic objective could be that of opening the doors of the Church to women so that they can offer their contribution in terms of skills and also sensitivity, intuition, passion, dedication, in full collaboration and integration with the male component.”

For the Vatican, however, collaboration and integration clearly do not include women’s ordination. The document underlined that in the meeting’s program, “there is no discussion here of women priests, which according to statistics is not something that women want.” Nor do most women want the bishop’s “purple biretta,” it said.

The real question in Rome is whether Pope Francis’ planned reform of the Roman Curia will bring women to executive roles in the Vatican, something that until now has been rejected because – as Pope Benedict once explained – decision-making in the church has been linked to holy orders.

The panel at the Vatican press conference included four women who helped prepare the document, all of them Italian and all of them successful in their careers. They offered some qualifications on the document’s assertion that non-therapeutic plastic surgery can indicate a “refusal of the body” and a denial of the natural aging process; the women said much depends on a woman’s motives and attitude toward such surgery. (For the record, the working document did not exactly assert that “plastic surgery is like a burqa made of flesh,” although it cited the line as an opinion worth discussing.)

The pontifical council deliberately avoided the term “maternity” in its working document, preferring to talk about what it calls a quality of “generativity,” which refers to the life-giving, nurturing and educating role of women – not only in bringing babies into the world, but also extending to other social relationships and even business activities.

The document insists that equality must not mean trying to erase real differences between men and women – differences, for example in problem-solving, emotional reaction and ways of cooperation. But it seemed to suggest that a favorite Vatican term used to describe the men-women relationship, “complementarity,” may be open to revision, asking: “Can the categories of ‘reciprocity’ and ‘complementarity’ be an interpretative key and possible way of life, or must we find other categories?”

The conference will also examine violence against women, including domestic violence, as well as selective abortion of females.

Pope Francis will meet with the conference participants on Saturday, and is expected to give a speech that will draw close attention.