Image copyright AFP Image caption Archbishop Romero is revered across Latin America as a champion of the poor

Pope Francis has conferred sainthood on murdered Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero at a ceremony in the Vatican.

He praised the cleric - an advocate for peace during El Salvador's civil war - for sacrificing his own safety to be "close to the poor and his people".

Óscar Romero was killed by soldiers while giving Mass in 1980. His killers have never been brought to justice.

Pope Francis also canonised Pope Paul VI, known for making reforms to the Catholic Church in the 1960s.

The bestowing of a sainthood onto Archbishop Romero has long been called for by Catholics in the region, the BBC's Will Grant reports.

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Thousands of pilgrims gathered Sunday to pay tribute to the new saints

What is happening today?

Pope Francis led a ceremony to elevate the two men, and five others, to sainthood in Saint Peter's Square.

"We declare and define Paul VI and Óscar Arnulfo Romero Galdámez... to be saints and we enrol them among the saints, decreeing that they are to be venerated as such by the whole church," he told a crowd of 60,000 people, including multiple heads of state.

The pope wore the blood-stained rope belt worn by Archbishop Romero when he was murdered and used the chalice and pastoral staff of Pope Paul VI.

The Argentine pontiff, Latin America's first, has hailed both men for their bravery during difficult times and their dedication to social justice and the oppressed.

Among the other newly appointed saints include an Italian orphan who died of bone cancer aged 19 and a German nun.

Thousands of pilgrims gathered to pay tribute to the new saints, including some 5,000 Salvadorans.

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Archbishop Romero and Pope Paul VI have been elevated to sainthood

Who was Óscar Romero?

Archbishop Romero was beatified in May 2015 in a ceremony in El Salvador which drew huge crowds.

For the faithful, his power came from the fact he criticised both sides of the El Salvadoran conflict, which started in 1980, for any actions that affected civilians.

When the US-backed Salvadoran army was using death squads and torture to stop leftist revolutionaries from seizing power, he used what would become his last homily to speak out against it.

Image copyright AFP Image caption Many in the region see him as the saint of central America

"The law of God which says thou shalt not kill must come before any human order to kill. It is high time you recovered your conscience," he said, calling on the National Guard and police to stop the violence.

"I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression."

The next day, on 24 March 1980, Archbishop Romero was shot dead as he celebrated Mass in a hospital chapel.

His death horrified the world and escalated the violence in El Salvador that spiralled into a 12-year civil war that claimed 75,000 lives.

Many Salvadorans are still angry that 38 years later, Archbishop Romero's killers have never faced justice because of a 1992 amnesty law.

He is still despised by some on the far right, who describe him as a "guerrilla in a cassock".

Who was Pope Paul VI?

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Pope Paul VI brought about sweeping changes as part of Vatican II but opposed birth control

Born Giovanni Battista Montini in the Lombardy region of Italy in 1897, Pope Paul VI was beatified in 2014.

Elected pope in 1963, he continued the reforms of his predecessor, John XXIII, until his death in 1978. The reforms, brought in by the Second Vatican Council or Vatican II, changed the relationship between the Catholic faithful and priests.

Mass, which had been celebrated in Latin, was translated into the language of the congregation and priests faced church goers instead of the altar.

During his 15-year pontificate, Pope Paul VI wrote seven encyclicals.

One of them, Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life), published in 1968, was highly controversial due to its opposition to birth control and led to protests around the Catholic world.</s>The Irish Catholic Bishops’ overseas development agency Trócaire has said the late Archbishop Oscar Romero remains “a guiding light for human rights defenders everywhere”.

The prelate was canonised in Rome on Sunday. And the agency will hold a remembrance Mass for the new saint at Maynooth on Wednesday, November 7th.

Archbishop Romero was murdered in 1980 while saying Mass in San Salvadoran, while Paul VI was pope, during one of the Catholic Church’s most turbulent periods.

“Trócaire had a very close association with Archbishop Romero,” said agency chief executive Caoimhe de Barra. “In 1979 we began funding the El Salvador Human Rights Commission, which had been founded by the archbishop, in response to the unlawful killing of 8,000 people,” she said. The chief executive added that his “values, conviction and compassion still influence Trócaire today and help guide us in our work”.

Pope Francis elevated Romero and Paul VI, two of the most contentious Catholic figures of the 20th century, in a ceremony before tens of thousands of people in St Peter’s Square. The pontiff declared the two saints along with five lesser-known people born in Italy, Germany and Spain during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Archbishop Romero, who was shot by a right-wing death squad, and Pope Paul VI strongly influenced Pope Francis.

With images of the seven new saints hanging from St Peter’s Basilica behind him, he called Pope Paul “a prophet of an extroverted church” who opened it up to the world. And he praised Archbishop Romero for disregarding his own life “to be close to the poor and to his people”.

Archbishop Romero’s canonisation has long been opposed at the Vatican and by powerful conservatives in the Latin American church who believe he had become too political in life and even more so in death. This changed with the election of Pope Francis in 2013. And in 2015 the Vatican declared the prelate had died a martyr.

Pope Paul VI guided the church through the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council and implementation of its reforms. Elected in 1963, he died in 1978 and is perhaps best known for his 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae (On Human Life) which sustained the church’s ban on artificial birth control.

Paul is the third pope Francis has canonised. The others were John XXIII who died in 1963 and John Paul II who died in 2005.

The other five canonised by Pope Francis during the ceremony were: Francesco Spinelli from Milan, founder of the Institute of the Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament in 1882; Vincenzo Romano who helped restore the town of Torre del Greco which was almost completely destroyed by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1794; Maria Catherine Kasper, who in 1848 founded the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ in Germany; Nazaria Ignazia of St Theresa of Jesus who, in Bolivia, founded the Congregation of the Missionary Crusaders of the Church in 1926; and the devout Nuncio Sulprizio who died aged 19 at Naples in 1836.</s>VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Latest on Catholic Church canonizations on Sunday (all times local). 4:00 p.m. Thousands of people have gathered in El Salvador’s capital to celebrate slain Archbishop Oscar Romero being declared a…

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Latest on Catholic Church canonizations on Sunday (all times local).

Thousands of people have gathered in El Salvador’s capital to celebrate slain Archbishop Oscar Romero being declared a saint.

Church bells pealed in unison throughout the country and large crowds watched on large video screens in front of San Salvador’s cathedral as Pope Francis recited the rite of canonization for Romero and Pope Paul VI on Sunday.

Maria Tolentina Martinez got there on Saturday morning to assure herself a good viewing spot. She said: “This is the happiest day of my life.”

Romero was assassinated in 1980 for his defense of El Salvador’s poor. On Sunday, Francis wore the blood-stained rope belt Romero was wearing when he was gunned down in 1980

A large banner hanging on the National Palace in San Salvador quoted Romero: “Let my blood be a seed of liberty.”

Pope Francis has lauded new saints Pope Paul VI and slain Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero as prophets of a church that looks out for the poor as he presided over a canonization ceremony.

History’s first Latin American pope warned in his homily Sunday of the “danger” posed by wealth, calling “the love of money the root of all evils.” He said: “We see this where money is at the center, there is no room for God nor for man.”

Francis said Paul, who oversaw the 1960s meetings that modernized the Catholic church, survived deep misunderstandings to “cross new boundaries” for the sake of following Christ’s call. He praised Romero, who was gunned down by El Salvador’s right-wing death squads, as having given up his own life to be “close to the poor and to his people.”

The two were canonized along with five other people at the start of Sunday’s Mass.

Pope Francis has declared Pope Paul VI and slain Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero saints, reciting in Latin the rite of canonization at the start of Mass in St. Peter’s Square.

After hearing brief biographies of Paul, Romero and five other people canonized Sunday, Francis declared them saints and “decreed that they are to be venerated as such by the whole church.”

The crowd of thousands in St. Peter’s Square applauded as Francis pronounced the rite. Among them were some 5,000 Salvadoran pilgrims who traveled to Rome to honor their hero, Romero, who stood up to El Salvador’s brutal military dictatorship to defend the rights of the poor and was slain as he said Mass.

Pope Francis is presiding over the canonization of two of the towering figures of the 20th-century Catholic Church: Pope Paul VI, who oversaw the modernizing church reforms of the 1960s, and Archbishop Oscar Romero, a human rights icon who was murdered for his defense of El Salvador’s poor.

In a sign of the strong influence both men had on history’s first Latin American pope, Francis wore the blood-stained rope belt that Romero wore when he was gunned down in 1980 and also used Paul VI’s staff, chalice and pallium vestment.

As Francis processed in at the start of Mass, portraits of the two men fluttered in the breeze from the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica, along with five others being canonized in a service aimed at showing young people that holiness can be achieved in every walk of life.

Some 5,000 Salvadoran pilgrims travelled to Rome and tens of thousands more Salvadorans stayed up all night at home to watch it on giant TV screens outside the San Salvador cathedral where Romero’s remains are entombed.

For many it was the culmination of a fraught and politicized campaign to have the church formally honor a man who publicly denounced the repression by El Salvador’s military dictatorship at the start of the country’s 1980-1992 civil war.

Copyright © 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.</s>Thousands of people are converging on the Vatican for the canonization of two of the towering figures of the 20th-century Catholic Church: Pope Paul VI, who oversaw the modernizing church reforms of the 1960s, and Archbishop Oscar Romero, a human rights icon who was murdered for his defense of El Salvador's poor.

Pope Francis is to celebrate Sunday's saint-making Mass wearing the blood-stained rope belt that Romero wore when he was gunned down in 1980 and using Paul VI's staff, chalice and pallium vestment — evidence of the strong influence both men had on history's first Latin American pope.

Some 5,000 Salvadoran pilgrims travelled to Rome for the ceremony, and tens of thousands more stayed up all night to watch it on giant TV screens outside the San Salvador cathedral where Romero's remains are entombed.

For many it was the culmination of a fraught and politicized campaign to have the church formally honor a man who publicly denounced the repression by El Salvador's military dictatorship at the start of the country's 1980-1992 civil war.

"I am here to give glory to Monsignor Romero," said Aida Guzman, a 68-year-old Salvadoran woman who carried photos of people killed during the war as she joined thousands in an evening procession in San Salvador. "He is a light for our people, an inspiration for all."

Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, was gunned down by right-wing death squads as he celebrated Mass on March 24, 1980, in a hospital chapel. A day before he was killed, he had delivered the latest in a series of sermons demanding an end to the army's repression — sermons that had enraged El Salvador's leaders.

Almost immediately after his death, Romero became an icon of the South American left and is frequently listed along with Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi as one of the world's most influential human rights campaigners. The United Nations commemorates the anniversary of his death each year.

His influence continues to resonate with El Salvador's youth as the country endures brutal gang violence that has made the Central American nation one of the most violent in the world — an scourge that Francis has frequently lamented.

"He is my guide, and from what I have read about his life, I want to follow in his steps," said Oscar Orellana, a 15-year-old who participated in the San Salvador procession wearing a white tunic like the one Romero used to wear.

Paul VI, for his part, is best known for having presided over the final sessions of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 church meetings that opened up the Catholic Church to the world. Under his auspices, the church agreed to allow liturgy to be celebrated in the vernacular rather than in Latin and called for greater roles for the laity and improved relations with people of other faiths.

Paul is also remembered for his two most important encyclicals, or teaching documents, that have had a profound effect on the church and Francis: One, "The Progress of Peoples" denounced the mounting inequality between rich and poor, and the other, "Humanae Vitae," reaffirmed the Catholic church's opposition to artificial contraception.

The stark prohibition empowered conservatives but drove progressives away. Even today it remains one of the most contested and ignored of papal encyclicals, with studies showing that most Catholics use contraception anyway.

Francis was deeply influenced by Paul, who was the pope of his formative years as a young priest in Argentina and was instrumental in giving rise to the Latin American church's "preferential option for the poor."

Francis has styled his papacy on another of Paul's exhortations, and has adopted the "church of the poor" ethos that Paul embodied when he formally renounced wearing the bejeweled papal tiara.</s>The Latest on Catholic Church canonizations on Sunday (all times local).

Pope Francis has lauded new saints Pope Paul VI and slain Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero as prophets of a church that looks out for the poor as he presided over a canonization ceremony.

History's first Latin American pope warned in his homily Sunday of the "danger" posed by wealth, calling "the love of money the root of all evils." He said: "We see this where money is at the center, there is no room for God nor for man."

Francis said Paul, who oversaw the 1960s meetings that modernized the Catholic church, survived deep misunderstandings to "cross new boundaries" for the sake of following Christ's call. He praised Romero, who was gunned down by El Salvador's right-wing death squads, as having given up his own life to be "close to the poor and to his people."

The two were canonized along with five other people at the start of Sunday's Mass.

Pope Francis has declared Pope Paul VI and slain Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero saints, reciting in Latin the rite of canonization at the start of Mass in St. Peter's Square.

After hearing brief biographies of Paul, Romero and five other people canonized Sunday, Francis declared them saints and "decreed that they are to be venerated as such by the whole church."

The crowd of thousands in St. Peter's Square applauded as Francis pronounced the rite. Among them were some 5,000 Salvadoran pilgrims who traveled to Rome to honor their hero, Romero, who stood up to El Salvador's brutal military dictatorship to defend the rights of the poor and was slain as he said Mass.

Pope Francis is presiding over the canonization of two of the towering figures of the 20th-century Catholic Church: Pope Paul VI, who oversaw the modernizing church reforms of the 1960s, and Archbishop Oscar Romero, a human rights icon who was murdered for his defense of El Salvador's poor.

In a sign of the strong influence both men had on history's first Latin American pope, Francis wore the blood-stained rope belt that Romero wore when he was gunned down in 1980 and also used Paul VI's staff, chalice and pallium vestment.

As Francis processed in at the start of Mass, portraits of the two men fluttered in the breeze from the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica, along with five others being canonized in a service aimed at showing young people that holiness can be achieved in every walk of life.

Some 5,000 Salvadoran pilgrims travelled to Rome and tens of thousands more Salvadorans stayed up all night at home to watch it on giant TV screens outside the San Salvador cathedral where Romero's remains are entombed.

For many it was the culmination of a fraught and politicized campaign to have the church formally honor a man who publicly denounced the repression by El Salvador's military dictatorship at the start of the country's 1980-1992 civil war.</s>VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Sunday praised two of the towering figures of the 20th-century Catholic Church as prophets who shunned wealth and looked out for the poor as he canonized the modernizing Pope Paul VI and martyred Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Francis declared the two men saints at a Mass in St. Peter's Square before some 70,000 faithful, a handful of presidents and 5,000 Salvadoran pilgrims who had traveled to Rome. Tens of thousands more Salvadorans stayed up all night at home to watch it on giant TV screens outside the San Salvador cathedral where Romero's remains are entombed.

In a sign of the strong influence Paul and Romero had on history's first Latin American pope, Francis wore the blood-stained rope belt that Romero wore when he was gunned down in 1980 and also used Paul's staff, chalice and pallium vestment.

Paul presided over the modernizing yet polarizing church reforms of the 1960s, while Romero was murdered by El Salvador's right-wing death squads for his fearless defense of the poor.

In his homily, Francis called Paul a "prophet of a church turned outwards" to care for the faraway poor. He said Romero gave up his security and life to "be close to the poor and his people."

And he warned that those who don't follow their example to leave behind everything, including their wealth, risk never truly finding God.

"Wealth is dangerous and — says Jesus — even makes one's salvation difficult," Francis said.

"The love of money is the root of all evils," he said. "We see this where money is at the center, there is no room for God or for man."

For many in San Salvador, it was the culmination of a fraught and politicized campaign to have the church formally honor a man who publicly denounced the repression by El Salvador's military dictatorship at the start of the country's 1980-1992 civil war.

"I am here to give glory to Monsignor Romero," said Aida Guzman, a 68-year-old Salvadoran woman who carried photos of people killed during the war as she joined thousands in a Saturday evening procession in San Salvador. "He is a light for our people, an inspiration for all."

Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, was murdered as he celebrated Mass on March 24, 1980, in a hospital chapel. A day before he was killed, he had delivered the latest in a series of sermons demanding an end to the army's repression — sermons that had enraged El Salvador's leaders.

Almost immediately after his death, Romero became an icon of the South American left and is frequently listed along with Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi as one of the world's most influential human rights campaigners. The United Nations commemorates the anniversary of his death each year.

But his popularity with the left led to a decades-long delay in his saint-making cause at the Vatican, where right-wing cardinals led by Colombian Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo warned his elevation would embolden Marxist revolutionaries on the continent.

Eventually Pope Benedict XVI unblocked the cause and Francis saw it through to its conclusion Sunday, including his determination that Romero was a martyr for the church — killed out of hatred for the faith and for preaching the Gospel, even though his assassins were Catholics like him.

Romero's influence continues to resonate with El Salvador's youth as the country endures brutal gang violence that has made the Central American nation one of the most violent in the world.

"He is my guide, and from what I have read about his life, I want to follow in his steps," said Oscar Orellana, a 15-year-old who joined the San Salvador procession wearing a white tunic like the one Romero used to wear.

Paul VI, for his part, is best known for having presided over the final sessions of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 church meetings that opened up the Catholic Church to the world. Under his auspices, the church agreed to allow liturgy to be celebrated in the vernacular rather than in Latin and called for greater roles for the laity and improved relations with people of other faiths.

Paul is also remembered for his two most important encyclicals, or teaching documents, that have had a profound effect on the church: One, "The Progress of Peoples" denounced the mounting inequality between rich and poor, and the other, "Humanae Vitae," reaffirmed the Catholic church's opposition to artificial contraception.

The stark prohibition against contraception like birth control pills or condoms empowered conservatives but drove progressives away. Even today, studies show that most Catholics ignore that teaching and use contraception anyway.

Francis was deeply influenced by Paul, who was the pope of his formative years as a young priest in Argentina and was instrumental in giving rise to the Latin American church's "preferential option for the poor."

Francis has also adopted the "church of the poor" ethos that Paul embodied when Paul formally renounced wearing the bejeweled papal tiara.

Paul is also very important to another pope, Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, whom Paul made a cardinal in 1977. There had been speculation that the 91-year-old Benedict might attend Sunday's canonization, but officials said he has recently weakened. Instead, Francis paid a visit to Benedict at his home in the Vatican gardens on the eve of the Mass.

This story corrects the day of the procession in San Salvador to Saturday.</s>VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Sunday praised two towering figures of the 20th-century Catholic Church as prophets who shunned wealth and looked out for the poor as he made saints of Pope Paul VI and martyred Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Francis canonized two men at a Mass in St. Peter's Square before some 70,000 faithful, a handful of presidents and 5,000 Salvadoran pilgrims who traveled to Rome to honor a man considered a hero to many Latin Americans.

Tens of thousands more Salvadorans stayed up all night at home to watch the Mass on giant TV screens outside the San Salvador cathedral where Romero's remains are entombed.

In a sign of the strong influence that Paul and Romero had on the first Latin American pope, Francis wore the blood-stained rope belt that Romero wore when he was gunned down by right-wing death squads in 1980, and also used Paul's staff, chalice and pallium vestment.

Paul, who was pope from 1963-1978, presided over the modernizing yet polarizing church reforms of the 1960s. He was the pope of Francis' formative years as a young priest in Argentina and was instrumental in giving rise to the Latin American church's "preferential option for the poor" that Francis has made his own.

Francis also has a close personal connection to Romero, and like him lived through the terror of right-wing military dictatorships when Francis was in Argentina. Francis was responsible for eventually declaring Romero a martyr for his fearless denunciations of the military oppression at the start of El Salvador's 1980-1992 civil war.

In his homily, Francis called Paul a "prophet of a church turned outwards" to care for the faraway poor. He said Romero gave up his security and life to "be close to the poor and his people."

And he warned that those who don't follow their example to leave behind everything, including their wealth, risk never truly finding God.

"Wealth is dangerous and — says Jesus — even makes one's salvation difficult," Francis said.

"The love of money is the root of all evils," he said. "Where money is at the center, there is no room for God or for man."

For many Salvadorans, it was the culmination of a fraught, politicized campaign to have the church formally honor a man who spoke out for the rights of landless peasants and the poor at a time when the U.S.-backed right-wing government was seeking to quash a leftist rebellion.

"We couldn't stay home on this historic day," said Jose Martinez, who with his wife and two young children joined the crowds outside the San Salvador cathedral. "I want my children to know Monsignor, our saint, that he was a great man who raised his voice to defend his pueblo, and for that they killed him."

Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, was murdered as he celebrated Mass on March 24, 1980, in a hospital chapel. A day before he was killed, he had delivered the latest in a series of sermons demanding an end to the army's repression — sermons that had enraged El Salvador's leaders.

Almost immediately after his death, Romero became an icon of the South American left and is frequently listed along with Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi as one of the world's most influential human rights campaigners. The United Nations commemorates the anniversary of his death each year.

But his popularity with the left led to a decades-long delay in his saint-making cause at the Vatican, where right-wing cardinals led by Colombian Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo warned that his elevation would embolden Marxist revolutionaries.

Eventually Pope Benedict XVI unblocked the cause and Francis saw it through to its conclusion Sunday.

Romero's influence continues to resonate with El Salvador's youth as the country endures brutal gang violence that has made the Central American nation one of the world's most violent.

"He is my guide, and from what I have read about his life, I want to follow in his steps," said Oscar Orellana, a 15-year-old who joined the San Salvador procession wearing a white tunic like the one Romero used to wear.

Paul VI, for his part, is best known for having presided over the final sessions of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 church meetings that opened up the Catholic Church to the world. Under his auspices, the church agreed to allow liturgy to be celebrated in the vernacular rather than in Latin and called for greater roles for the laity and improved relations with people of other faiths.

Paul is also remembered for his two most important encyclicals, or teaching documents, which have had a profound effect on the church: One denounced the mounting inequality between rich and poor, and the other reaffirmed the Catholic church's opposition to artificial contraception.

The stark prohibition against contraception like birth control pills or condoms empowered conservatives but drove progressives away. Even today, studies show that most Catholics ignore that teaching and use contraception anyway.

Francis has also adopted the "church of the poor" ethos that Paul embodied when Paul formally renounced wearing the bejeweled papal tiara.

Paul is also very important to Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, whom Paul made a cardinal in 1977. Officials said the 91-year-old Benedict was too weak to attend Sunday's canonization, so Francis paid him a visit on the eve of the Mass.</s>ROME — Pope Francis canonized seven new saints Sunday, including Pope Paul VI, who concluded the Second Vatican Council, and Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated while celebrating Mass in 1980.

Paul VI was pope from 1963 to 1978 and oversaw the close of the Second Vatican Council, which introduced sweeping changes in the church, including the introduction of the use of local languages in the liturgy and a rapprochement between Catholics and other religions, notably the Jews.

The pope’s most controversial move during his turbulent, 15-year pontificate was the publication of the 1968 encyclical letter titled Humanae Vitae (“On Human Life”), which confirmed the church’s longstanding teaching regarding the immorality of the use of contraceptives to avoid pregnancy. Many inside and outside the church had expected Paul to overturn traditional teaching on contraception, along with the majority of the members of a special commission Paul had set up to study the question.

Pope Francis chose the year 2018 — the fiftieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae — for the canonization of Paul VI. Francis has often voiced his personal regard for Paul VI and has held up Humanae Vitae as a critically important document for today’s world.

In his 2016 letter, Amoris Laetitia (“The Joy of Love”), Francis cited Humanae Vitae four times, insisting that the teaching of Humanae Vitae “ought to be taken up anew in order to counter a mentality that is often hostile to life.”

A crowd of some 70,000 pilgrims, visitors, and dignitaries overflowed Saint Peter’s Square onto the Via della Conciliazione for the outdoor ceremony Sunday that took place under sunny Roman skies.

Among those attending the canonization Mass were Queen Sofia of Spain and the presidents of Italy, Chile, El Salvador, and Panama. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, was also present. Pope Paul VI is venerated among Anglicans, having reopened ecumenical dialogue with the Anglican communion in 1966 through a historic meeting in the Vatican with the archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey.

For his part, Archbishop Oscar Romero was a controversial figure for his outspoken criticism of the Salvadoran military government during the 1970s. Touted as a champion of the poor for his denunciation of oppression, critics considered him to have crossed the bounds between pastoral leadership and partisan politics.

In his homily during Mass, Pope Francis said that Paul VI “spent his life for Christ’s Gospel, crossing new boundaries and becoming its witness in proclamation and in dialogue, a prophet of a Church turned outwards, looking to those far away and taking care of the poor.”

Even in the midst of fatigue and misunderstanding, Francis said, “Paul VI bore witness in a passionate way to the beauty and the joy of following Christ totally.”

“Today he still urges us, together with the Council whose wise helmsman he was, to live our common vocation: the universal call to holiness. Not to half measures, but to holiness,” he said.

For his part, Archbishop Romero, the pope said, “left the security of the world, even his own safety, in order to give his life according to the Gospel, close to the poor and to his people, with a heart drawn to Jesus and his brothers and sisters.”</s>The Latest on Catholic Church canonizations on Sunday (all times local).

Pope Francis has declared Pope Paul VI and slain Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero saints, reciting in Latin the rite of canonization at the start of Mass in St. Peter's Square.

After hearing brief biographies of Paul, Romero and five other people canonized Sunday, Francis declared them saints and "decreed that they are to be venerated as such by the whole church."

The crowd of thousands in St. Peter's Square applauded as Francis pronounced the rite. Among them were some 5,000 Salvadoran pilgrims who traveled to Rome to honor their hero, Romero, who stood up to El Salvador's brutal military dictatorship to defend the rights of the poor and was slain as he said Mass.

Pope Francis is presiding over the canonization of two of the towering figures of the 20th-century Catholic Church: Pope Paul VI, who oversaw the modernizing church reforms of the 1960s, and Archbishop Oscar Romero, a human rights icon who was murdered for his defense of El Salvador's poor.

In a sign of the strong influence both men had on history's first Latin American pope, Francis wore the blood-stained rope belt that Romero wore when he was gunned down in 1980 and also used Paul VI's staff, chalice and pallium vestment.

As Francis processed in at the start of Mass, portraits of the two men fluttered in the breeze from the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica, along with five others being canonized in a service aimed at showing young people that holiness can be achieved in every walk of life.

Some 5,000 Salvadoran pilgrims travelled to Rome and tens of thousands more Salvadorans stayed up all night at home to watch it on giant TV screens outside the San Salvador cathedral where Romero's remains are entombed.

For many it was the culmination of a fraught and politicized campaign to have the church formally honor a man who publicly denounced the repression by El Salvador's military dictatorship at the start of the country's 1980-1992 civil war.</s>Pope Francis will canonize two of the most important and contested figures of the 20th-century Catholic Church, declaring Pope Paul VI and the martyred Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero as models of saintliness for the faithful today.

Sunday's ceremony is likely to be emotional for Francis, since he was greatly influenced by both men and privately told confidantes he wanted them made saints during his papacy. The two represent the epitome of the outward-looking church that Francis has championed, one that is close to the poor and fights injustice.

Paul VI and Romero also endured strong opposition from within the church in life and after death — a fate Francis is experiencing now amid the church's burgeoning sex abuse and cover-up scandal.

These two towering figures will be canonized along with five others in a ceremony designed to show that holiness can be attained in all walks of life.

When Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio delivered the 2013 stump speech to cardinals that got him elected Pope Francis, he made only one citation in the text: Pope Paul VI.

When later that year Francis issued the mission statement of his papacy, he based it largely on a 1975 text by Paul on evangelization, which Francis once called "the greatest pastoral document" of the modern church.

"One of the first things he told me when he was elected was that he hoped, he prayed to be able to canonize Paul VI," said Francis' former chief of staff, Cardinal Angelo Becciu.

Giovanni Maria Vian, editor of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, said Bergoglio matured as a priest, a Jesuit and a Christian while Paul VI was pope from 1963-1978.

"It's understood that Paul VI is his pope," Vian said.

Paul is perhaps best known for having presided over the final sessions of Vatican II, the tumultuous 1962-65 church meetings that modernized the Catholic Church and opened it up to the world, allowing liturgy to be celebrated in the vernacular rather than in Latin and calling for greater roles for the laity and improved relations with people of other faiths.

During his 15-year papacy, Paul VI ushered in other reforms as well, including that of the travelling papacy.

Paul stepped foot on each of the five continents, but two of his trips stand out most: In 1964, he travelled to the Holy Land and met with the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, a first since the schism that divided Christianity 1,000 years earlier.

A year later, Paul travelled to the United Nations, where he delivered the now-famous plea for peace as the U.S. military involvement in Vietnam escalated: "Never again war! Never again war!"

But it was Paul's 1968 encyclical "Humanae Vitae" that marked his papacy, reaffirming the church's opposition to artificial contraception.

Issued in an era of the contraceptive pill, the 1960s' sexual revolution and alarm about overpopulation, the stark prohibition empowered conservatives but drove progressives away.

Even today, the document remains one of the most contested and ignored of papal encyclicals, with studies showing that most Catholics disregard it and use artificial contraception.

"It's a text that isn't rooted in reality, where life is absent and above all women are absent," Monique Baujard, former head of family services at the French bishops' conference, wrote last month in a Vatican's women's magazine.

Francis also longed to declare Archbishop Oscar Romero a saint, convinced that he was a true martyr for the faith who willingly gave up his life to stand with El Salvador's poor and denounce the violence of the military dictatorship.

Romero, archbishop of San Salvador, was gunned down by right-wing death squads as he celebrated Mass on March 24, 1980 in a hospital chapel. The military had vehemently opposed his preaching against the army's repression at the start of the country's 1980-1992 civil war.

Almost immediately after his death, Romero became an icon of the South American left, with his image frequently appearing alongside the likes of Che Guevara and Salvadore Allende.

But that post-mortem politicized fame cost Romero dearly as his saint-making cause wound its way through the Vatican. Conservative Latin American prelates, led by the late Colombian Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, feared his perceived association with liberation theology would embolden the movement that holds that Jesus' teachings require followers to fight for social and economic justice.

"Romero found himself caught in a substantively political conflict between those who saw him as a revolutionary — which he absolutely wasn't since he was very gentle — and those who saw him equally as a revolutionary but in a negative sense," Romero biographer Roberto Morozzo della Rocca said.

After the cause was held up for three decades, Pope Benedict XVI finally unblocked it in 2012 and Francis, history's first Latin American pope, pushed it through to its final phases.

A few months after Romero was beatified in 2015, Francis denounced how Romero had suffered as a martyr twice — once when he was gunned down, and again when his own brother bishops "defamed, slandered and had dirt thrown on his name."

Even earlier, though, Francis made clear he wanted to see Romero honored.

Romero's former secretary, the Rev. Jesus Delgado Acevedo, revealed a private conversation he had with then-Cardinal Bergoglio in 2007 on the sidelines of a conference of Latin American bishops in 2007 in Aparecida, Brazil.

He recalled asking Bergoglio, then the archbishop of Buenos Aires and an influential cardinal at the meeting, "Eminence, one day will Oscar Romero be canonized? Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo told me it will never happen."

Delgado quoted Bergoglio as saying "Listen, if I become pope the first thing I'll do is send Lopez Trujillo to San Salvador" to make him a saint.
Óscar Romero, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Salvador assassinated while celebrating Mass in 1980, is canonized by Pope Francis. Six other canonizations, including that of Pope Paul VI, are also announced.