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. 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. 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. 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. 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.” 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. 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. 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. 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.
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.