VATICAN CITY — 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. 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. 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. Paul is also very important to another pope, Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, whom Paul made a cardinal in 1977.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer October 14, 2018 10:07 UTC