Pope Francis has cleared the way for the likely beatification of Salvadoran Bishop Oscar Romero, who was murdered while celebrating mass in 1980.  The Catholic Church had previously banned any talk of such an honor for Romero over concerns that he harbored Marxist ideas.

“For me Romero is a man of God,” the pontiff said on the plane bringing him back from a trip to South Korea.  “There are no doctrinal problems and it is very important that (the beatification) is done quickly.”

Romero was an outspoken critic of the US-backed military regime running El Salvador during its bloody civil war, which pit Left-wing rebels against government death squads trained at “The School of the Americas” – a Pentagon-run facility where the US military officials provided “anti-communist counterinsurgency training” that usually led to torture, disappearances, and other atrocities in the fascist dictatorships of Latin America. 

No one has ever been charged for Romero’s killing.  But in 2010, then-President Mauricio Funes – El Salvador’s first Left-wing leader since the end of the civil war – officially apologized on behalf of the state and unveiled a mural in his honor.

Beatification is the process of declaring a person as “blessed”, and is the necessary prelude to full sainthood.

Bishop Romero was one of the main proponents of Liberation Theology, which is an interpretation of Christian faith through the perspective of the poor.