Pope makes El Salvador’s Oscar Romero a saint

Pope Francis has 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 canonised Pope Paul VI and martyred Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Francis declared the two men saints at a Mass in St Peter’s Square before tens of thousands of pilgrims, a handful of presidents and some 5,000 Salvadoran pilgrims.

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

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

Paul presided over the modernising yet polarising church reforms of the 1960s, while Archbishop Romero was murdered by El Salvador’s right-wing death squads for his fearless defence of the poor.

In his homily, Francis called Paul a “prophet of a church turned outwards” to care for the faraway poor.

He said Archbishop Romero gave up his security and life to “be close to the poor and his people”.

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

“Wealth is dangerous and…