Scottish Catholic Observer

The gathering took place in the city’s St Martin in the Fields Church, Trafalgar Square, and was organised by the Archbishop Romero Trust and Pax Christi.

Marie Dennis, co-president of Pax Christi International, a global Catholic peace movement, said that Archbishop Romero of El Salvador had an ‘unequivocal belief in Resurrection.’

“We are invited again—by the life and witness of this great saint of our times—to do the same,” Ms Dennis told those gathered. She also urged a rethink on what we understand by security, saying that ‘the orchestration of fear and the response to orchestrated fear have become the primary occupation of too many people.’

At the start of the service, the congregation laid candles around a bust of Archbishop Romero, who was assassinated by a right-wing death squad on March 24, 1980 while celebrating Mass.

His assassination occurred one day after he gave a sermon calling on Salvadoran soldiers, as Christians, to obey God’s higher order and to stop carrying out the government’s repression and violations of basic human rights. According to an audio recording of the Mass, he was shot while elevating the chalice at the end of the Eucharistic rite.

Prayers were said at Saturday’s service for progress in the Canonisation cause of Oscar Romero (left) and, at the conclusion of the service, El Salvador’s Ambassador to the UK, Werner Matias Romero, described 2013 as a ‘year of hope for El Salvador, especially with the election of the first Latin American Pope.’

He reported that when the country’s first lady, Vanda Pignato, conversed with Pope Francis after his inauguration last week and showed him her lapel badge carrying an image of Archbishop Romero, the Pope, ‘expressed his hope to have a rapid Canonisation process of Archbishop Romero, as a recognition of his legacy.’