Berkley Center

Paul Elie uses the ceremony declaring the sainthood of Archbishop Óscar Romero as an opportunity to reassess the Catholic Church's dubious history in Latin America. To celebrate Romero, Elie says, the Church has to address unholy episodes in its past—episodes as troubling, in their own way, as the current sexual-abuse scandal. The canonization also forces us to consider Pope Francis in a different light—as a figure scarred by Latin American politics and his own encounter with fear and violence, compromise and complicity. The article was published in the November 2018 edition of the Atlantic, with the print headline of "The Martyr and the Pope.”