SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador – Cheers rang from a crowd of hundreds of thousands Saturday as former Archbishop Óscar Romero, whose defense of the poor and repressed divided both his nation and the Church, was beatified.
In a move long resisted by conservative Catholics and the Salvadoran right, Archbishop Oscar Romero will be declared "blessed" in a ceremony Saturday led by the pope's envoy, Cardinal Angelo Amato, in San Salvador's central plaza.
On Tuesday, the chapel at the Hospital Divina Providencia in San Salvador, where Romero was killed 35 years ago, was packed with people who came to honor the former archbishop.
Today, Salvadorans will remember Archbishop Oscar Romero at masses in his honor across the country, and with a ceremony in San Salvador cathedral led by Panamanian Cardinal José Luis Lacunza.
The Salvadoran daily La Prensa Gráfica reported Tuesday that voting authorities carried out two test tallies prior to the election, and that both were failures.
For the first time, voters will be able to select individual candidates from any party rather than being forced to vote for a single party with an established list of candidates. Voters can still opt to simply choose a party.
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador – Former guerrilla commander Salvador Sánchez Cerén was sworn in Sunday as president of El Salvador with the pressing tasks of dealing with violent gangs, a struggling economy and endemic poverty.
El Salvador's election officials on Sunday declared ex-leftist guerrilla commander Salvador Sánchez Cerén the winner of a March 9 presidential election, after rejecting the opposition's last challenges to the results.
