By Rhina Guidos SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (CNS) – Some thought this day would never arrive. Others hoped and some always knew it would. On May 23, the Catholic Church, beatified Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdamez, of El Salvador, who was assassinated in 1980 while celebrating Mass, just a day after pleading and ordering […]
Latin America
Romero Lives in the Salvadoran People
“If they kill me, I shall rise in the Salvadoran people” – The legacy of Oscar Romero. I have heard this statement of the late Archbishop Oscar Romero countless times as I showed the movie “Romero” every semester to my high school students and read it over and over in books and publications about him. But while in El Salvador in March celebrating the 35th anniversary of his assassination, I saw the truth and reality of these words as I walked and prayed with the Salvadoran people.
Church In U.S. Should Be the Good Samaritan
By Father William J. Byron, S.J. Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, archbishop of Tegucigalpa in Honduras and past president of the Latin American bishops’ council, was on the campus of St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia at the end of April to participate in a meeting of about 250 Catholic community organizers gathered to express their hopes […]
Pope Outlines Temptations In Latin American Church
RIO DE JANEIRO (CNS) – Reducing the faith to a worldly ideology, prizing administrative efficiency over missionary zeal and exalting the role of clergy to the detriment of the laity are some of the major “temptations” undermining evangelization in Latin America, Pope Francis told Church leaders from the region. “The decision for missionary discipleship will […]
Pope Asks Permission to Visit
by Cindy Wooden and Francis X. Rocca RIO DE JANEIRO (CNS) – Pope Francis returned to his native Latin America July 22, asking for open hearts, even after the irrepressible crowds made it clear he had them. The 76-year-old pope’s first international trip involved a 12-hour flight from Rome, taking him back to the continent […]
Latin America Needs Permanent Deacons
Father Peter J. Daly Pope Benedict XVI’s visits to Mexico and Cuba were good things. Both countries are extremely troubled. The Catholic Church in those countries could use the encouragement of the Church’s supreme pastor. I’ve never been to Cuba, but I have frequently been to Mexico and Nicaragua over the past 12 years. We […]
Church in Latin America
When Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Mexico and Cuba in late March, what kind of Catholic Church will he find? Some say that while the Church remains strong in Latin America, Pentecostal sects have been making inroads. Others points to a Church in a state of religious flux and economic uncertainty. The most recent statistics […]
Trip Will Be Benedict’s Third to Latin America
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Benedict XVI will meet with Cuban President Raul Castro, Mexican President Felipe Calderon and bishops and Catholics from the region when he visits Mexico and Cuba in late March. He will also greet bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean as well as pray at the shrine of Our Lady […]