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| St. Romero figured at the Amazon Synod in October. |
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The movement in the nomination of any candidate for Doctor of the Church advances at a glacial pace and therefore I even wondered if it was worth offering an end-of-year balance in the case of St. Oscar A. Romero, the Salvadoran martyr who was just barely canonized in October 2018. Reacting to demands that we might call “dottore subito” (doctor right away), similar to the ones that called for John Paul II to be canonized immediately, the current archbishop of San Salvador asked Pope Francis to initiate a process to name Romero “Doctor of the Church” the day after he was canonized.
Despite the slow motion that usually characterizes such a process, there is enough to report to justify this post. First, Eminens Doctrina can confirm a predictable and not altogether surprising application of brakes to the request from some sectors to open a process in the Vatican, perhaps to avoid having a premature or runaway cause. The Roman authorities have confirmed that it is too early to begin a process with any seriousness, given that the opening of such a case presumes that the candidate’s teachings have been widely disseminated and absorbed, which for Archbishop Romero, it is still too early to say.
On another note, the death of Fr. Robert Pelton and Archbishop Leon Kalenga, the most enthusiastic promoters of the cause, has made 2019 an annus horribilis for the doctoral cause. Father Pelton proposed Romero as a “Pastoral Doctor of the Universal Church” in March 2017. The proposal was taken up in May of that year by Archbishop Kalenga, then Apostolic Nuncio in El Salvador, who presented it to an assembly of the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM), “spontaneously and effusively inciting great and massive applause,” according to a CELAM report. Both had continued cheering on the cause from their respective posts. In fact, Archbishop Kalenga identified it as a to-do item he assigned to his successor in his farewell address when Nuncio was appointed in Argentina.
Archbishop Kalenga died on June 12 in Rome, after a serious illness. The Congolese prelate was a canonist and had some closeness with Pope Francis, who appointed him as his representative for his homeland. This should have given him great authority to promote the cause. Archbishop Kalenga is credited with mobilizing the Salvadoran episcopal conference to promote the cause for the beatification and canonization of the first Salvadoran saint. When the new Nuncio in El Salvador, Archbishop Santo Gangemi, celebrated the Mass for the first anniversary of Romero’s canonization this year, his lengthy homily did not speak about “Romero, doctor of the Church.”
Father Pelton died on November 4 at the age of 98. Among his pending projects, he was compiling a history of Latin American theology, in which he situated both Archbishop Romero and Pope Francis. He also wanted to establish an advisory board made up of theologians and scholars to coordinate research and studies on Romero to provide support to the Salvadoran Church to promote Romero’s cause for doctor. I know, because Fr. Pelton had invited me to join the project. With his death, there is no one left who would call me to talk about Romero, Doctor of the Church. It may well be that some may accept my call and talk enthusiastically about the issue, but now there is no one who would initiate such a call.
Another death of a great Romero devotee came when Robert Waldrop, founder of the Oklahoma City “Oscar Romero” Catholic Worker House died on August 30. Although he was neither a cleric nor a theologian nor a scholar, Waldrop helped spread the Romeroist spirituality. In 2002, he presented “Seven Lent Sermons by Oscar Romero”, a collection of fragments of homilies, grouped into seven headings, which this blog will publish next year. Waldrop also wrote prayers and other works of spirituality in homage to Romero and other saints and heroes of social justice, including Dorothy Day and Stanley Rother, among others. Waldrop was a great fighter and a great Catholic worker.
But not all the news is discouraging. An important, positive development was that the influential theologian Gustavo Gutierrez has endorsed the idea of Romero, doctor, calling it an “excellent” initiative. To the extent that Fr. Gutierrez, “Father of Liberation Theology,” is an influential theologian, he could urge other theologians to study Romero and incorporate him into their analysis, which would help advance the cause. Gutierrez has experienced a kind of vindication in Peru, where he was recently awarded an honorary doctorate and was praised by the new Archbishop of Lima Carlos Castillo (“He taught us to see reality with the eyes of the poor “). Another positive note that may go unnoticed is the vote by the conference of American bishops in favor of granting the title Doctor of the Church to the former Christian Father San Irenaeus. The import is that Irenaeus was a martyr, and his acceptance would leave the field free for other martyrs, including St. Oscar Romero (until now, no martyr has been named a doctor).
The first Salvadoran saint will also have company next year, when Eminens Doctrina predicts that there will be four new blessed—martyrs, all—from the Central American nation. In the first quarter of the year, favorable decrees can be expected for Fr. Rutilio Grande, S.J. and his two companions, Manuel Solorzano and Nelson Lemus, killed in 1977, as well as Father Cosme Spessotto, OFM, of Italian birth, but murdered in El Salvador in 1980. The new blesseds will raise the profile of Saint Romero, as he tops the list. As Francis said in 2014: “there are others who were killed, but none as prominent as Romero.”
Finally, Pope Francis was asked when he was returning from his recent trip to Asia if he was still planning to publish an encyclical on just war theory. It has been thought that this would include some reference to Romero, who discussed nonviolence in his fourth pastoral letter. “Yes, the project is there, but the next Pope will do it, because I barely have time,” Francis said with his usual candor. “There are other projects on the back burner ...: one on peace for example, it is there, it is maturing.” This is another thing that would help a lot to promote the doctorate, but for now there is little movement.
Therefore, 2019 cautions us to moderate expectations and settle in for a long wait.
