Pope Francis canonizes murdered Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero and Pope Paul VI

Portraits of Pope Paul VI (R) and the martyred Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero (L) are seen during a canonization ceremony mass in St Peter's Square at the Vatican, on October 14, 2018.
(Image credit: Filippo Monteforte/Getty Images)

Pope Francis on Sunday canonized Pope Paul VI and the murdered Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, declaring the two new saints before a crowd of 70,000 at the Vatican.

He called Paul, who was pope from 1963 to 1978, a "prophet of a church turned outwards." Today the former pope is best known for his work in the Second Vatican Council and his authorship of the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae (On Human Life).

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.