A Martyr Whose Sainthood May Be Inevitable : El Salvador: Ten years ago, the Pope refused to beatify slain Archbishop Romero for political reasons. Today, he may have no other choice.

No figure in the history of the Roman Catholic Church commands greater veneration from Pope John Paul II than St. Stanislaw. In 1079, the patron saint of the Pope’s native Poland was assassinated while at church on the orders of King Boleslaw the Bold. He was elevated to sainthood in 1253. The pontiff describes the bishop as “the advocate of reconciliation of all his fellow countrymen.”

The Pope is now faced with the infinitely delicate test of deciding whether the church should accord a similar recognition to Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero of El Salvador, who was murdered, in 1980, by political enemies while celebrating mass at a hospital chapel. Last month, Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas of El Salvador formally introduced, to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, a petition for the “necessary steps” to be taken toward Romero’s beatification, which precedes recognition of sainthood.

Ten years ago, the Pope refused to allow Romero’s canonization process to open, even though Romero was slain for exactly the same cause--trying to bring peace to a civil conflict--that St. Stanislaw was. The pontiff contended that Romero was “a political banner because they say he was a guerrilla” alongside Salvador’s Marxist rebels. As such, he was an ideological problem.

How the Pope handles the Romero case is significant because it symbolizes--and highlights--the great contradictions of his reign, now in its 15th year. The Pope remains relentlessly opposed to abortion and women priests; whenever possible, he seeks to give conservative theologians positions of power and influence. Yet, in his visits to more than 100 countries and in his encyclicals, the Pope inevitably raises his voice against social injustice. Indeed, improving the human condition is his constant theme, in speech and prayer.

The Pope, who survived an assassination attempt in 1981, may have softened his harsh political assessment of Romero since the negotiated end of the 12-year Salvador civil war last December. But it is known that he never cared much for the Salvadoran prelate who became famous for his advocacy of the “theology of liberation,” a Latin American religious movement the Vatican regarded as Marxist-inspired, and his incessant protests against murders of suspected guerrilla sympathizers, even Catholic priests and nuns, by the regime’s “death squads.”

In his “Diary,” published in 1989 by the Salvadoran episcopate, Romero poignantly describes his visit to the Pope in Rome in May, 1979. After presenting folders of evidence of political assassinations, including that of a Jesuit priest he knew well, the Pope chillingly recommended “much equilibrium and prudence, especially in making specific denunciations,” adding that “it was better to remain confined to principles because it was risky to fall into errors of equivocations in making concrete denunciations.” Romero was also threatened with the appointment of a permanent apostolic administrator in El Salvador, who would outrank him, because of the deep split between politically liberal and conservative Salvadoran bishops. And when the Pope visited El Salvador in 1982, he conspicuously stayed away from the site of Romero’s slaying.

Curiously, Romero was regarded as a theologically safe, conservative cleric when he was named archbishop by Pope Paul VI in 1976. But the killing, three weeks after his installation, of the Rev. Rutilio Grande, a Jesuit, and the Salvadoran government’s failure to investigate it, turned him, overnight, into a champion of the oppressed. As Kenneth L. Woodward notes in his book “Making Saints,” this incident “emboldened Romero to accept a larger prophetic role as the voice of the Salvadoran people. . . . Never before had a Catholic bishop spoken so directly, so concretely about the abuses suffered by the masses of Salvadorans.”

The cause of Romero’s sainthood may also be aided by current political events in his homeland. Rivera’s formal request for the initiation of the beatification process coincided with the publication of a report by the United Nations’ Commission on the Truth, which investigated human-rights violations in El Salvador during the civil war. The commission found, among other things, that Salvadoran rightists, working hand-in-hand with U.S.-trained Salvadoran military commanders, were directly responsible for the slaying of Romero, four American nuns in 1980 and six Jesuit priests in 1989. In these and most other instances, senior U.S. officials cooperated with Salvadoran authorities in covering up the crimes, assigning the blame to the leftist guerrillas.

The report clearly undercuts the Pope’s suspicions of Romero’s political allegiances, thereby enhancing Romero’s chances of achieving beatification--being declared blessed and worthy of public veneration. In the case of martyrs, the church no longer demands proof of performed miracles (miracles are still required for sainthood) because death is the ultimate sacrifice. The Pope acknowledged in 1983 that Romero was a martyr.

Still, the pontiff has the final binding word, especially in controversial situations, and he may declare, notwithstanding the archbishop’s merits, that his beatification would be “inopportune” at this time. Saint-making, clearly, is a political affair at the Vatican.

But that could work to the advantage of those seeking Romero’s beatification. Last year, the Pope triggered one of the greatest recent church controversies by arranging, in record time, the beatification of Monsignor Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, the Spanish founder of the lay order of Opus Dei, a highly conservative and powerful Rome-based Catholic organization. Though Escriva was not martyred and is not considered an outstanding theologian, the Pope pronounced him “heroically virtuous” and, last May, the church declared him “Blessed Josemaria.” Opus Dei itself became the most important order in the Vatican, displacing Jesuit influence at the Holy See.

It is thus entirely possible that Romero will be beatified to restore some balance to the church’s political theology in the aftermath of the widely criticized Escriva elevation. The Pope already holds, after 14 years, the papacy’s record for the largest number of beatifications and canonizations: 400 beatifications and 267 canonizations, as of March, 1993. The runner-up is Pope Pius XII with a mere 23 beatifications and 33 canonizations during his 19-year reign. The present pontiff apparently prefers to link beatifications and canonizations to his worldwide missionary endeavor, often announcing them during his foreign trips.

El Salvador is not on his current travel schedule, but whether he returns there or not, the Pope may conclude that when all is said and done, Oscar Arnulfo Romero is as worthy of veneration for his martyrdom as was St. Stanislaw.