Pope to canonize 20th Century icons Oscar Romero, Paul VI

Thousands of people are converging on the Vatican for the canonization of two towering figures of the 20th Century Catholic Church: Pope Paul VI, who oversaw modernizing church reforms of the 1960s, and Archbishop Oscar Romero, a human rights icon who was murdered for his defense of El Salvador’s poor.

Pope Francis is to celebrate Sunday’s saint-making Mass wearing the blood-stained rope belt Romero wore when he was gunned down in 1980 and using Paul VI’s staff, chalice and pallium vestment — evidence of the influence both men had on history’s first Latin American pope.

Some 5,000 Salvadoran pilgrims traveled to Rome for the ceremony, and thousands more stayed up all night to watch it on TV screens outside the San Salvador cathedral where Romero’s remains are entombed.