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A young woman leads her classmates at a primary school in Nairobi, Kenya, Sept. 9, 2015. The empowerment of women was the focus of a March 19 panel discussion at the United Nations, with the speakers saying that women should not be required to divest themselves of femininity to achieve empowerment and gender equality. (CNS photo/Thomas Mukoya, Reuters)

By Beth Griffin 
Catholic News Service

UNITED NATIONS (CNS) — Women should not be required to divest themselves of femininity to achieve empowerment and gender equality, according to panelists at a March 19 event at the United Nations.

Women’s dignity and distinctiveness also must not be sacrificed to win social protections, public services and sustainable infrastructure, they said.

Speakers addressed “Protecting Femininity and Human Dignity in Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality Policies Today” at a side event to the 63rd session of the Commission on the Status of Women. The program was co-sponsored by the Vatican’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations.

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Iglesia de Roma, a small church in St. Oscar Romero’s hometown of Ciudad Barrios, El Salvador, is seen by pilgrims in this Jan. 30, 2019, photo. Iglesia de Roma, or Church of Rome, is where the first Salvadoran saint was baptized. (CNS photo/Rhina Guidos)

By Rhina Guidos 
Catholic News Service

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (CNS) — Even before St. Oscar Romero became a saint Oct. 14, his native country of El Salvador saw an increase in tourism attributed to pilgrims or those wanting to know more about his life and death.

Figures from El Salvador’s Ministry of Tourism say a “considerable number” of the 1.8 million tourists to the country who traveled there in 2013 went “exclusively to learn about the places where Oscar Arnulfo Romero lived.”

After his canonization, the Archdiocese of San Salvador published a list of towns and cities for those interested in learning more about El Salvador’s first saint. The list includes San Salvador, the country’s capital, where many tours about St. Romero begin and end.

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St. Oscar Romero is pictured in an undated photo greeting worshippers in San Salvador, El Salvador. (CNS photo/Octavio Duran)

By Rhina Guidos 
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) — One of the founders of liberation theology in Latin America said he supports an effort to declare St. Oscar Romero a doctor of the Catholic Church.

During a March 18 livestream of an event celebrating the Salvadoran saint canonized in October, Dominican Father Gustavo Gutierrez, considered by many as the father of liberation theology, said he thought the idea of naming St. Romero a doctor of the church was an “excellent” proposition.

While some value a person’s writings or academic record, when it comes to declaring a saint a doctor of the church, “love toward another person is worth more than all of the theologies,” said Father Gutierrez, recalling something he’d read from another theologian. He was speaking via internet to those gathered for “Romero Days,” an event sponsored by the University of Notre Dame.

St. Romero’s feast day is March 24.

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Italian pilgrim Thierry Bonaventura takes a photo in front of a mural depicting the martyrdom of St. Oscar Romero Jan. 30, 2019, at St. Oscar Romero Church in Ciudad Barrios, El Salvador. The first Salvadoran saint was born in this eastern El Salvador city. (CNS photo/Rhina Guidos)

By Rhina Guidos 
Catholic News Service

EL MOZOTE, El Salvador (CNS) — I could see his slow and gentle steps seeking distance from the woman’s story near the tree. When friend Thierry Bonaventura told me he wanted to come with me to El Salvador, I warned him that my native country was a complicated place — one of great natural beauty, materially poor, with generous and spiritual people, but whose past and difficult present you can’t and shouldn’t ignore.

I could see during a Jan. 30 visit to El Mozote that he found himself deep in that complicated place. We made what I thought would be a quick stop en route to visit places in the life of El Salvador’s St. Oscar Romero when we ran into Serapia Chicas, a native of El Mozote, near a monument in the center of the village.

She told us how soldiers murdered almost a thousand of her fellow villagers in 1981, including hundreds of children, some whose remains were buried in a common grave close to where we were standing.

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