President-Elect Salvador Sanchez Ceren meets the Pope Francis in Rome
The Pope Francis met this Friday with Salvadoran President-Elect Salvador Sanchez Ceren, at the Vartican in Rome, in a historical visit in which the ex-guerrilla commandant thanked the Pontif’s efforts to the beatification of San Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero.
Romero, 62, was killed on March 24, 1980 by death squad members supported by the military when celebrating mass in his Church La Divina Providencia in San Salvador.
His canonization process began in 1994 and, after several years of stagnation, Francisco reactivated the cause in 2013 to beatify and make Romero become the first saint in Salvadoran history.
The audience, at the Pontiff 's Private Library at the Vatican Papal Palaces, lasted for 30 minutes, after which the president-elect said he was " very happy to meet with a Pope so loved by the Salvadoran people ."
Sanchez Ceren asked the Pope’s blessing for his presidency, which begins the first of June, 2014.
The President-Elect kissed the Pope’s ring, as part of the protocol, and reiterated that he was "very happy to be for the first time in the Vatican with the Pope, to whom he gave a painting of the figure of Archbishop Romero, painted by famous artist Joshua Villalta .
He also presented a stole made by artisans of La Palma, in the north of El Salvador, who specialized in making guerrillas combat clothing during the civil war.
The Pope, meanwhile, gave Sanchez Ceren a medallion of a saint and document of the V General Conference of the Episcopate of Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAM ) in Aparecida, Brazil, in 2007.
At parting, Francisco wished a speedy recovery of Margarita Villalta, Sanchez Ceren’s wife, who came to the Vatican walking with a cane due to surgery practiced on her left leg.
The five-person delegation that accompanied Sanchez Ceren were Foreign Minister, Jaime Miranda, Margarita, his wife and two diplomatic representatives accredited to the Vatican.
Sanchez Ceren , 69, who is Catholic , will be the first former guerrilla to come to power in El Salvador and the fourth in Latin America, after Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, José Mujica Uruguayan and Brazilian Dilma Rousseff.
FMLNUSA
