A Romero beatification false alarm [UPDATED]

First it was a few stray tweets yesterday afternoon from relatively obscure sources, referring to an announcement that Archbishop Oscar Romero would be beatified in 2015. Hours later, the Spanish-language newspaper El Pais reported that the source of this talk was the renowned theologian Jon Sobrino, who was saying that he had been told by the current Archbishop of San Salvador, José Luis Escobar, that Pope Francis had told Escobar, in private conversation, that this would happen. Hardly an official announcement, but interesting!

A retraction soon followed. Last night came this series of five tweets from Monsignor Rafael Urrutia, vice-chancellor of the El Salvador Episcopal Conference (translation mine):

“Following the instructions of the archbishop, I communicate to all that it is not true that Mons. Romero will be beatified in 2015.”

“It is up to Pope Francis to officially announce a beatification.”

“The archbishop only comments that things are moving well along this road and that things bode well for the cause, with many possibilities.”

“And if so we will have to start thinking about where the liturgical act could be performed.”

“We rejoice at the interest in good news like this, and we invite everyone to pray for a speedy beatification of Bishop Romero.”

I’ll update this if anything more comes to light.