Around a quarter of a million people have attended a beatification ceremony in El Salvador for Archbishop Oscar Romero, 35 years after his assassination.<br /><br /> The bloodied shirt he died in was paraded through the crowd, which included former Marxist rebels as well as Catholics from around the world.<br /><br /> Romero’s path to sainthood stalled under the last two pontiffs but he was declared a martyr earlier this year by Pope Francis.<br /><br /> The archbishop was gunned down as he celebrated mass. He had become a staunch critic of the repression of the poor by the military dictatorship, which involved widespread arrests and the use of torture and death squads.<br /><br /> Only the previous day he had delivered the last of many denunciations of the killings.<br /><br /> No-one has ever been prosecuted for his murder.<br /><br /> After Romero’s death, tens of thousands died in the civil war which broke out between the US-backed government and leftist insurgents, who now form the ruling party.<br /><br /> The war ended in 1992 but gang violence ha
