He was proclaimed blessed in an apostolic letter read on behalf of Pope Francis by Italian Cardinal Angelo Amato during a Mass in South Africa's northern Limpopo province on Sunday.

The ceremony in Tshitanini village was attended by some 30,000 people.

Blessed Daswa was beaten to death 25 years ago by fellow villagers after he refused to join in witchcraft-related activities ordered by local elders as a response to damaging storms.

A convert to Catholicism, he reportedly refused to pay a sorcerer who promised to end the storms.

After being stoned by his assailants, Blessed Daswa ran to a hut before being found by the mob and beaten to death with a stick.

His murderers then poured boiling water in his ears and nostrils - all of which happened on February 2, 1990, the day the apartheid regime announced it would release Nelson Mandela.

"While his executioners were killing him, Benedict was on his knees praying. He prayed until the last minute of his life," said Fr Andre Bohas, one of the initiators of the beatification process.

He "is a model for all the people in Africa".

Blessed Daswa's eight children - including one born a few months after his death - sat in the front at the ceremony, alongside their 91-year-old grandmother Ipa.

"Proud is an understatement to describe what I feel," said Mutshiro Michael, 33, one of Daswa's sons, adding he had forgiven his father's murderers.

Virtually unknown when he died, Blessed Daswa's fame grew throughout South Africa's Catholic community, with villagers starting to commemorate the anniversary of his death.

His feast day will be celebrated on February 1.

Around eight per cent of South Africa's population is Catholic.

During his Sunday Angelus address in Rome, Pope Francis paid tribute to Blessed Daswa.

"In his life he always showed great consistency, courageously defending Christian views and rejecting worldly and pagan customs," Pope Francis said.

Sources

• AFP
• Vatican Radio
• Reuters
• Image: La Voz Catholica

"Romero, friend, the people are with you," the congregation chanted at a square in San Salvador.

Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, presided over the beatification Mass.

In his homily the cardinal said that "the figure of Romero is still alive and giving comfort to the marginalised of the earth."

"His option for the poor was not ideological, but evangelical. His charity extended to the persecutors."

Blessed Romero was assassinated in 1980 while celebrating Mass a day after ordering soldiers and police to stop killing innocent civilians.

While his killers were never found, many blame the assassination on right-wing death squads.

The archbishop had been a fierce critic of the US-backed military regime that seized power in 1979.

The blood-stained short he wore when he was killed is now a relic and it was given some prominence at the beatification Mass.

Eight deacons carried the shirt, displayed in a glass case, to the altar.

One of the offertory gifts at the beatification Mass was a book "From Madness to Hope" that detailed some of the human rights atrocities committed in El Salvador during the conflict from 1979 to 1992 between leftist guerrillas and a right-wing dictatorship.

In a message, Pope Francis stated that, in a time of difficulty in El Salvador, Archbishop Romero knew "how to guide, defend and protect his flock, remaining faithful to the Gospel and in communion with the whole Church".

"His ministry was distinguished by a particular attention to the poor and marginalised," the Pope noted.

Archbishop Romero's feast day will be March 24, the "day he was born into heaven", the Pontiff wrote.

In February, Francis signed the decree recognising Archbishop Romero as a martyr, a person killed "in hatred of the faith".

A hero to the liberation theology movement, Blessed Romero's beatification was delayed for decades over political concerns.

But the way forward for his cause was unblocked by Pope Benedict XVI.

Sources

• Catholic Herald
• Catholic News Agency
• CNN
• Image: Business Insider

Cardinal Angelo Amato told a Rome conference: ""There is no fourth secret and there are no other hidden secrets."

Cardinal Amato said he had "the privilege" of reading the original manuscripts of the secrets of Fatima when he served as secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 2002 to 2008.

"I meditated on them at length because they cast a light of faith and hope on the very sad events of the past century, but not only," he said.

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