Pope Francis Declares US Martyr: Oklahoma Priest Stanley Rother Makes History After Being Murdered In Guatemala

The Catholic church has been enduring a lot over the past few weeks with their new outlook on abortion and child sex abuse allegations. While Pope Francis has been instrumental in many of the changes underway, the leader has now declared a martyr. It is being reported that a missionary priest in Guatemala has been killed.

According to the National Catholic Reporter, Stanley Rother, the U.S. missionary priest who was murdered in Guatemala in 1981 became a step closer to being considered a saint in the Catholic church on Friday, after the Vatican office in charge of sainthood causes officially declared him a martyr who had been killed for his faith.

Fr. Rother, a priest of the Oklahoma City archdiocese who served for nearly 15 years in Guatemala before he was shot dead in his parish church, is making history beyond the grave now being the first American to be recognized by the Vatican as a martyr.

Rother who was one of several priests murdered in 1981 during the Guatemalan civil war which lasted from 1960-1996 was in the country translating the New Testament into an Indian dialect.

Although Rother initially went home to Oklahoma after being placed on a death list, he came back to Guatemala declaring: "the shepherd cannot run." He was killed within days of his return to the country.

The publication reports that following Friday's declaration from the Congregation of the Causes of the Saints, Pope Francis is expected to beatify Rother in coming weeks. Beatification, the final step before sainthood, declares that a person's life is worthy of imitation by Catholics.

Pope Francis, who has long made clear that he belives that priests killed during Latin America's right-wing dictatorships died out of hatred for the faith, made no hesitations bestowing the honor to Rother.

"What I would like is a clarification about martyrdom in odium fidei, whether it can occur either for having confessed the Creed or for having done the works which Jesus commands with regard to one's neighbor," Francis says.