Pope Francis has ruled that Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was murdered by a right-wing death squad in 1980, should be beatified.
The slain archbishop became an icon of South American Catholicism but his promotion towards sainthood was delayed by Popes John Paul II and Benedict who regarded him as too radical.
The Vatican statement calls the murdered archbishop "a martyr and prophetic instrument of justice and peace killed in hatred of the (Christian) faith".
This qualifies him to be given the title blessed, one step short of sainthood, without having to have a miraculous cure attributed to his intercession.
"This is really big news for El Salvador," said Minister for Government and Communications Hato Hasbun.
Salvadorans celebrated, with many referring to the archbishop as "Saint Romero of the Americas".
Shot dead celebrating mass in a hospital, the one quarter-of-a-million-strong turnout at his funeral underscored the special place he had earned in the people's hearts with his frequent denunciations of repression and poverty.
The funeral was attacked by gunmen, some of them snipers positioned inside the National Palace in San Salvador.
Among those who witnessed many of the three dozen or so subsequent killings was the then Bishop of Galway Eamon Casey, former chairman of Trócaire.
The murder was one of the most shocking of the long conflict between a series of US-backed governments and leftist rebels in which thousands were killed by right-wing and military death squads.
No one was ever brought to justice for Archbishop Romero's killing.
The civil war, one of the Cold War's most brutal conflicts, claimed some 75,000 lives before it ended with a peace agreement in 1992.
The beatification is expected to take place in El Salvador, but the Vatican did not say when.
