POPE Francis has given the go-ahead for assassinated Archbishop Oscar Romero to be made a saint, with the Vatican announcing today that Francis had “confirmed a miracle” involving him.

Romero, bishop of San Salvador, was murdered by right-wing death squads in 1980 while performing Mass in a hospital chapel in El Salvador.

He has been hailed for standing up for El Salvador’s poorest amid violent government repression. The Pope said that Romero should serve as a model for modern Catholics.

No-one has ever been brought to justice for Romero’s killing, but El Salvador’s UN-created Truth Commission has named Roberto D’Aubuisson as ordering his death.

D’Aubuisson was a far-right politician and death squad leader who founded El Salvador’s Arena party, which is still a major force in the country’s politics.

The United States funded and trained Salvadoran soldiers and right-wing death squads during its dirty war in the 1980s, which killed 75,000 civilians — more than 1 per cent of the population — and made a fifth of the country’s people refugees.