Peter Stanford (22 March) describes as “propaganda” the claim by one of our speakers in a Premier Radio interview that John Paul II “had been a great fan” of Archbishop Oscar Romero. I have not listened to the interview, and am not sure of her exact words, but the idea is not propaganda. During his 1983 pilgrimage to El Salvador, John Paul insisted on visiting Romero’s tomb in the face of objections by the Salvadorean Government. He asked local priests to open the door of the cathedral which was locked up by the military, and prayed for a long time in front of Romero’s tomb. John Paul II declared Romero a Servant of God in 1997, thus initiating his cause for canonisation. He later insisted that during the 2000 Jubilee Year celebration in Rome’s Co