Buenos Aires: The Vatican said that before he became Pope Francis, Argentina`s Catholic leader took the first steps toward granting sainthood status to six churchmen who were murdered in July 1976 as Argentina`s dictatorship began killing thousands of so-called "subversives."
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi says Jorge Bergoglio approved the beatification cause of Carlos de Dios Murias, a Franciscan priest whose eyes were gouged out and hands cut off in Argentina`s La Rioja province.
Bergoglio also OK`d a sainthood investigation for a priest and four seminarians killed at St. Patrick`s Church in Buenos Aires.
Father Alfredo Kelly and seminarians Alfredo Leaden, Pedro Dufau, Salvador Berbeito and Emilio Barletti, were shot to death by a right-wing hit squad that sprayed graffiti calling it revenge for a leftist guerrilla bombing.
PTI
