Kevin Coleman
University of Toronto

Co-sponsored with The Institute for the Liberal Arts, The Jesuit Institute, and the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences Dean's Office

This talk examines the assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero and the subsequent contestation over his legacy as manifestations of a transnational theological and political struggle in and beyond Cold War El Salvador. Drawing on previously unexamined beatification documents, particularly the Positio Super Martyrio, Coleman will reconstruct how conservative forces constructed theological justifications that portrayed Romero as a communist dupe rather than as an authentic religious authority. He will introduce the concept of theopolitical doppelgängers to explain the mirroring through which Christian nationalists created permission structures for violence.