SHARE's Programs

This month we are fortunate to share with you a reflection by Scott Wright, Director of the Religious Task Force on Central America and Mexico. For more information on the spirituality of the martyrs, visit www.rtfcam.org

Remembering the Jesuit Martyrs of El Salvador 15 Years Later

By Scott Wright
Director of the Religious Task Force on Central America and Mexico
www.rtfcam.org
Today, I had the opportunity to accompany my six-year-old daughter, Maura, to her Sunday school class at our local parish, St. Aloysius in Washington DC. The topic of today’s lesson was the martyrs of the University of Central America (UCA) in San Salvador. Fifteen years ago, when the six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter, were brutally assassinated, the pastor of our parish joined hundreds of others in a vigil and action of civil disobedience in front of the White House.

I agreed on the spot to share something with the children about the meaning of these martyrs. I began by asking if they knew what a martyr was. Several of the older African American children replied that they did, and they named Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We established early on that a martyr is somebody who loves God, stands up for justice, and is killed for doing so.

I told them that I was at the funeral mass of the Jesuit martyrs, and that thousands of people were killed in El Salvador during the war. I asked the children if the only people killed were priests, pointing to a picture of the martyrs, and they said no, there were two women. I told them the story of Julia Elba and her daughter Celina, and how Celina’s father, Obdulio, tended the roses that marked their graves after they were killed.

We closed on a note of hope, and recalled how God sends us holy men and women, friends of God and prophets, to show us the way. And even though they kill good people and destroy churches – one African American boy recalled the church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 – the church will continue to live on in the spirit of the saints and martyrs like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Archbishop Romero, the four US church women, the six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter.

What do the UCA Martyrs Teach Us Today?

What do the Jesuit martyrs have to teach us today, 15 years after their assassination? I often ask myself, as I am sure many thousands of people do who had the privilege to travel to El Salvador during the war and to have their hearts broken by the people they encountered there. I especially ask myself this question after the attacks of September 11, the war on Afghanistan and Iraq, the torture scandals at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons, and the most recent Presidential election. I am sure they would not be silent. Each one, in his own way, leaves us with a gift and with a challenge.

Ignacio Ellacuria, SJ, gave us a new language from which to view the world, with words like “crucified peoples,” “taking the victims down from the cross,” “bearing the burden of reality,” and he invited us to work for peace “from the perspective of the orphans and widows, and the tragedy of the assassinated and the disappeared.” He encouraged us to keep our eyes “on the God of life, the God of the poor, and not on the idols or gods of death that devour everything.”

Ignacio Martin-Baro, SJ, gave us a new understanding of the consequences of war, and the devastating impact it has on the social fabric of a nation. He said that war becomes the focal point of people’s lives, and results in three things: an increasing polarization in society, so that people began to look at others as either “enemies” or “friends”; an increasing institutionalization of lying by those in power; and an increasing reliance on violence to resolve conflict.

Segundo Montes, SJ, gave us a new perspective on social conflict and social movements. I remember shortly before he was assassinated, he came to Washington DC to share the hope he found in the capacity of the poor to organize a new future for themselves - even in the midst of war – soon after he visited the refugee camps in Colomoncagua, Honduras. On the very day he was killed, those same refugees boldly crossed the border into El Salvador to found a village they later named Ciudad Segundo Montes in his honor. When asked why he did not leave El Salvador for the safety of another country, he said: “We are also parish priests and the people need the church to stay with them …God’s grace does not leave, so neither can we.”

These three martyrs are the most well-known throughout the world, especially through their writings. But the other three Jesuits were equally loved by the Salvadoran poor on account of their pastoral work and commitment to justice.

Amando Lopez, SJ, was a gentle soul who inquired about the work of the pastoral teams I accompanied in war zones like Morazan and Chalatenango. He had once been the rector of the seminary in El Salvador, and many of the priests he taught were assassinated, forced to go underground, or into exile. Later he became rector of the Central American University in Managua, Nicaragua, after the Sandinista triumph. A year before he was assassinated, he was the pastor of a marginal parish in Soyapango, San Salvador. Twenty-five of his friends risked their lives to cross combat zones to get to his funeral.

Juan Ramon Moreno, SJ, was known for his work of evangelization and justice. He spoke of “globalization” years before it became a household word. “But,” he added, “this is a divided world, and in a divided world the good news must inevitably be partial. It does not ring the same in everybody’s ears.” What is good news for the poor is bad news for the rich and powerful. “The real enemy of the God of Jesus is not the atheism that denies God’s existence, but far more this idolatry that sacrifices millions of human victims before the altar of power and money.”

Joaquin Lopez y Lopez, SJ, for his Fe y Alegria schools that enabled thousands of Salvadoran children to go to school, and tens of thousands more to be treated by their clinics. He alone was a native of El Salvador.

Elba Ramos Elba Ramos and her daughter Celina were the housekeeper and daughter whose blood was spilled alongside of the Jesuit priests they cooked for and cared for. Their deaths lend dignity to the Jesuit martyrs, because they are a reminder of both the goodness and faithfulness of the poor, as well as the 75,000 victims who died during the course of the war, most of whom, like Elba and Celina, were poor, good and faithful.

If You Want Peace, Work for Justice

Is the world any better off today than it was 15 years ago? Do the poor matter? Do the martyrs even matter?

The divide between rich and poor in the world continues to grow wider, even in an age – or especially in an age – of corporate globalization. We live in a “civilization of wealth,” which cannot be sustained for the entire population of the planet. A very few are very wealthy because a great many are very poor. That’s what Ellacuria taught us. Only a “civilization of poverty” is sustainable, one in which the fundamental needs of all human beings on earth are met, freedom flourishes, and a fundamental option for the poor is at the heart of our personal values, diverse social relations, and global economic structures …

The logic of the current administration seems to be, “If you want peace, prepare for war,” a direct affront to the Gospel command: “If you want peace, work for justice.”

The Hope that is Ours in This Season of Advent

This week, thousands of people from across the United States will converge on the military base in Ft. Benning, Georgia to call for “the School of the Americas” that has trained so many assassins and torturers in Latin America to be closed. It is a fitting way to remember the legacy of the Jesuit martyrs and the two women who were martyred with them.

Especially now, during this liturgical season of Advent, when the shadows and darkness of the Last Judgment and the End Times precedes the miracle and light of Christmas, we are called to be people of hope. Precisely in these times of darkness, when the cruelty of war - from Fallujah to Ramallah, and from Sudan to Colombia - challenges the very foundations of our hope, precisely in these times of darkness we are called to bear witness to the light. In El Salvador, when the change of seasons seem to signal something auspicious, as the winds stir up the dust and shower the sky with brilliant sunsets, the peasants have a saying that speaks of this hope: “The darker the night, the closer the dawn.”

So let us remember this time with hope, and let us remember the martyrs. May this time of approaching Advent be a time of gathering light in the darkness; of following in the steps of the martyrs – not only the UCA martyrs, but the many thousands of good and humble women and men who bore witness to their faith during the war and were killed. Let this be a time of remembering their joy with gratitude, and offering a reason for our hope through generous actions for justice and risks for peace.

We have been given a great hope – as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. used to remind us – the gift to live precisely in these times. May the legacy of the Salvadoran martyrs be one that strengthens our resolve and capacity to work untiringly for justice and peace, and to celebrate with hope the task that is ours of entering the ranks of women and men throughout history who have “done justice, acted with compassion, and walked humbly with their God,” knowing that – again in the words of Dr. King – “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”