Father Jose Maria “Chema” Tojeira Educator, Priest, Mediators From the Sumpul River to Gaza

By Eileen Purcell

On Friday morning, September 5, 2025, we received the devastating news of the passing of Father Jose Maria Tojeira, SJ,.

Fondly known as “Chema,” the beloved Spanish-Salvadoran Jesuit and former rector of the Catholic University (UCA) in El Salvador departed the earth while on a work trip in Guatemala. This towering priest with a deeply resonant voice with an unassuming demeanor was a steadfast advocate for peace and justice across the world. He was a philosopher, an educator, a journalist and a leader of the Jesuit community in Central America during the war years. He planted his feet alongside the poor and dispossessed. At the same time he invested in youth programs to develop a new generation of leaders who would transform society.

Chema was deeply rooted in his faith, Ignatian spirituality, and the in communities of Honduras and El Salvador. Over his fifty-year plus ministry, he embraced many leadership roles with grace and humility. He listened. He was a bridge builder. He believed deeply in solidarity. And he used his various platforms to promote dialogue and the common good.

P. José María Tojeira, S.J., compañero de Jesús

I first met Chema in the early 1980s during a fact-finding visit to El Salvador. By then, he was a young priest and communications expert visiting from Honduras where he was the director of the Jesuit-sponsored Radio Progresso. The Salvadoran Archdiocesan radio transmission towers had been bombed, and he was helping assess the damage.

Voice of the Voiceless

The Salvadoran Archdiocesan radio station as well as Chema’s Radio Progresso represented vital news sources. They regularly broadcasted the weekly homilies of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero. The beloved Archbishop preached a “preferential option for the poor.” He listened to the Mothers of the Disappeared and the survivors of massacres. He called for an end to the brutal military and structural violence in El Salvador ravaging his country and denounced threats against priests, sisters, farmworkers and labor leaders. He decried the sin of poverty and lifted up a new politics predicated on social and economic justice. Known as “the voice of the voiceless,” he refused to be intimidated by death threats, saying, “If they kill me, I will rise in the Salvadoran people.” He appealed to the U.S. President to halt all military aid. In his final sermon he addressed the Salvadoran military, saying, “In the name of God, in the name of our tormented people, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: Stop the repression!” At the same time, he announced the Good News – the promise of God’s Kingdom on this earth. On March 24, 1980, he was assassinated, cut down by a sniper’s bullet while he celebrated Mass at the Chapel of the Divina Providencia cancer hospital.

Romero’s courage and sacrifice reverberated around the world.

Chema, together with other members of the Honduran-based Jesuit Radio Progresso staff, magnified the Archbishop’s reach by broadcasting his sermons even after his death, inspiring many while earning the enmity of the rich and powerful. He used the radio to educate communities across Honduras, especially young people, and later launched ERIC, a Jesuit Center for Reflection, Research and Communication. They multiplied the voices of those with no voice.

Chema and his co-workers would, themselves, become targets when they bore witness to the 1980 Rio Sumpul Massacre in El Salvador just two months after the Archbishop’s assassination. The Sumpul River provides a natural border between El Salvador and Honduras.

On May 14th, 1980, six hundred Salvadoran men, women and children civilians were slaughtered as they sought to escape an indiscriminate attack by the Salvadoran National Guard who shot and bayonetted them to death. Others drowned as they fled to the Honduran side of the river only to be turned back by the Honduran military. The Salvadoran and Honduran governments and the United States Embassy in El Salvador denied that a massacre had taken place.
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Chema and Radio Progreso contradicted the official story, and broadcast the news, including eyewitness accounts from the religious and lay men and women from the Diocese of Santa Rosa de Copan and CARITAS workers who physically pulled people from the waters. Some Rio Sumpul River massacre survivors took refuge in San Salvador on the seminary grounds of San Jose de la Montana – a sanctuary Archbishop Romero had established before his death. The vast majority were women and children. During my first fact finding delegation to El Salvador in 1980, I would be privileged to interview many of the survivors who took refuge at the seminary. A year later, former US Ambassador Robert White would acknowledge that the massacre had, indeed, taken place and repudiated US policy towards El Salvador.

Educator, Religious Leader, Advocate

¿y 1985 as the Civil War raged in El Salvador, Central America had become a flashpoint for the Cold War. International solidarity was growing. The US-sponsored Contra War enveloped Nicaragua. The Salvadoran Civil War was more and more entrenched. Honduras became a staging ground for U.S. policy.

Chema relocated to El Salvador and taught Theology at the UCA. Later he became provincial of the Jesuits for Central America, navigating the perilous political situation. The Jesuit leaders of the Catholic University in El Salvador José Simeon Cañas (UCA) played a central role trying to broker peace – a role which would cost some of them their lives.

In November,1989, members of the US-trained Atlacatl Brigade of the Salvadoran Army assassinated Chema’s six Jesuit brothers. They broke into their home, forced them into the Rose Garden behind their living quarters at university, and shot them point blank. They also killed their housekeeper, Elba and her daughter Celina. In an interview, Chema stated, “I was provincial and It was my job to take on the case. They killed them at 2am in the morning; we realized it at 6:30 am in the morning. At 11am in the morning I informed President Cristiani that the military had killed them, providing evidence.” Yet the powers that be sought to cover up the crime, at first claiming the guerillas had perpetrated the crime and later claiming the Jesuits were complicit.

Undaunted, Chema persisted.
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He asserted that the Jesuits were killed for speaking the truth about a country at war where human rights were systematically violated. He consoled his community and his country as they grieved ​the tremendous loss of thousands of Salvadorans victimized by the civil war and the deaths of the Jesuits, Elba and Celina. He reassured the university community that the UCA would not back down. At the funeral Mass of his brother priests, he declared, “They protected the children, they accompanied those fleeing the bullets in the zones of combat, they consoled those who lost their loved ones, they remained by the side of the poor. They {the military} have not killed the Company of Jesus nor have they killed the University of Central America José Simeón Cañas”
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He promised to continue the work to defend the University and to support a peace process that would end the Civil War.

Chema with Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas in the Rose Garden at the Salvadoran Catholic University José Simeón Cañas (UCA) praying over the bodies of his murdered Jesuit brothers on November 11, 1989.

Preserving the Social Mission of the University

As rector of the UCA Chema worked diligently to preserve the social mission of the university embodied by his martyred predecessor, Ignacio Ellacuria, s.j. Ellacuria viewed the University as a powerful force to transform society to one grounded in love and justice, with a priority placed on the poor, the oppressed and marginalized.

Ellacuria once wrote, “Christians and all those who hate injustice are obligated to fight it with every ounce of their strength. They must work for a new world where greed and selfishness are overcome.”
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It is an invocation Chema lived over the next forty years.

Speaking Truth, Breaking Impunity & Working toward Authentic Peace & Reconciliation

Chema played a critical role pursuing legal action to hold the intellectual authors and perpetrators of the horrific crime accountable. Breaking the cycle of violence and impunity were fundamental prerequisites to peace and reconciliation. He worked with the United Nations Truth Commission. She welcomed the legal support of the Center for Justice and Accountability and later the Guernica Group. It took decades. In 2020 Spanish magistrates concluded that the eight murders of the Jesuits and their housekeeper and her daughter were “plotted, planned, agreed and ordered by members of the high command of the Armed Forces.” Former Colonel Inocente Orlando Montano was sentenced to 133 years in prison and extradited to El Salvador from the United States due to immigration infractions.

SHARE Executive Director Jose Artiga with Father Jose Maria "Chema" Tojeira in El Salvador

Loving our Neighbor & Solidarity

During an interview on the UCA’s radio station YSUCA’s program La vos con vos he shared his own philosophy as an educator and religious, saying, “As a religious it is not enough to think about God, but to think about God in our neighbor. ...We must think about how to live better, not just personally but socially, and how to correct problems that are a result of our self-centeredness, our machismo, our hatred of poor, our indifference to human suffering, and equally, in the end, to think about what God asks of us: the commandment to love one another as Christ loved us… In the gospel we see Christ enjoying his life by giving his life to defend love, justice, peace, dialogue – those values that we would hope would dominate our society.”

These were the requirements of being a good Christian, a global citizen.

Or, as Mica 6:8 might say, “What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Chema applied these principles locally, regionally and in our world. He sought change through dialogue and by standing alongside those who are excluded, marginalized and oppressed. He invited students to read the signs of the times through the lens of the social gospel and seek solutions. He sought justice, loved mercy, and walked humbly with his God.

L-R: Phil Little, Jose Maria “Chema” Tojeira, Father Ismael Melo Moreno,sj, SHARE Executive Director Jose Artiga leading an emergency interfaith delegation in Honduras after the fraudulent presidential elections in 2018

After his semi-retirement from the UCA, and ever the journalist and educator, Chema elaborated these ideas and principles in a weekly column for Diario Co-Latino entitled “Ethics and Politics.” He tackled themes from the successful anti-mining movement in El Salvador and water politics to immigration, religion and consumerism, the erosion of rights under the State of Exception, Hiroshima, and of late, Gaza.

He did not seek controversy, nor did he avoid it.

In 2023, he tackled the inconsistencies of the Nicaraguan Revolution and the crackdown on the Catholic University by the Nicaraguan government.

The unfolding genocide in Gaza tore at his heart.

One of Chema’s last posts on FB before his untimely passing stated: “Knowing, understanding, praying, showing solidarity, these are the responsibilities of anyone who considers themselves ​Christian.” Beneath these words, he posted an article from CARITAS International, entitled “In Gaza, there is no war, there is an annihilation.”
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It was a call to truth telling, to solidarity, to recognizing our neighbor in the oppressed, to challenging the policies and powers oppressing them, and building towards authentic peace and justice.

Post Script:

A month after the 1989 murder of his six brothers, Elba and Celine in January of 1990, the interfaith community in El Salvador gathered in the chapel at the Catholic University for a prayer service. The SHARE Foundation had organized a delegation of faith leaders, including Lutheran and Episcopal Bishops and Catholic theologians, to accompany the late Lutheran Bishop Medardo Gomez back to El Salvador from exile. Chema welcomed us. The grief and fear were palpable. But so was the courage embodied by the leadership of the UCA and Chema. After many of the church leaders spoke, a young woman stood at the pulpit, and declared, “Do not weep for them, imitate them.” The overflowing Chapel exploded in applause.

I believe this is what Chema would ask of us – to continue searching for knowledge and understanding. To reflect deeply and to live in solidarity with one another.
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With deep gratitude we say,
¡PADRE CHEMA, PRESENTE!

Eileen Purcell served as a Board member & Executive Director of the SHARE Foundation from 1983-1991, and serves on SHARE’s Advisory Board. Today she is a Sr. Advisor at IBEW Local Union 1245 in California/Nevada.