Captions bearing the names of the six fallen Jesuits representing the six martyred priests and their two associates have been placed in the Quad.
Six Jesuits, their housekeeper, and her daughter were murdered at the University of Central America in San Salvador, El Salvador on November 16, 1989. This year marks the 20th anniversary of their martyrdom and several events have been planned in remembrance of them.
At Boston College, Fr. Monan, SJ, moderated a program titled “Living Legacies: the 20th Anniversary of the Martyrs of El Salvador” featuring Rodolfo Cardenal, SJ, who lived with the six Jesuits as rector of UCA. Fr. Monan will also moderate a discussion, “Memory and Its Strength: The Martyrs of El Salvador,” with Noam Chomsky and Jon Sobrino, SJ who is a co-founder of UCA. BC also has eight crosses in the quad symbolizing the graves of the martyrs.
Xavier University in Cincinnati streamed a live feed from the procession and remembrance vigil in San Salvador. Special Masses were offered on campus as well as exhibits and film showings. On November 19, there will be vigil and procession on campus.
In California, Santa Clara University welcomed Fr. Jon Sobrino, SJ to deliver a speech on the campus.
The House of Representatives passed House Resolution 761 honoring and remembering the Jesuits and the two women who were also murdered.
The highest honor of all came from the El Salvadoran government. On November 16, Salvadoran President Mauircio Funes awarded the priests the National Order of Jose Matias Delgado, which is the country’s highest honor.
Funes referred to the award as a “public act of atonement” for the mistakes of past governments. The award is an honor awarded to foreigners in El Salvador, named after a priest and doctor known as a leader in the independence movement of El Salvador from Spain. It is awarded to recognize extraordinary merit in humanitarian, literary, scientific, artistic, political, and military fields.
The six Jesuits, Fr. Ignacio Ellacuria, rector of UCA, Fr. Ignacio Martin-Baro, vice rector, Fr. Segundo Montes, dean of the social sciences department, Fr. Amando Lopez, professor of Theology and Philosophy, Fr. Juan Ramon Moreno, professor of Theology, Fr. Joaquin Lopez y Lopez, founder of the Faith and Joy program at UCA, their cook and housekeeper, Julia Elba Ramos, and her daughter, Celina Mariset, were killed in the early morning hours outside their house.
These eight martyrs were victims of the civil war violence in El Salvador that also claimed the life of prominent Archbishop Oscar Romero and several other members of religious communities and large numbers of civilians. A sign left near the bodies read, “The FMLN has executed the spies who turned on them. Victory or death. FMLN.”
The FMLN, or the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front is a Socialist political party in El Salvador formed in the 1980s as a revolutionary guerrilla organization. After the peace accords signed in 1992, FMLN became a legal political party and is now one of two major parties in El Salvador.
According to a Washington Post Foreign Service article from November 17, 1989, during the week of the shootings, hospitals around San Salvador reported 1,627 civilians injured and 100 dead. Many civilian victims explained that the governmental curfew at the time confined them to their homes while rockets, bombs, and machine gun fire from the streets hit them.
Peace accords to end the civil war were signed in 1992, after more than a decade of violence that claimed thousands of lives. Late U.S. Representative Joseph Moakley, a democrat from Massachusetts, led a U.S. investigation into the killings and discovered a cover-up for the murders and responsibility in a high level of the armed forces of El Salvador. In 1991, two Salvadoran military officers were found guilty of ordering the murders. Moakley’s discovery set an international process to end the war into motion.
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