Twenty-seven year anniversary of the UCA Jesuit martyrs

Twenty-seven years ago I was in my guidance counselor's office when we received word that the six Jesuits and their two female companions had been murdered in El Salvador. We learned shortly afterwards that they were murdered by the US trained Atlacatl Battalion. Their deaths, and overall US policy towards Central America during the 1980s, have had a profound impact on who I am and what I do.

Father Ignacio Ellacuria and the other Jesuit priests were murdered because they had committed their university, the University of Central America Jose Simeon Cañas, to work on behalf of the poor and marginalized. Through their university work, they sought to investigate and make known the national reality of the country. At the same time, they were committed to proposing serious solutions to the critical problems confronting the people of El Salvador - poverty, inequality, political exclusion, and government repression of the popular sectors.

Given the conditions in El Salvador at the time, their priority was to contribute potential solutions to the civil war that was in its tenth year. Fr. Ignacio Ellacuria promoted dialogue as an initial step towards negotiations. His international and domestic profile in support of negotiations made him a threat to those who favored war and the status quo. For that, he and his fellow companions were murdered.

Obviously, the US context is different. However, the challenge of investigating the national reality of our own country and its special role in the world, is an ongoing challenge. For sometimes complicated reasons, we have elected a president whose values differ from students, staff, faculty, administrators, and alumni of Catholic and Jesuit universities.

I recently traveled to Washington, D.C., with approximately 2,000 other students, staff, and faculty across Jesuit universities and high schools across North America to "learn, reflect, pray, network, and advocate in the context of the Catholic faith tradition." The Ignatian Solidarity Network focuses on several main themes, all of which seem to be low priorities for the incoming administration:

• Humane immigration policies;
• U.S. policy towards Central America; 
• environmental justice;
• racial justice;
• criminal and juvenile justice;
• human trafficking;
• capital punishment;
• socially responsible investing;
• fair trade; and
• issues of war and peace.

Fair trade and immigration are likely priorities of the Trump administration but it is unclear whether it understands those issues from a more Jesuit and Catholic perspective. 

Jesuit universities have to recommit themselves to studying the national reality and proposing solutions to the challenges that confront our communities. As Adolfo Nicolas spoke in 2010, 

"Each institution represented here, with its rich resources of intelligence, knowledge, talent, vision, and energy, moved by its commitment to the service of faith and promotion of justice, seeks to insert itself into a society, not just to train professionals, but in order to become a cultural force advocating and promoting truth, virtue, development, and peace in that society."

If you are available and on campus this afternoon, please join us for a discussion led by Robert Lassalle-Klein Ph.D., M.S.W., S.T.L., Professor of Religious Studies at Holy Names University in Oakland, CA. Dr. Lassalle-Klein will help us to better understand why six Jesuit priests and their two female companions were murdered in El Salvador on this date in 1989 and what that means for us today.