Most of the Jesuits at the Universidad Centroamericana in San Salvador, El Salvador, were asleep when armed men broke through the front door. Living in the midst of a decade-long civil war, which had more recently moved into the capital city, they were used to the sounds of gunfire and shouts from the streets. But that night – Nov. 16, 1989 – the violence burst into their home.
The intruders, part of a small militia aligned with the government of El Salvador, dragged the six Jesuits from their rooms, laid them on the grass in their garden outside, and shot them in the backs of their heads. They also killed the Jesuits’ cook and her daughter, who ironically had retreated to the Jesuit community because of violence raging in their own neighborhood.
The Jesuits had received numerous death threats during the civil war. In their roles as professors and administrators at the UCA, they were outspoken in their defense of human rights and persistent in their calls for peace talks. They challenged government and business leaders to address the underlying social and economic problems that fueled the conflict. They did this not simply as academics but as Jesuit priests, committed to a faith that does justice. They devoted their priestly and academic lives to preaching and teaching about the fundamental dignity of the human person and the solidarity of the human family. Such ideas are steeped in the Judeo-Christian tradition and in the Gospel to which they devoted their lives.
Living in a nation marred by civil war and vast inequalities of wealth and power, the slain Jesuits knew that such ideas have consequences. The method of execution was meant to send a message: They were shot in the head to destroy the brains that were the font of ideas that challenged a repressive system.
Ideas can unleash human potential for truth, beauty and goodness. They can inspire us to imagine a more loving world and they can lead us to it. But our history reveals that ideas can also spawn hate, division and violence. As much as ideas can lead to Eden, they can also drag us to Calvary – and Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Rwanda and Darfur.
The UCA killings were ill-fated attempts to silence the Jesuits’ prophetic voices, but they failed miserably in their purpose. The outrage was immediate and widespread. Governments worldwide condemned the killings. The U.S. Congress launched an investigation. Calls for a ceasefire were widespread. At Georgetown and other Jesuit universities, students gathered in prayerful solidarity. Scores of Jesuits volunteered to teach at the UCA in place of their slain brothers. Eventually, a “truth commission” was established in the early 1990s, and some of those directly responsible for the killings were brought to justice. The six Jesuits were only a handful of the nearly 75,000 noncombatants killed in the Salvadoran civil war.
Godly ideas endure because they are grounded in faith, hope and love. Death and violence do not have the last word. On their way up to the Jesuits’ bedrooms, the gunmen shot a hole through the picture of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who nine years before had been assassinated for his own prophetic witness. While gruesome acts would soon follow, this was their most pathetic gesture: They had already killed Romero, but they still were trying to kill the Godly ideas for which he lived and died.
The rector of the UCA, Rev. Ignacio Ellacuria, S.J., was one of the Jesuits killed. He wrote, “Precisely because a university is inescapably a social force, it must transform and enlighten the society in which it lives.”
At Georgetown, we are privileged in our exposure to great ideas that can transform people and societies. We read these ideas, talk about them, write about them and then apply them. In the process, we reshape them. Ideas come to life as they take root in human hearts. They are the seed-beds for our values and worldview.
Ideas must be grounded in reality, in the beauty and brokenness of our world. The reality of injustice and suffering will challenge us. If we let these uncomfortable truths in, they will make demands on us to re-think presumptions and discern alternatives. They will summon us to speak out, act and even suffer ourselves.
Today at the UCA, a rose garden flourishes where the Jesuits were murdered, blood spilling from their heads. Their blood, like their ideas, became a source of life that continues to emerge in the people of El Salvador, who labor with a relentless hope for a more just and gentle society. We at Georgetown share that hope by committing ourselves to the ideas for which the Jesuits gave their lives.
Fr. Kevin O’Brien, S.J. graduated from the College of Arts and Sciences in 1988 and is executive director of campus ministry. He can be reached at obrienkfgeorgetown.edu. As This Jesuit Sees It . appears every other Friday with Fr. Schall, Fr. Maher and Fr. O’Brien alternating as writers.
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