On 40th anniversary of their killing, missionaries of El Salvador remembered for their political witness as much as their faith
Molly Cahill
December 02, 2020
A group of pilgrims gathers near the tomb of Maryknoll Sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clarke Dec. 1, 2020, the eve of the 40th anniversary of their assassination in the Central American nation. Along with Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel and laywoman Jean Donovan, the Maryknoll sisters helped children and civilians find refuge but were subsequently raped and assassinated by military. Even with the COVID-19 pandemic, small groups stopped by with music and flowers to remember the U.S. Catholic women as "martyrs." (CNS photo/Rhina Guidos)
Cardinal Michael Czerny, S.J., marked the 40th anniversary of the martyrdom of four American missionary women in El Salvador on Dec. 2 with a memorial Mass in Rome. Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, lay missionary Jean Donovan and Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford were brutally murdered by Salvadoran National Guard members on Dec. 2, 1980. Mourning their violent deaths and testifying to lives spent working for justice, Cardinal Czerny cited the testimony of the Rev. Gregory Chisholm, a Canadian missionary who had met two of the women on the day they were murdered.
According to Father Chisholm’s testimony, after meeting Kazel and Donovan at the airport in San Salvador, he and his companions departed in a mini-bus that was identical to the one the women would soon use to leave the airport. He remembers that Salvadoran National Guard members stopped his group, refusing to let them leave until they proved that they were Canadians, not Americans. He said that not long after that encounter, those same heavily armed men stopped the women’s vehicle and forced them to an isolated location where they were assaulted and executed.
Father Chisholm and his group later came upon the women’s abandoned bus. They learned shortly after that their bodies had been disposed of in a shallow grave.
. . .
According to Father Chisholm, in its response to the incident, the recently elected Reagan administration in the United States took a dismissive approach to the crime, questioning aspects of the missionary women’s encounter with the Salvadoran Guard members. Jeane Kirkpatrick, soon to be Reagan’s ambassador to the United Nations, denied that the Salvadoran military had played a role in the killings, saying, “The nuns were not just nuns. They were political activists.”
More:
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/12/02/el-salvador-martyrs-churchwomen-anniversary-czerny-239388
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