The four were Maryknoll Sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clark, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, and Cleveland Diocese lay missionary Jean Donovan. Regular readers of these pages will be aware of my interest in El Salvador and will not be surprised that I accepted the invitation. Particularly vivid were the comments of Jean Kirkpatrick, Ronald Reagan s ambassador to the U.N., claiming that the women were not just nuns, but political activists, implying they had brought the deaths on themselves. In testimony to Congress, Alexander Haig suggested that their vehicle tried to run a roadblock and that there was an exchange of fire. As a matter of fact, the four women were tortured, raped, and shot execution-style.
More lawsuits are pending.
Saturday, Dec. 2, the day of the anniversary, we heard from Melinda Roper, mm, who was president of the Maryknoll Sisters at the time of the events, and Jon Sobrino, SJ, theologian on the faculty of the University of Central America. He went on to talk about how protecting U.S. interests in Central America required killing, and then lying about it. In the afternoon, we gathered in groups to reminisce and recommit to the future. Gathered around a conference table were a number of uniformed military officers with yellow pads and ball-point pens. Melinda Roper had described the grass-roots changes happening in Central America as like a rain forest lush and unpredictable.