Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: (Vigil): Thomas & Josephine McNamara, (Anniv).
11.00: Anne & James Sharkey, (Anniv).
6.30: Vincent Murphy, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

The release of 80 year old Columban priest, Father Mick Sinnott brought immense relief to his friends and admirers. The violent abduction of any human being is a heinous crime. The abduction and imprisonment of a frail old man is especially callous. You would think that the conditions in which he was held would have destroyed a younger and fitter man. But Sinnott's frailty was merely physical, obviously. Because only a person of great mental toughness, and with considerable inner resources, could survive such an ordeal.

But Father Sinnott's plight was not an isolated incident. Where courageous missionaries throw in their lot with the poor, they will meet powerful opposition. Twenty years ago tomorrow, six Jesuit priests at San Salvador's Central American University, together with two of their female staff, were murdered by the military. This atrocity didn't 'come out of the blue'. Twelve years before, every Jesuit in the country was given one month to leave. The slogan, "Be a patriot: kill a priest" was daubed on many walls in the city. While many Jesuits went on the run, not one of them left the country. They remained by the side of the poor.

Many in the military and on the extreme right viewed the Jesuits as in some way legitimising the guerrillas, and so they became military targets. The priests and two women were executed on the evening of November 16th, 1989, by a military patrol that entered the university grounds and sought them out.

Among those murdered (see article below) was the rector of the University, Father Ignacio Ellacuria, S.J., 59, a widely respected intellectual. He had been highly critical of the military regime and he publicised his views through the University Press. He was the prime target for the gunmen who were also told to "leave no witnesses!" Hence the death of the two poor women.

The Jesuits were six of over 70,000 victims who died in El Salvador's civil war which raged in the 1980's and early 1990's. The vast majority of these victims were civilians killed by the armed forces and paramilitary death squads. The murder of the Jesuits led to international outrage and shifted U.S. support for the war, reducing the millions of dollars in military and economic assistance given to El Salvador.

Two Salvadoran military officers were found guilty in 1991 of ordering the murders. Those who fired the shots were acquitted on the basis that they were merely 'obeying orders'.

Tomorrow afternoon, on the 20th anniversary of their murder, the martyrs will receive El Salvador's highest National Award from the President Mauricio Funes. Funes said the awards would be presented as a "public act of atonement" for mistakes made by past governments.

The killings also seriously tarnished the American 'democratic' image after it was found that some of the soldiers involved received training at Fort Benning, Georgia. Father Mick Sinnott walks in distinguished footsteps.

-Dick Lyng

Lest We Forget

The six Jesuits who were killed by a military death squad on the campus of the Jesuit University of Central America (UCA) 20 years ago this week were typical of many of the others working in the country at the time - dedicated to working with the poor, and to being the voice of the voiceless.

As the six murdered Jesuits went through their training, they became more and more aware of the injustice of a system which favoured a few at the expense of the many. They also began to realise it could not be squared with the Gospel they were ordained to preach. In the mid-Seventies they started to teach these truths to their pupils at the college. They were immediately accused of being subversive by many parents and alumni. A long and bitter polemic broke out during which they were denounced to Rome as Communists, underwent a formal inquiry and saw many parents remove their sons from the college.

On countless other occasions attempts were made to silence them. Finally gunmen succeeded when they shot the six, along with their housekeeper and her 15-year-old daughter.

The eight killed in the early morning hours of Nov. 16, 1989, were:

It was my privilege to have known and worked with them. But I agreed with a Jesuit colleague who also lived and worked with them, when he declared recently: "The world might call them martyrs and saints, but the Jesuits slain that night would be horrified." He knew them better than to call them saints. Fr Amando Lopez would fall asleep in an easy chair watching appalling Hong Kong martial-arts movies. Fr McMahon, a Jesuit colleague, maintains that Fr Juan Ramon Moreno was the single most boring teacher he had ever had.

They were ordinary people, each with their faults, and it is likely that five of them, and both women, were killed because the soldiers had been told to leave no witnesses. However, their murders still changed the history of El Salvador.

-Michael Campbell-Johnston SJ worked in El Salvador.

Advent Preparation

SCRIPTURES FOR ADVENT: Don't forget our Advent Scripture Programme. You should really be signing up for it now if you intend attending. The Augustinians at Orlagh have been working with a web-based programme in their teaching of theology and scripture for some years now. We used them here in preparation for Advent and Easter last year. It was really a worthwhile exercise.

What happens is as follows: a local parish group (here in Galway, for example) will gather and listen via broadband to a 30 minute talk on some aspect of the scriptures. (see below for details). The group will then discuss the content of the talk for another 30 minutes. The group will then participate for another 30 minutes discussion with the presenters and fifteen other groups via a telephone conference.

We already have all the technical requirements for taking up on this: a computer, broadband access, a projector and a phone line. Our friends in St. Nicholas' are keen on joining us again this year for these sessions. If we were to embark on this programme for the coming Advent, how many people would attend? This is an important question, because it is now costing €250 for each group to register for the programme. The Parish will foot the bill, but it's a lot of cash to spend on a solitary scholar! And we cannot access it unless we register for it. So, if you are interested, let me know as soon as you can. The general title of the programme is: "What is the Gospel?" It runs as follows:

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