Acompanamiento “Not Mine, Dear Friend, Not Mine”
Pardon us, please.
Before addressing Easter and the wonder of the Resurrection, we must speak to the Father of the Resurrection, the Son of Courage, and the Spirit of Hope.
“Sometimes, O Lord, you leave us shaking our heads…
At Your joy in playing with our emotions.
At Your timing.”
Born in Brooklyn on April 23, 1940, Sister Ita Ford joined the Maryknoll Sisters of St. Dominic in 1961, after finishing her degree at Marymount. When health problems forced her to leave her training in Maryknoll after three years, Ita worked as an editor with Sadlier Publishers before returning to Maryknoll in 1971. She began her missionary career in Chile in 1973 – months before the September 11 coup d’etat that began years of oppression. She revealed her internal struggles in a 1977 reflection:
“Am I willing to suffer with the people here, the suffering of the powerless, the feeling impotent? Can I say to my neighbors – I have no solutions to this situation; I don’t know the answers, but I will walk with you, search with you, be with you. Can I let myself be evangelized by this opportunity? Can I look at and accept my own poorness as I learn it from other poor ones?”
When El Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Romero asked the Maryknoll Sisters to send missioners to work with his country’s poor and oppressed, Ita and her Maryknoll companion/coworker in Chile, Sister Carla Piette responded to the call, arriving on March 24, 1980, the day the Archbishop was assassinated; one of their first acts in the country in which they would offer their own lives for the Gospel and the poor was to stand vigil at his coffin in the Cathedral of San Salvador.
During El Salvador’s “undeclared civil war” (1979-1992), the Corporal Works of Mercy – feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, sheltering the homeless, visiting the imprisoned – were acts with political implications and a threat to the rightwing government. “Accompaniment” and “being with” were words so ubiquitous in the homilies and lectures of Archbishop Romero, who was declared a saint by Pope Francis on October 14, 2018, that he coined the phrase “El Pastoral de Acompanamiento” – the pastoral task of being a companion on the way.
Speaking during a memorial Mass for Carla in New York, a Maryknoll Sister continued the story:
The Church in El Salvador passed into a period of transition and confusion. Ita and Carla also passed through several months of trial and search. During this time they studied all of Romero’s homilies and steeped themselves in his thoughts. As they searched for a place to live and work, the war increased and communities disintegrated as their leaders were killed or the people fled. Refugees grew in number as hundreds and then thousands were displaced by the Army or fled from threats of death. These people needed food and shelter. The Vicariate [geographic part of a diocese] of Chalatenango then asked the Sisters to work on an Emergency Relief Team for Refugees; and so they began a new work in Chalatenango… It was in this service that Carla and Ita set out, August 23rd in the evening, to take home a recently-released prisoner.
They had crossed several rivers and were returning home. Just as they crossed the River El Zapote, a flash flood came crashing down the ravine. Miraculously, Ita and the two men with them in the jeep were saved. Carla’s last act was to help push Ita through the side window of the jeep just before the current swept it away. Carla was carried down the river and her body was finally found the next morning at about 11:00 a.m. That was August 24th, five months to the day after Archbishop Romero was shot and Carla, herself, had arrived in the country.
That afternoon and night the campesinos came to the church to pray and reflect on the meaning of Carla’s life and death. Bishop Rivera Damas celebrated Mass. The next day, Monday, several other Masses were celebrated and in the afternoon; the Eucharist was concelebrated by 10 priests. Hundreds of people listened to numerous testimonies on Carla’s life and the gift of herself to the poor of El Salvador. They called her “Martyr of Charity” and “First Martyr of the Pastoral of Assistance to Refugees.”
Some time after Carla’s death Ita told her mother in a tape-recorded message:
“I never said, ‘Help’ or ‘save me,’ or ‘I’m drowning.’ Something was happening and I said, ‘Receive me, Lord, I’m coming.’”
While her prayer was anticipatory, what happened on December 2 remains unclear.
Writing on the Dominican Web site Ordo Praedicatorum [Order of Preachers, the Latin title for all Dominican orders] Father Simone Garavaglia, O.P. offers some information:
“What is certain is that [Ms.] Jean Donovan [a lay missioner working with Maryknoll in El Salvador] and Sr. Dorothy Kazel [an Ursuline Sister working with the Cleveland diocesan mission team in El Salvador] went to the airport of San Salvador to await the arrival of the two Maryknoll Sisters [Ita Ford and Maura Clarke], returning from Nicaragua… Shortly after 9 p.m. the van carrying the four missionaries returned to their respective missions. At about 10 p.m., as some local farmers testified, the van was passing through a rather isolated area and it was there that soldiers of the Salvadoran National Guard, rebels of the regime, intercepted the van and stopped it. The four missionaries were raped, then stabbed to death and thrown into a pit near the road. The bodies were found the next morning.
“Despite the investigations carried out, many things remain unclear. However, it appears that high-ranking members of the military junta ordered military personnel to follow the four missionaries. Why did this happen? The most well-founded hypothesis is that their work with the poor was viewed with great suspicion. In fact, working alongside the poor, helping them to organize themselves to fight against the dictatorial regime, creating a united front of opposition composed of exhausted and innocent needy people, presented itself as a considerable threat to the already unstable military junta… The missionaries received many threats because of the work they were doing. It seems that Sr. Ita had somehow predicted her death.
“During the last assembly of the [Maryknoll Sisters’] congregation that she attended in November 1980, she read a passage from a sermon by Bishop Romero, in which he stated:
“Christ invites us not to fear persecution because, believe me, brothers and sisters, whoever commits himself to the poor must suffer the same fate as the poor, and in El Salvador we know what the fate of the poor means: to disappear, to be tortured.’
In fact, a few days later, all four of them were martyred, just a few months after Bishop Romero.
“Mary Elizabeth Clarke, later Sr. Maura, was born on January 13, 1931 in Queens, New York. She entered the Dominican Sisters of Maryknoll in 1950 at the age of nineteen. Before arriving in El Salvador, Sr. Maura spent much of her missionary life in Nicaragua, always at the side of the poor, providing in every way for their spiritual and material needs. In August 1980, she left for El Salvador, where, immersed in a situation of great tension, she did not hesitate to immediately put herself at the side of the poor to support them in their struggle against the dictatorship.
[Sister Ita Ford’s] life as a missionary, before responding to Bishop Romero’s invitation to go to San Salvado, took place in Chile, in the mission of La Bandera in Santiago… [In] El Salvador, her mission was immediately clear: to help the needy who were forced to live in the midst of great hardship, deprivation and persecution because of the regime.
“The two missionaries, who arrived in El Salvador a few months apart, always worked side by side until their deaths.
“Contemplating the lives of Sister and Maura… If we look closely, they fully embody this reversal of perspective inaugurated by the Beatitudes. This was the most beautiful gift they put in the hands of these poor people: the powerful and hidden hope of the Beatitudes… [They] fully embodied this spirit; they lived from the Gospel, they were nourished by the Gospel, they consoled through the Gospel, all this, as we have said, in the cradle of love. What does this mean? In this regard, there is a letter from Sr. Ita, written while she was in Chile, in 1977, where, speaking to herself and putting herself before the questioning candor of necessity, she said:
‘I do not know the answers, but I will walk with you, I will seek with you, I will be with you. Can I allow myself to be evangelized by this opportunity? Can I look and accept my poverty as I learn from other poor people?’”
Two weeks before her murder, Jean Donovan wrote a friend in the States:
“The Peace Corps left today and my heart sank low. The danger is extreme.
and they were right to leave… Now I must assess my own position because I am not up for suicide. Several times I have decided to leave El Salvador. I almost could, except for the children, the poor, bruised victims of this insanity. Who would care for them? Whose heart could be so staunch as to favor the reasonable thing in a sea of their tears and helplessness? Not mine, dear friend, not mine.”
In the Maryknoll tradition, Sisters Ita and Maura were buried in El Salvador – close to Sister Carla’s grave – on the anniversary of Archbishop Romero’s death. Sister Dorothy Kazel was buried at the Ursuline Sister’s Motherhouse in Cleveland; Jean Donovan was buried in Sarasota, Florida.
Why, as we celebrate the Feast of the Resurrection, do we write about Carla, Ita, Dorothy, Jean and Maura?
Because the Lord of the Resurrection recently chose – with His incredible sense of timing and humor – to cause us to stumble - purely by divinely-arranged-happenstance – over the last page of the pamphlet “Ita Ford: Missionary Martyr” by Phyllis Zagano. Through much of our priesthood, we have relied on the accompaniment of the Maryknoll Sisters at “The Cloister,” now called the “Contemplative Community.” When we’ve been most in need of prayerful support, Sister Grace and her companions have faithfully been there for us – “El Pastoral de acompanamiento.”
And so, as an Easter gift, He offered us the last page of Phyllis Zagano’s brief epistle:
“Sister Grace Myerjack is a member of the Maryknoll Cloister in Ossining, New York; she lives there with other contemplative Maryknoll Sisters. She had lived with Ita in St. Louis; she knew her well during Ita’s 1978 – 1979 ‘Reflection Year.’ She was also close to Maura Clarke. Grace spent the early part of the winter of 1980 in solitude. One night, in the seconds before full sleep enfolded her, she saw in her mind’s eye both Ita and Maura. The face of Ita and the face of Maura were fully present to her, and they said one simple word: ‘Come.’
“They do not look like they are suffering, she said to herself. Why do they need me? The memory is quite clear to her. They were not suffering. They were complete, they were full. They were who they were. It was some days later when she heard.”
“The angel said to the women,
‘Do not be afraid,
for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified.
He is not here;
He has been raised,
as he promised he would be.’”
Matthew 28: 5-6
Receive us, Resurrected Lord. We are coming.