The Same Fate As The Poor

Because it doesn’t end with a zero, Thursday, December 2, the forty-second anniversary of the sexual assault and brutal murder – martyrdoms – of four “church women” will go unrecognized by too many Americans.

In a nation torn asunder by politicians pandering to fear and hatred, inciting violence and “othering” in order to maintain and increase their power and wealth, these women – these martyrs – can serve – must serve - as examples of genuine Courage and Commitment. A courage that stands in contradiction to race-baiting, long-gun toting, and violent, hate-filled and dishonest rhetoric.

“If we abandon them when they are suffering the cross,
how can we speak credibly about the resurrection?”
Maura Clarke, M.M.

“Most of us feel we would want to stay here.…
We wouldn’t want to just run out on the people.”
Dorothy Kazel, O.S.U.

“Several times I have decided to leave El Salvador.
I almost could, except for the children.”
Jean Donovan

“I truly believe that I should be here,
and I can’t even tell you why.…
All I can share with you is that God’s palpable presence
has never been more real.” – Ita Ford, M.M.

For men and women of Faith – priests, Brothers, Sisters, seminarians and especially lay catechists, student activists, human rights workers, labor and campesino organizers - El Salvador in 1980 was one of the most dangerous places on Earth. Their bodies turned up in ditches, along roadsides or floating in rivers, often with thumbs tied behind their backs.

Archbishop – now Saint – of San Salvador Oscar Romero was assassinated on March 24 and his murder - as he celebrating Mass in the chapel of Divine Providence Hospital - sent a message to all who had accepted the 1979 Latin American bishops’ call to take up the “preferential option for the poor.” Bishop Romero had called on all people of Faith to accept “the same fate as the poor.”

In the 1964 Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes (“Joy and Hope,” also known as “The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World”), the world’s bishops declared, “The joys and the hope, the grief and the anxieties of the men [and women] of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ…”

As the poor of Latin America awoke to the Church’s declaration that their suffering was not God’s will or a trial to be endured for the sake of the afterlife but the consequence of injustice and greed, they were accompanied by:

Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, who joined the Cleveland diocesan mission team in El Salvador in 1974, as she was turning 35. Over the following six years, she witnessed firsthand the increasing persecution of popular movements and the repression of the poor.
Jean Donovan, 26, a Ronald Reagan conservative Republican and lay woman, who arrived in El Salvador in July 1979. Her father was chief of design for the Sikorsky Aircraft Division of United Technologies and helped to design the “Huey” helicopters that were used by the Salvadoran military in a brutal counterinsurgency that abducted, tortured, “disappeared” and killed many of the nation’s poor – affecting a new focus for Jean in her work with the Cleveland team.
Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke, M.M. and Ita Ford, M.M., who were relatively new to El Salvador but experienced missioners. Responding to the call of Archbishop Romero, who had issued an urgent plea for more missioners from the international community to assist with the ever-growing needs of his persecuted people, Ita arrived in El Salvador in April 1980 with colleague and friend Sister Carla Piette, M.M. Sister Carla was killed in August, when the jeep she was driving was caught in a flash flood; her final act in life was to push Ita free; Sister Ita later remembered praying “Receive me, Lord, for I am coming.” Sister Maura began working in Nicaragua in 1959 and went to El Salvador in August 1980 – just two weeks before Sister Carla’s death – to explore and consider responding to Archbishop Romero’s call; she decided to stay and work alongside Sister Ita.

Because they stand in such stark contrast to the blusterings of politicians who run to sunny beaches of Cancun while 200 of their constituents die in a February 2021 cold snap or raised clenched fists as rioters and insurrectionists prepared to storm the nation’s Capitol, assault police officers and scream for the death of the Vice President or deny the reality of a pandemic and issue dictates against mask wearing, we offer the reflections of these martyred women of Courage and Faith.

Jean Donovan, just two weeks before she was killed, wrote to a friend back in Connecticut:

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 would be so staunch as to favor the reasonable thing in a sea of their tears and helplessness? Not mine, dear friend, not mine.

On October 3, 1979, Sister Dorothy Kazel wrote Sister Martha Owen, O.S.U.

We talked quite a bit today about what happens if something begins.... We wouldn’t want to just run out on the people.... I thought I should say this to you because I don’t want to say it to anyone else because I don’t think they would understand. Anyway, my beloved friend, just know how I feel and ‘treasure it in your heart.’ If a day comes when others will have to understand, please explain it for me.”

In a letter to Sister Theresa Kane, R.S.M., Sister Dorothy wrote about

“… how important it is to serve the poor and the oppressed. I believe that wholeheartedly – that’s why I am here in El Salvador.”

Sister Maura Clarke explained her decision to accompany Sister Ita Ford after the death of Sister Carla:

My fear of death is being challenged constantly as children, lovely young girls, old people are being shot and some cut up with machetes and bodies thrown by the road and people prohibited from burying them.... One cries out, how long? And then too what creeps into my mind is the little fear, or big, that when it touches me very personally, will I be faithful?

In 1977, after years of witnessing the suffering imposed on Chile’s poor by the military dictator, Sister Ita questioned,

“Am I willing to suffer with the people here, the suffering of the powerless? Can I say to my neighbors, ‘I have no solution to this situation. I don’t know the answers, but I will walk with you, search with you, be with you.’”

Most poignantly, on August 18, 1980, shortly after arriving in El Salvador, Sister Ita wrote her niece and godchild, Jennifer Ford:

Dear Jennifer,

The odds that this note will arrive for your birthday are poor, but know I'm with you in spirit as you celebrate 16 big ones. I hope it's a special day for you.

I want to say something to you and I wish I were there to talk to you because sometimes letters don't get across all the meaning and feeling.

But, I'll give it a try anyway.

First of all, I love you and care about you and how you are. I'm sure you know that. That holds if you're an angel or a goof-off, a genius or a jerk.

A lot of that is up to you, and what you decide to do with your life. What I want to say...some of it isn't too jolly birthday talk, but it's real... Yesterday I stood looking down at a 16-year-old who had been killed a few hours earlier. I know a lot of kids even younger who are dead. This is a terrible time in El Salvador for youth. A lot of idealism and commitment is getting snuffed out here now. The reasons why so many people are being killed are quite complicated, yet there are some clear, simple strands. One is that many people have found a meaning to life, to sacrifice, to struggle, and even to death. And whether their life span is 16 years, 60 or 90, for them, their life has had a purpose. In many ways, they are fortunate people.

Brooklyn is not passing through the drama of El Salvador, but some things hold true wherever one is, and at whatever age. What I'm saying is, I hope you come to find that which gives life a deep meaning for you...something worth living for, maybe even worth dying for... something that energizes you, enthuses you, enables you to keep moving ahead. I can't tell you what it might be -- that's for you to find, to choose, to love. I can just encourage you to start looking, and support you in the search. Maybe this sounds weird and off-the-wall, and maybe, no one else will talk to you like this, but then, too, I'm seeing and living things that others around you aren't...

I want to say to you: don't waste the gifts and opportunities you have to make yourself and other people happy... I hope this doesn't sound like some kind of a sermon because I don't mean it that way. Rather, it's something you learn here, and I want to share it with you.

In fact, it's my birthday present to you. If it doesn't make sense right at this moment, keep this and read it sometime from now. Maybe it will be clearer...

A very happy birthday to you and much, much love,

Ita

In El Salvador, Sister Carla Piette, described the life of Faith and Trust:

The walk continues and the Lord of the Way
leads each day with no map and no clear weather,
but rather fog and total trust.

In Chile, after years of working in one of Santiago’s poorest barrios under the military dictatorship, Sister Carla gave expression to the vocation of every man and woman of Faith:

The Lord has guided me so far
and in his guidance he has up and dropped me here…
at this time and in this place in history,
to search for and find him.
Not somewhere else.
But here.

And so HERE I WILL STAY,
until I have found that broken Lord,
in all his forms and all his various pieces,
until I have completely bound-up his wounds
and covered his whole body, his people,
with the rich oil of gladness.

And when that has been done,
he will up and drop me again –
either into his promised kingdom
or into the midst of another jigsaw puzzle
of his broken body,
his hurting people.

Giddy Boy

Thank You, Winston Churchill

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