El Salvador: Murdered Jesuit priests receive highest honour

Father Ignacio Ellacuria was murdered in the early hours of November 16, 1989 along with five fellow Jesuit priests

We applaud the Salvadoran government’s decision to posthumously award six Jesuit priests murdered in San Salvador in 1989 the prestigious Order of José Matías Delgado on the 20th anniversary of their deaths

The award is the highest honour awarded by the state and recognises “extraordinary service offered to the country in the areas of education, human rights, contributing to the combating of poverty, social exclusion and inequality and contributing to peace and the construction of democracy in the country”, announced President Mauricio Funes.

The six priests - Fathers Ignacio Ellacuría (pictured), Amando López, Juan Ramón Moreno, Segundo Montes, Ignacio Martín-Baró, Joaquín López y López - were valued colleagues of CAFOD for our partner the University of Central America (UCA).

Momentous occasion

In the early hours of November 16, 1989, they and two female colleagues were tragically murdered by members of the then Armed Forces. To this day, no-one has been charged for the murders.

Throughout the conflict in El Salvador in the 1980s and early 1990s, UCA was a leading force in the defence of human rights and an outspoken opponent of state-sponsored military repression.

The awards are a momentous occasion for CAFOD and the UCA, as El Salvador’s new government has ended the 20 years of silence and spoken out against those that perpetrated the attack.

Mauricio Funes, elected President in March 2009, says this accolade is "one of the ways the government of the Republic, and particularly the Head of State, makes a public apology for the mistakes the state committed in the past”.

Only days beforehand, the government implied it may soon make a public apology on behalf of the state for the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero, assassinated on March 24, 1980 for speaking out against injustice.

Clare Dixon, CAFOD regional manager for Latin America and the Caribbean, says: “In his inauguration speech, Mauricio Funes resolved to follow the example of Archbishop Oscar Romero in his leadership.

"We are pleased he seems to be leading the country forward to condemn the violence of the past by celebrating the lives of the UCA martyrs and Oscar Romero who were silenced by previous regimes, holding them up as role models for the Salvadoran people.

“We are proud of our continued partnership with the UCA. This has helped them to promote peace and reconciliation and maintain an awareness of the country’s history.

“At CAFOD we will be marking the martyrs’ 20th anniversary with sadness, but also with optimism, for an El Salvador in which these martyrs live on in its leaders and people, so that the social justice they dreamed of and worked for can be achieved.”

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