For over 60 years the Diocese of Cleveland has supported the mission project in El Salvador. It first began with the call of Pope John XXIII during the Second Vatican Council. The Pope asked dioceses around the world to adopt a mission and partner with an impoverished part of the world. Cleveland answered that call in 1964 by choosing El Salvador and is one of the only dioceses that still continues to support a mission project.
Over spring break, I went to El Salvador for a mission trip with a group from Borromeo Seminary. As seminarians discerning the call to priesthood, we were invited to go and learn about the missionary activity that we may one day partake in. While in El Salvador we were able to visit this long-standing mission project that has ministered to generations of Salvadorans and see firsthand the impact that Cleveland has made in the communities. Currently, the Diocese supports two parishes, one in La Libertad and another in Teotepeque. These parishes include more than 30 individual churches and many schools.
In the late twentieth century Christians were persecuted heavily in El Salvador, especially the priests and leaders of churches. A common saying at the time was “haz patria, mata un cura” (be a patriot, kill a priest). Christianity was the opponent of the Salvadoran right-winged government that openly massacred people and targeted priests.
A significant and influential figure at this time was Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was shot in the middle of celebrating mass in March of 1980. Romero was the leader of this revolution against the darkness and the violence of the Salvadoran government. He defended the impoverished and was outspoken on the oppression of the Salvadoran government. Most importantly, he popularized the concepts of “liberation theology” which desires freedom from oppression as an expectancy of salvation in Jesus.
The 1989 martyrdom of six Jesuits at the UCA (a Jesuit University in El Salvador) is another significant moment during the civil unrest where church leaders were brutally murdered in the middle of the night.
The martyrdom that I’d like to speak on is that of the four churchwomen.
Their names were Jean Donovan, Dorothy Kazel, Ita Ford and Maura Clark. The connection between these churchwomen and Cleveland is eye-opening through the ongoing mission project in El Salvador.
Jean Donovan studied at Case Western Reserve and hoped to create a career in the business world. She had a great job but wanted something more fulfilling. She took interest in the Diocese of Cleveland’s mission project that partnered with the Maryknoll lay missionaries in El Salvador, and arrived in the summer of 1979.
Sister Dorothy Kazel, an Ursuline sister from Cleveland, went to El Salvador in 1974. Sister Dorothy did missionary work with the Papago Tribe in Arizona and was a catechist who taught deaf students and ecumenical communities.
Sister Ita Ford was a Maryknoll sister from New York who did mission work in Chile and was later sent to El Salvador shortly after Archbishop Romero’s death in 1980.
Sister Maura Clark, also a Maryknoll sister from New York, taught in New York before being assigned to Nicaragua and then sent to El Salvador in November of 1980 due to an emergency. Maura and Ita worked together in Chalatenango before their martyrdom in December of the following year.
These women served in the port city of La Libertad, the same parish that the Diocese of Cleveland has supported for more than 60 years. They left their daily American lifestyles or religious work to go to a country of civil unrest and violence. They served with everything they had.
On Dec. 2 1980, Jean and Dorothy drove to the airport to pick up Maura and Ita from a Maryknoll conference they were attending in Nicaragua. The women were under surveillance by the government because of their involvement with the Church and were targeted immediately by government officials. The sisters got into the van and drove back to the port of La Libertad when they were stopped by five guardsmen and were beaten, raped and murdered by the National Guardsmen. They drove far away from the airport to an isolated location where they executed the women and threw them into shallow graves.
Two days later their bodies were found and their deaths became the symbol of resistance to oppression. We were able to visit the site where the bodies were found in San Pedro Nonualco. The Diocese of Cleveland’s Mission office built a chapel there and there lies a stone and memorial for where the bodies were found. We celebrated a communion service where we used the Eucharist from the tabernacle at the chapel. A great sign of the relationship between Salvadorans and Clevelanders, the body of Jesus being given through Salvadorans to Clevelanders.
There was a moment on the drive to San Pedro Nonualco that I will never forget. I was sitting there wondering why there was this tug on my heart to visit this place that was so familiar to me, wondering when was the first time that I had heard about these churchwomen. The memory came to me as I was sitting in the microbus.
I went to a small Catholic High School not too far from Carroll called Trinity. Our chapel there is called “Martyrs Chapel”. I always wondered why it was called that, until that moment. I went back to that memory of sitting in that chapel early in the morning, looking up at the plaques on the wall which read the names of the martyrs. I looked up at those names, specifically the churchwomen and said, “I don’t know who you are, but you must be important to be on a plaque so please pray for me and I’ll pray for you.”
It hit me on that car ride to the martyrdom site, I was going to visit the site where my friends were killed. My saintly friends who I did not know I had, but they had me.
These churchwomen taught in the schools and churches supported by the Diocese of Cleveland and their memory remains in the hearts of many in El Salvador and in Cleveland. They are modern-day martyrs who were just like us. Their stories are important, and we must not forget their boldness to serve in an area of unrest and violence and the call to holiness that is present in our local area.