On the day that six Jesuits — Ignacio Ellacuría, Ignacio Martín-Baró, Segundo Montes, Arnando López, Joaquín López y López and Juan Ramón Moreno — together with the community cook and her daughter, Julia Elba Ramos and Cecilia Ramos, were murdered in El Salvador, I was at Cha Choeng Sau outside Bangkok, at the Jesuit Refugee Service meeting held there.
It was 16 November 1989. We had heard from JRS workers of the suffering and resilience of refugees around Asia. We now looked forward to hear from Jon Sobrino, the El Salvador Jesuit theologian, who had been speaking at another meeting in Bangkok. But at breakfast we heard the dreadful news.
That evening Jon Sobrino did join us for the Eucharist, still in shock. Next morning he read the account in the Bangkok Post. A photograph showed one of the dead Jesuits in a room. Jon looked at the photo, and said slowly, 'That's my typewriter: that's my Bible. That is my room.'
A Jesuit visiting from another community had spent the evening and died in Jon's room.
Two years later I spent six months in El Salvador. I wanted to understand Latin American theology and to visit the communities of refugees who had returned from camps in Panama, Honduras and Nicaragua. In the theological library where I worked there were still bullet marks in the walls from the night of the murder. In many communities there were other relics — the stole worn by Fr Martín Baró, and so on.
The Jesuits were still bearing the weight of their loss. They were determined not to allow the deaths to affect their commitments, and were intensely focused. One wit had remarked, 'In 1989 the Salvadorean Army martyred the six Jesuits; in 1990 the six Jesuits martyred the rest of the Province.'
Although I had intended my stay to be a gesture of solidarity with the Jesuits in El Salvador, I came to realise that guests with less than fluent Spanish must have been more of a burden than an encouragement. The Jesuits in El Salvador lived under great pressure, constantly standing up to a government that had turned its arms against its little people, and following Jesus in the midst of a civil war.
Those who were killed were good people, good Jesuits. They were not picture book saints, just ordinary martyrs. I was heartened to hear that one died swearing at