Jesuit martyrs remembered

Throughout the week, the waters of Foley Pond have run blood red in memory of the lives of eight martyrs.  On Monday, a vigil was held in remembrance of the lives of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter, who were assassinated in El Salvador 20 years ago.

The priests were martyred because of their writings and their declamations to the government for human rights abuses.

The vigil began by Foley Pond, where a group of more than 50 students gathered together in the cold, holding candles to light the night.  There were prayers, responses and songs as the stories of the eight martyrs were told and their lives remembered.

From Foley Pond, the group processed to Sunken Garden where eight crosses were erected.  Below each cross sat six of LMU’s own Jesuit priests and two students to represent the six martyrs.

The mood of the vigil was somber and respectful as the crowd felt the impact of the assassinations.  Each representative at the crosses stood as the story of their respective martyr was spoken and remembered.

From Sunken Garden, the crowd moved to the front of the chapel where more prayers were said. The vigil ended before the Jesuit Community Residence after about an hour of remembrance and prayer.

Similar vigils have been and are being held at Jesuit universities across the nation.
The event held this past Monday was a student-run effort, assisted in large part by the delegation of students that will be travelling to Georgia with fellow Jesuit students across the nation to discuss issues of justice and protest The School of the Americas.

Coordinator and junior psychology and political science major Carlos Rodriguez described The School of the Americas as a “school started in the 1920s as a way for the United States to train soldiers from Latin America.  During the ’80s, when the U.S. had a firm policy of anti-communism, they began to train soldiers from dictatorships.” The students from the school, he explained, went on to commit huge atrocities and violations of human rights.

Having been on the Georgia trip three times, the vigil was very personal to Rodriguez who knows people who have suffered from the effects of the assassinations.

The vigil was held in memory of the lives of the martyrs, “to say that we will continue their work in our own lives and in our life as a University,” said Rodriguez.  “They were assassinated because they believed in free expression and intellectual rigor and as students of this university that is something that we hold dear as well.”

Rodriguez hopes that all the students who attended the event and everyone in the LMU community sees the lives of these martyrs as an inspiration for what we can do with our lives and our community.

Sarah Yamamoto and Holly Maag, freshmen mechanical engineering and civil engineering majors also attended the vigil. 

Yamamoto said she “didn’t know what [she] was getting into but in the end it was really enlightening.” 

Maag thought that this issue was “just so important for everybody, and it really brought the community together to support one another as Jesuits.”

It is the hope of Rodriguez for “all LMU students and ourselves as a community to give continuity, to give life to the work of the Jesuit martyrs, and to continue to place ourselves in the life of the oppressed and the poor in our worlds so that we can realize that our calling is to give voice to those who don’t have a voice in our world.”