Dean Brackley, SJ, passed away in El Salvador on Sunday, October 16, 2011 in the
company of friends and his Jesuit brothers. He had struggled with cancer, and after chemotherapy treatments proved ineffective, he decided to forego further treatment and return to his home in El Salvador.
When the 6 Jesuits were martyred at the University of Central America (UCA) in November of 1989, their Superior General was inundated with letters from Jesuits
around the world offering to go El Salvador in their stead. Fr. Brackley was one of the few sent to help.
This past July, I went to El Salvador with a group of 10 from Romero Center Ministries through Project Fiat. The experience included visiting sites associated with the death of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the 6 Jesuit martyrs, their housekeeper, and her daughter.
Our time at the UCA, where we visited the small museum and rose garden in commemoration of the Jesuit martyrs, was the most challenging part of my experience.
Often times, as an onlooker at memorials, I am moved by imagining what the suffering marked by the memorial must have been like. At the UCA, I didn’t have to imagine it. Death lingers there.
Bloodstained clothing hangs in memory of each Jesuit. One is commemorated solely by his bloody underwear. The room where the Jesuits’ housekeeper and her daughter were raped and murdered remains as it was during that time. The site of the violence is jarringly accessible.
The memorial forced me to face whether I would be willing to live out my faith to the point of risking death. Heck, not even death, but rejection by family or friends.
Would I, like Fr. Brackley, enter a country in the throes of civil war to speak the message of Catholic Social Teaching in the place of those who just been murdered because
of their commitment to it?
Previous groups who visited El Salvador with Project Fiat have had the chance to welcome Fr. Brackley as a guest speaker. He was too ill to meet with us when we visited in July.
Though he can no longer speak to groups, his message lives on. It includes a challenge for his own people at home in the United States; that we welcome migrants who are victim to violence and poverty.
In Fr. Brackley’s memory, let us pause to consider why people flee their country and seek places of refuge, like the United States. May we help his message live on by speaking up about the call for justice for immigrants to our family, friends, faith community, and politicians– regardless of the risk of rejection, or even death.
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By Genevieve Jordan, Romero Center Ministries