FSPA commemorate loss and legacy in El Salvador

Perhaps more than anything, El Salvador’s Civil War defines the country’s history. Waged from 1979 to 1992 it is the second longest war in Latin America. Statistics released to the public indicate that in those 13 years approximately 75,000 people were killed. Among them were Archbishop Oscar Romero and four American churchwomen—Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford and lay missionary Jean Donovan. Dec. 2, 2010, marked the 30th anniversary of their deaths.

FSPA is also part of Salvadoran history. The community established a presence there in 1962 when three sisters were sent to assist the Maryknoll Fathers to begin a parish school, Madre del Salvador, and Sister Charlotte Seubert was among them. Working with native priests to help establish a leadership center
for “campesinos,” or peasants, she became acquainted with Bishop Romero. As one of “very few American sisters in the area,” she knew the four women quite well.

After the slayings in 1981, when FSPA called Sister Charlotte back to St. Rose, her departure felt like a personal act of betrayal. “I’d worked with these campesinos, taught them liberation theology, led them to realize they had basic human rights to education, decent wages, housing and land ownership. Just when these people needed moral support at the very least,” she recalls,
“I abandoned them.”

Equally distressed when directed to return to La Crosse and forsake her nine-year post in El Salvador was Sister Antona Schedlo. In 1988 she took an opportunity to transfer back with an NGO, Christians of Peace, and was stationed in the war zone. Rebel gangs obstructed efforts to rebuild what the war had destroyed. “Anyone in pastoral care was considered a communist suspect,” she recalls, and her own civic presence grew in 1992 when she took an administrative position.

Speaking to the world 30 years after the atrocities in its Catholic ministries, El Salvador sent mixed messages; Sister Antona’s reflections prove that paradox. Before moving back to St. Rose in May she’d experienced a shift in political reform. “The government has been more transparent.” Newly-elected president Mauricio Funes, a member of the left-winged Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, made history by joining a march to commemorate Bishop Romero’s execution. Reports indicate that civilian slayings have decreased from an average of 15 to 10 per day. Yet contradiction came to her in a recent e-mail message from a friend in El Salvador: “Yesterday the newspapers reported that murders are increasing.” Fear has catechists revoking meeting-space privileges for a team of women campaigning for health care. Peace Corp workers are no longer sent to the region. A young man making arrangements for parish transportation was shot.

Although 25 years have passed since Sister Charlotte left El Salvador and her war wounds are less visible, she felt transported back to the violence upon her return there with Global Awareness Through Experience in August. Going to the sites where “Bishop Romero, the four church women, the six Jesuits priests, their housekeeper and her daughter were killed” confirmed her place in history there. “I was in this country for these events.” Yet visiting Madre del Salvador after 46 years and realizing its growth of 80 to 800 students and three to 30 teachers gave her a perspective of mission validation. “I could see their pride and dedication,” she says, and “feel the gratitude they have for FSPA.”

First-time visitor Affiliate Margaret Bleuer, who joined August’s GATE trip, arrived overwhelmed by the names etched on the Wall of Memory and Truth, a memorial that honors more than 30,000 victims and the difficult stories of “bombings, torture, prisons and death squads.” She left, however, carrying optimism in a report of successful AIDS education ministry, the gift of a Salvadoran woman declaring “God has touched you to help me,” and hope for “peace, forgiveness, reconciliation and the realization of human rights.”

FSPA Mission Councilor Sister Rose Elsbernd made a December pilgrimage to El Salvador on a trip sponsored by LCWR, Pax Christi and SHARE. She stood at the altar of Bishop Romero 30 years to the day that the four Catholic women were delivered into martyrdom.

Not far from where they were assaulted she visited women forging legislative gains to criminalize rape and authenticating financial relationships through gardening cooperatives and lending practices. Refugees are returning to the region and to the Peace Accords’ promise of social and economic reform, the division of government and law enforcement and the renewal of education and catechism.

“It was painful to see the barbed wire covering the homes and the buildings, yet beautiful to see the spirit that continues at the church where the churchwomen’s bodies were found,” says Sister Rose. She felt privileged to celebrate there as one in a bilingual crowd and later with Spanish-speaking Maryknolls in San Salvador. “It was very much about the people.”

Sister Rose speaks of FSPA’s continued presence there, of Sister Marie Des Jarlais’ dedication to FSPA’s GATE program that “honors the history that our missionaries were a part of.” Sister Charlotte encourages FSPA women in formation to honor that Spirit of ministry as well. Says Sister Julia Walsh, a teacher in an inner-city Chicago high school, “It was both powerful to see them stunned by the injustice and the horror of the truth and exciting to say that my community is part of the peacemaking story”