This Power Guns Can’t Destroy : Murders: Whether in secular pursuits or more pastoral work in El Salvador, the Jesuits sought to serve the truth. This, apparently, was their ‘crime.’

My wife’s message was brief: The residence of the Jesuits in San Salvador had been bombed by heavily armed men. Six Jesuits, the cook and her daughter killed. I stared at the machine--stunned, outraged, disbelieving.

Disbelief lasted only a few seconds, however. After all, in 1980 I heard Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero in his sermon warn soldiers not to kill unarmed peasants, even under orders. “No human command is above God’s law: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ ” The next day he was shot dead while saying Mass. Father Ignacio Ellacuria, one of those killed Thursday, was with Romero that morning nine years ago.

Ellacuria and other Jesuits in El Salvador have been living on borrowed time since June, 1977, when a death squad called the White Warriors Union ordered all of them to leave the country within a month or be eliminated, one by one. This was shortly after two priests had been murdered (one of them a Jesuit named Rutilio Grande, as seen in the film “Romero”). The White Warriors Union, reputedly directed by Roberto D’Aubuisson, then active in the army’s intelligence service, denounced “Jesuit guerrillaism.” The bizarre 30-day countdown drew international media attention to El Salvador. As the attention-filled days and nights passed, the Jesuits held their ground. None was killed then, although over the next two or three years 10 priests were murdered.

What was the Jesuits’ “crime”? The landholders, business people and the armed forces were blaming the Jesuits for growing militancy among peasants, workers and students. The logic seems to be that poor people don’t think for themselves, so that when they begin to demand their rights, there must be “brains” behind them--intellectuals, church people and especially Jesuits. In fact, initial reports from San Salvador indicated that four of the Jesuits were found with their brains cut out.

These Jesuits were murdered at their residence in the Central American University, a Jesuit school. Catholic universities in Latin America have generally devoted themselves to training young professionals. Often these schools have higher academic standards than national universities, which are under-funded and usually highly politicized. Twenty years ago, under the leadership of Ellacuria, the Central American University began to ask itself a basic question: What is the role of a Catholic university in a country like El Salvador? Their answer was that it should steer its research and training in a direction that would address El Salvador’s economic, political and social problems.

For two decades, the most honest and objective social science research in El Salvador has come from the university. It’s journal, Estudios Centroamericanos , edited by Ellacuria, has carried the best documentation and analysis of events in the country. Astonishingly, even in the midst of the civil war, Ignacio Martin-Baro carried out opinion polls and Segundo Montes monitored human-rights violations and studied the situation of refugees. These priests, whether following secular pursuits or a more pastoral work, sought to serve truth and God’s people, especially the poor. These Jesuits have gone to bed every night knowing that they were on numerous permanent death lists.

For example, in April, 1981, Gen. Guillermo Garcia, the minister of defense, read on television a list of 138 “traitors.” Included were the names of Ellacuria and other church people. What probably gave them a measure of protection was a calculation that there would be a high political cost to murdering people with as many international connections as the Jesuits.

Their murderers apparently blame the Jesuits to some extent for the current rebel offensive. It is true that they had insistently pointed out that the roots of the crisis in El Salvador are to be found in an unjust economic system that enriches a few while keeping the majority in poverty. In that sense, they can be seen as sympathetic to the left.

However, they were not simply guerrilla partisans. When I interviewed him in 1981, Ellacuria criticized particular positions of the guerrillas at that early stage of the war. In their publications, the Jesuits insisted over and over that the only sane, just and rational course for El Salvador was the negotiation process involving all forces--the government, military and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.

The White Warriors Union--or a similar group--has finally gotten its way. In 1977, when announcing their decision to remain in El Salvador, the Jesuits stated “Christian power is far stronger than a two-edged sword because it is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ. It is a power neither money nor guns can destroy.” They died with that belief and others will continue to live and resist in the same spirit.