In Salvador, Americans remember U.S. missionaries killed in 1980

Published: 2005-12-06

NONHUALCO, El Salvador (CNS) -- As the yellow American school buses made the turn off the old San Salvador-airport road, the U.S. passengers fell silent, reflecting on the final moments of four American missionaries killed in 1980. More than 100 delegates, including priests and nuns, tried to imagine what is was like as Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel and lay missioner Jean Donovan were waylaid by members of the Salvadoran military at a roadblock just outside the country's primary airport. "When the soldiers with them turned their van down this dirt road, these women had to have known they were facing their last few minutes on earth. It was so very moving," said Sister Marie Lucey, a member of the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia and associate director for social mission with the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The four missionaries, working mostly with poor peasants in civil war-torn El Salvador, were tortured, raped and murdered at a remote rural enclave that is now one of the country's holiest pilgrimage sites.

Copyright (c) 2005 Catholic News Service /U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service .