Brophy student gather for
  prayer service in the
  Graham Plaza


November 18, 2009 – The Brophy student body led a prayer service to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Jesuit Martyrs of El Salvador. 

Twenty years ago this week, a meeting took place between high-level leaders of the military of the country of El Salvador.  It was decided that Jesuit Father Ignacio Ellacuria, the Prsident of the Jesuit University of Central America in San Salvador, was to be killed.  The commando unit further ordered to leave no witnesses.  Father Ellacuria, as well as other Jesuits in his community at the university, had been outspoken critics of the violence, repression and obfuscation committed by the Salvadoran government on its own civilian population.  By that time in the war, over 70,000 civilians had been killed, and according to the UN Truth Commission conducted after the war, over 90% of those deaths were committed by the Salvadoran government and it’s military.  Father Ellacuria’s continued criticism of these atrocities led the government of El Salvador to their decision. 

In the early  morning hours of November 16th, 1989, over 60 commandos entered the University grounds.  A smaller number of them passed the campus chapel and entered the two-story Jesuit residence.  Leading the Jesuits, their housekeeper, and her daughter out into their garden, the commandos made them lie face down in the grass.  Then they shot each of them at close ranges, and dragged their bodies back into the residence.

Brophy senior A.J. Steimel spoke at the service, sharing his experiences during this summer’s Brophy Immersion Trip to El Salvador.  The group of Brophy students visited the site of the brutality, the museum displaying clothes the martyrs were wearing at the time of their death, the horror story was no longer just a story.  He called on his fellow classmates to live out the Jesuit principles and in the name of Christ to seek justice for the poor and the oppressed. 

Read the November 17, 2009 L.A. Times Article   

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