Jesuit Journeys
Winter 2006

Social and International Ministries:
25 years of accompaniment and witness

John Sealey
Provincial Assistant For Social and International Ministries

Certain events in our lives become graced, formative moments. Containing both mystery and consolation, they invite us to mature in our faith and, like our best teachers, may even unveil new insights that over time help contour and reshape our worldview.

In summer 1990, my wife Leah and I were midway through a two-year term as Jesuit Volunteers teaching in Belize City. We spent a portion of our summer break visiting a friend working with Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in El Salvador.

We returned one evening to our unmarked JRS house on a quiet residential block in San Salvador to find our six person group (two teachers, two nurses and two pastoral workers) being confronted in the darkened cul-de-sac by 20 armed Salvadoran soldiers. Leaping commando-style from the back of their open troop truck, they surrounded our car and led us by gunpoint single file into the house. I was taken by a soldier bearing his M-16 into a side room while my wife and the others were questioned in other rooms.

In those days, the U.S. provided $1.5 million daily to train and support the Salvadoran Army and special police. The assassinations of six Jesuits and two companions, carried out by a special unit of the US-backed Army, had occurred just six months earlier (see Jesuit Journeys – fall 2005). Now, the Salvadoran Army nervously anticipated a possible rebel offensive with the start of the seasonal rains.

During the 12-year war, 75,000 Salvadorans were killed (60,000 were civilians, including Archbishop Oscar Romero and other church workers, labor organizers, and human rights promoters). Others were tortured; over 1 million were internally or internationally displaced. According to the United Nations Truth Commission, all but 5 percent of the killings and abuses were carried out by the Salvadoran Army or their affiliates (Estudios Centroamericanos).

Midway through the ordeal, I sensed that we would be unhurt – not so much due to our innocence but simply because, as American citizens, harming us would embarrass the Salvadoran Army and further undermine the case for U.S. funding.

At the same time I imagined how different our situation would have been were we a group of Salvadorans sympathetic to displaced communities. Earlier that day and throughout the journey, we met friends and families of the killed and missing – parents, children, catechists, and villagers who were illegally apprehended and often tortured without regard for due process.

Soldiers searched our bags and scanned the floors for secret compartments looking for weapons. They searched our papers and learned we had visited sensitive areas where returning refugees resided. They lectured us about the presence of “communist” insurgents among the rural civilian population. With Cold War mindsets fully operational, they asserted that El Salvador would not become the next Nicaragua.

Before leaving at 2 a.m., they awoke a neighbor to sign an affidavit shielding them from any claim of maltreatment. Unhurt but exhausted, we prepared a dispatch to share with international human rights groups.

This is but one very isolated example of the kind of work JRS does. Inspired by St. Ignatius’ instruction for Jesuits to go in service to God where the need is greatest, Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ established JRS 25 years ago. Fr. Arrupe was particularly moved by the spiritual and material suffering of nearly 16 million refugees worldwide. He realized that international witness and solidarity could provide advocacy for dispossessed people and those rendered homeless by conflicts and breakdowns in civil society.On the 25th anniversary of JRS, Jesuit Superior General Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach reaffirms JRS as a Jesuit apostolic priority while also noting the dramatic contextual changes. Today, there are over 50 million forcibly displaced people worldwide. He also notes that people displaced within their own countries now surpass those who are internationally displaced.

Only one person was present when Xavier, betrayed by merchants and abandoned by those whom he trusted, died on a small island with the China coast within his sight but not his reach. Now, 450 years after Xavier’s death, there are 5,656 Jesuits in 38 Asia/Oceania countries. In this region with hundreds of cultures, the spirit of Xavier lives on. The great traditions and the spiritual heritage of Asia beckon us to speak anew about the Kingdom of God in ways that allow the people we meet to understand and open their hearts to the way of our Lord.