In 1989, five months before the Jesuits were assassinated in El Salvador, my friend Karl Kiser, S.J., and I managed to talk our way into the country. At the Salvadoran embassy in Guatemala —where we were studying Spanish — we tactfully impersonated tourists hoping to visit the beaches. Things got dicey when they asked if Loyola Chicago was a Jesuit school. Knowing the truth would be a deal breaker, we smiled and said, “What’s a Jesuit?” Moments later, our passports were stamped for entry.
For young Jesuits in formation, El Salvador was the “it frontier” of faith and justice; the place where courage met conscience. My intentions were good, but I was still a naive 22-year-old idealist when it came to the complexities of a nation torn apart by civil war. The moment I arrived and saw tanks on the streets, the poverty, and the faces filled with fear, my simplified vision of justice began to crumble. I left with an unsettling awareness that there are no quick fixes in social justice, and that hope and heartbreak often live side by side.
Five months later, the Jesuits at the Universidad Centroamericana — where we had stayed — were killed by American-trained Salvadoran soldiers. That moment forever redefined for me what it means to live “a faith that does justice.”
Years later, that experience and its lingering questions compelled me to make a film about the Jesuit martyrs. In 2014, my team and I produced “Blood of the Martyrs” (available now on Amazon Prime), a documentary that lets audiences hear the story directly from those who lived it, witnesses, family members, government officials, justice advocates, and scholars in El Salvador, and the United States.
We didn’t set out merely to retell history. We wanted to understand how the martyrs’ sacrifice continues to shape El Salvador and challenge the world today. In the process, I returned to El Salvador a few times to film and to listen. Gone were the military tanks of my first visit, but the city still bore the marks of vigilance: security guards stationed outside shops and homes; checkpoints at intersections; and a visible sense of caution in the air. The poverty remained overwhelming, and the fear still palpable, though now it came from gang violence rather than the military.
And yet, amid all that hardship, I encountered something extraordinary: hope. Salvadorans spoke not with resignation, but with courage and conviction. They told me of faith that endures and love that insists on justice. In San Salvador, murals of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the four churchwomen, and the Jesuit martyrs line the streets — a bold reminder that goodness can rise even from the blood-stained soil of suffering.
For those of us in Jesuit education, the story of the martyrs is not a distant tragedy: it’s a living lesson in what our mission demands. The UCA Jesuits were brilliant scholars and teachers, but more than that, they were men who used their intellect and influence to stand with the poor and confront systems of injustice. Their commitment to truth made them targets. Their courage made them saints.
At Loyola Marymount University, we inherit that same mission. When we teach, research, or tell stories through film that expose injustice or lift up the forgotten, we stand in continuity with those eight lives. The martyrs remind us that Jesuit education is not about comfort, it’s about conscience. It forms women and men who discern, who act, and who refuse to be indifferent.
During one of my visits to the UCA, I met a young engineering student who was born after the Jesuits’ murders. She said to me, “My generation will stand up and change El Salvador.” Her words have stayed with me ever since.
Thirty-five years later, I still don’t have easy answers. But I do know that the martyrs’ story has the power to transform — because it already has. It transformed a generation of Salvadorans, and it continues to shape Jesuit universities like ours, reminding us that learning and justice belong together.
Their story is Christ’s story, which is also our story: a story of courage, of compassion, and of hope that refuses to die.
There will be a special Mass to honor the Jesuit Martyrs of El Salvador on November 16 at 8:00 p.m. in Sacred Heart Chapel.