With Jon Sobrino at the SOA protest (John Dear SJ in NCR)

[struggle4progress]

Thousands of us gathered this weekend, Nov. 21-23, for the annual funeral procession at Fort Benning in Columbus, Ga., there to call for the closing of the notorious "School of Assassins," where the United States trains the Latin American death squads that, over the past few decades, have killed thousands. We gather there each year around Nov. 16 -- the anniversary of the massacre of the Jesuits in El Salvador. This year, the sole Jesuit at the University of Central America to have survived the attack, liberation theologian Jon Sobrino, was our guest of honor ...

On Friday night, in the packed ballroom of the Howard Johnson Hotel, Pax Christi gave Sobrino its annual book award for his latest, No Salvation Outside the Poor: Prophetic-Utopian Essays (Orbis Books) ...

"When Ellacuria 'took hold of the reality' of the Third World, he grasped it in an important way as a 'crucified people' ... Ellacuria said that the crucified people are one of the main features of our time, not merely something factual that we may consider, but something central that must be considered, without which we do not have a full grasp of reality," Sobrino wrote ...

The weekend over finally, Jon Sobrino took my arm and pulled me aside. The weekend amazed him, he said. He had no idea there were so many North Americans siding with the crucified people of Central and South America. "This is such a good thing!" he said with joy and wonder. "I'm so glad I came" ...

http://ncrcafe.org/node/2299

[knitter4democracy]

1. And don't forget the four martyred churchwomen.

I taught for two years at the school Sr. Dorothy Kazel taught at before going to El Salvador and being attacked, raped, murdered, and left in a ditch. Her spirit is still there, and that's where I first learned of the SOA and its evils.

What the US has done in Central and South America is a war crime, as far as I'm concerned.

[bluesmail]

2. That was put beautifully.