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Four Churchwomen Murdered in El Salvador

Back in the day on December 2nd, 1980, four U.S. Catholic churchwomen were brutally raped murdered by National Guardsmen in El Salvador. Maryknoll sisters Maura Clark and Ita Ford, Ursuline nun Dorothy Kazel and lay worker Jean Donovan were buried in a shallow grave the following day after their bodies were discovered. The women were in El Salvador in accordance with their faith after having answered a call issued by martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero. They dedicated their lives to the impoverished ravaged by civil war in the Central American country. On their last day of carrying out a ‘preferential option for the poor,’ Kazel and Donovan drove a van to the San Salvador airport to pick up Maryknoll sisters Clark and Ford who were returning from a regional conference in Nicaragua. On orders, the Guardsmen then stopped the van transporting the four women and took it to a remote location where they carried out their heinous crimes.

Before joining the 75,000 victims of the civil war Sister Ita Ford described the role of U.S. in El Salvador when she said the following in an interview, “The United States has to realize that it does not own Central America or any other part of the world.”

For Uprising, this is your truth professa’ saying it’s no mystery why they conceal our people’s history