PVC 1991 Delegation – Part Twelve: Fr. Rafael Sivatte

 

The following notes have been edited to correct errors and to add explanations and updates. Parenthetical notes and remarks from the original are enclosed in parentheses. Present day [2022] updates are italicized and enclosed in square brackets.

Tuesday, 15 October 1991 - 4:10 PM - Fr. Rafael Sivatte at the UCA

We are seated once more in the library of the Monsignor Romero Center on the campus of the Central American University. As I look around, I note that the machine-gunned volumes which had last year been exhibited open on chairs along the one wall are now in glass covered display cases lining the same wall. The scorched and mutilated portrait of Archbishop Romero, glass stalactites still appended to its frame, is also enclosed and glass covered once again. These are mute reminders of the night of slaughter which took place here nearly two years ago.

George introduces our group to Father Sivatte, who greets us graciously. We have asked him specifically to speak about the recently concluded trial of those accused of murdering the six Jesuits and their two housekeepers.

"I am delighted to be able to receive you. I am Vice Rector of the University and Assistant to the director of the Monsignor Romero Pastoral Center. I also give classes in Old Testament and in theology, and I assist Father Sobrino [Father Jon Sobrino, who had escaped the massacre two years before because he was out of the country at the time.] in editing "Letters to the Churches," a bi-weekly journal published by the University. I have been here two years since they killed my associates.

PVC 1990 Delegation – Part Thirteen: University of Central America

The following notes have been edited to correct errors and to add explanations and updates. Parenthetical notes and remarks from the original are enclosed in parentheses. Present day [2022] updates are italicized and enclosed in square brackets.

5 October 1990, 3:00 PM - University of Central America

We are welcomed to the university and led back a hallway to a conference room/library where some of the items which were attacked during the massacre are on display. [On the night of 16 November 1989 members of the elite Atlacatl Battalion of the Salvadoran military invaded the UCA and massacred six Jesuit priests/scholars, their housekeeper, and her daughter.] There are text books and a Bible which were machine-gunned into tatters. A scorched and blistered portrait of Archbishop Romero hangs in a charred wooden frame. The glass which had once covered it drips in icicles from the lower edge of the frame, melted by flame throwers and solidified again into tortured columns. The wooden panel above the door frame is pierced repeatedly with bullet holes, mementos of that terrible night nearly a year ago.

A slightly-built, middle-aged Spanish priest enters the room and takes his seat at the head of the conference table. He is introduced to us as Rafael Sivatte, an assistant to Fr. Jon Sobrino.

"I have been here since 1985, more or less - teaching at the university three months of each year. The last time that I was here was just before the massacre. But now I am settled in to stay as the Old Testament professor and assistant to Jon Sobrino.