“Upon receiving the news, Father Arrupe exclaimed in Rome on March 19 that “the news of the recent assassination in the Central American republic of El Salvador of Father Rutilio Grande seems to me a clear sign from the Lord. He had been preceded, in a short span, by Father João Bosco P. Brunier […] They were men of normal human qualities, of a hidden life, almost unknown, who lived in small towns, completely dedicated to the daily service of the poor and the suffering…”

“The day before his death he had prayed the responso over the corpse of a villero who had been killed in a demonstration of marginalized groups. As he left after saying his Mass in his marginal parish of San Francisco Solano in Buenos Aires, at 7:40 p.m., a group got out of a car and machine-gunned him in the presence of his people. Already in the hospital, before dying, he said to Father Vernazza, leader of the Priests for the Third World: ‘Now more than ever I am going to be with the people.’”

“On the theoretical plane, the enemy to be defeated is liberation theology; on the ecclesial plane it is Medellín; on the political-financial plane it is necessary to “cut off the supplies” to all Christian commitments with the poor and the oppressed: the popular Church. What is certain is that the enormous power our sociologist [Vekemans] possesses in the Church and in political-economic agencies has rendered fruitless every attempt made by Jesuit religious, priests and Christians to get him to leave Bogotá.”

“‘Something terrible has happened.’ […] He asked me if I was sitting down and had something to write with. I said I had and then he told me what had happened. “They have murdered Ignacio Ellacuría.” I remained silent and did not write anything, because I had already been afraid of this. But my friend went on: “They have murdered Segundo Montes, Ignacio Martín-Baró, Amando López, Juan Ramón Moreno, and Joaquín López y López.” My friend read the names slowly and each of them reverberated like a hammer blow that I received in total helplessness.”

“It was 21 June 1971. A judge from Pakistan delivered his verdict in an hour-and-a-half broadcast. The judge overturned a 1950 International Court of Justice ruling that South Africa’s mandate in Namibia (once South-West Africa) was legal. Now, the court ruled, South Africa was illegally occupying the territory. Excited, the seminarians returned to their class after the broadcast. A Finnish New Testament professor was lecturing on Romans 13: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God…”

“I left New York on August 18, 1971, headed for Africa. The conference that I was participating in had been called by the National Committee of Black Churchmen (NCBC) to coordinate the efforts of Black clergy in the United States and their counterparts throughout the African continent. I was traveling with a group that included Ron Daniels, a fellow Pan-Africanist, whose organization, Freedom Inc., was doing some interesting things in Youngstown, Ohio, to spur economic development among our people. He had been asked to talk about those efforts. I had been invited to discuss the building of Malcolm X Liberation University. The group included about two dozen NCBC delegates and Black staff members of various churches. […] Little did I know that I was in for a grueling march of close to four hundred miles.”