'La Verdad' revists murder of Jesuit martyrs 25 years later

By Lucia Cerna and Mary Jo Ignoffo (Orbis, 2014)

After 25 years on the planet, one hopes that a young adult is well on the way toward finding traction and clarity in navigating life. Similarly, the 25th anniversary of a major event ought to be a moment of resolved meaning.

In a simple, unsparing testimonial, La Verdad: A Witness to the Salvadoran Martyrs casts a timely laser on the despicable circumstances surrounding the 1989 murders of six Jesuit priests, a caretaker, and her daughter, all of whom were residing at the Jesuit house at the Universidad Centroamericana in San Salvador. Coauthor Lucia Cerna, a housekeeper for the Jesuits, saw who committed the crimes from a window of the nearby residence. With the help of Mary Jo Ignoffo, Cerna opens additional windows into daily life with the Jesuits, growing up in El Salvador, and, most harrowing, her own victimhood by the same dark forces that killed the Jesuits.

As a child, Lucia was called Luz, or “light.” Her birthday, September 15, is both the Catholic feast of Our Lady of Sorrows and the Salvadoran celebration of national independence. Indeed, La Verdad is a story of light, best glimpsed by the blend of faith within the tumultuous Salvadoran context. The narrative stretches from Cerna’s birth in 1946 to her present life in California. Her first words in the book could as easily be her concluding ones: “I know sadness with victory.”

Each chapter is divided into an opening contribution from Cerna—transcripted from interviews with Ignoffo—and a concluding commentary by Ignoffo, who befriended Cerna once she resettled in the U.S. after the murderous trauma. The format is not as ungainly as might be anticipated.

The epilogue, offered by Jesuit theologian Jon Sobrino, recounts a remark once made about Archbishop Oscar Romero by an unnamed official who saw Romero at an airport: “There goes the truth.” After reading La Verdad, you will want to say of Cerna, “There goes a kindred spirit.”

This review appeared in the November 2014 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 79, No. 11, page 43).