Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Jean Donovan, Dorothy Kazel
The destinies of Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Jean Donovan, and Dorothy Kazel were joined together in just the last months of their
lives. Murdered together by National Guardsmen in El Salvador in 1980, their deaths became a martyrdom for the church of the poor in El Salvador and for thousands of Christians in the United States. Who are these women, and what led them to this fate, the “same fate as the poor,” as the Maryknoll Sisters called it. What were they doing in El Salvador? How did they understand their role as missioners, and why did this lead them into conflict with forces of a military government that killed them? And what, after all, does this have to say to us?
Essays and prayer adapted with permission from Religious Task Force on Central America and Mexico.