Blood and Ink

A Jesuit community’s conversion to the poor, and the price they paid.In November 1989, six members of the Jesuit community of the University of Central America in San Salvador, including the rector, Ignacio Ellacura, were massacred by government troops. Twenty-five years later, this book provides the definitive account of the path led to that fateful day, focusing on the Jesuits’ prophetic option for the poor, their role in the renewal of the Salvadorean church and society, and the critical steps that caused them, as Archbishop Romero would put it, to “share the same fate as the poor.”Drawing on newly available archival materials and extensive interviews, Robert Lassalle-Klein gives special attention to the theological contributions of Ellacura and Jon Sobrino, who survived the massacre, and the emergence among the community of a spirituality that recognized the risen Christ in what Ellacura called “the crucified people of El Salvador.”Robert Lassalle-Klein