The Nuns

Warning. This episode contains references to sexual violence. Listener discretion is advised. There are thousands of bodies buried in the fertile soils of El Salvador, deep beneath the volcanic ash feeding the coffee plantations in the mountains. The practice of burying multiple bodies in a common grave goes back centuries when the conquistador is killed with swords and plagues when the government massacred our indigenous people in the nineteen thirties.

After pushing the bodies into the grave, the villagers covered it and placed a simple cross us made out of tree branches on the grave. I always thought it was just some little twig cross, and it was big three feet tall, this cross. And I think it was very obvious that the compasinos wanted this grave to be found, otherwise they wouldn't have marked it that way.

That's my opinion on that.

That's sister Cynthia glavic an Ursulae nun from Cleveland, Ohio, and she's talking about a common grave that was discovered in the afternoon of December fourth, nineteen eighty four women's bodies had been found sprawled along the roadside in the village of Santiago Nonualco. Local campasinos had found the women and buried them together in a shallow grave. This is

The sandals was an interesting detail because the Salvadoran women didn't wear any shoes, so the fact that these women had sandals, it was like an identifying item that they were who they were, that these were the missionaries.

Four American missionaries had gone missing. They'd been coming back from the airport in a big white van when they just disappeared. So when the priest heard about the women in sandals, he immediately raised the alarm. He called the American embassy and the US ambassador Robert White. We heard about in the last episode. White went to the grave site and asked the local authorities to dig up the bodies.

The bodies were unearthed and pulled out of the shallow grave one by one with ropes, first, then more than Dorothy, and finally Ita.

This graphic moment was caught on film by reporters and broadcast all over the US. Sister Cynthia was one of the people watching on TV.

Those bodies being pulled out of the grave over and over again on TV. I think that just reinforced the brutality of this the whole thing.

For Sister Cynthia, this footage hit especially hard because she recognized some of these women from back home.

We were especially shocked in Cleveland because Dorothy and Jean had lived among us, so when they were found in a shallow grave in this deserted cow pasture, this news made headlines in every local and national news program and in every newspaper. Their deaths brought the tiny country of El Salvador and its problems to the intention of the entire world.

The news that four American churchwomen had been killed execution style in El Salvador broke in the United States like a bomb. It was the first time that the general public in the US had heard any detail about what was happening in El Salvador. Oscar Romero had been murdered earlier that same year, but the murder of these four churchwomen would bring a whole new level of international scrutiny. This moment became a litmus test for the United States

I just have this memory of us laughing, kind of screaming on the river wherever we were. We were in some park and trying to maneuver the canoes.

But that's how Sister Cynthia remembers her time with Dorothy Kasel, one of the four churchwomen who were sent to El Salvador, not as a nun, but as the vibrant and dynamic woman she was.

She was very outgoing. She had a huge smile, a.

Lot of energy, the ability to make you feel special.

Cynthia first met Dorothy when she joined the Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland in nineteen seventy three, but it turns out that Dorothy and Cynthia had actually grown up in the same place.

Her family lived on the same street as I did, Shoreview Avenue, in Ublite, Ohio. They lived six doors away, so I knew her parents pretty well. So when I told her that I was from Shoreview Avenue, she called us the Blondes from Shoreview because she always had nicknames for people.

Sister Cynthia is now the director of Archives for the Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland, and she wrote a book about Dorothy after her death. It's called In the Fullness of Life, and in the process of writing her book, she researched deeply how her fellow sister came to be in El Salvador and what her time there was like. In the nineteen sixties, the Pope had asked religious congregations to send missionaries to Latin America to support the new vision for

Sister Dorothy wrote a letter volunteering and she mentioned that she had always had this desire since she was a child to serve the Spanish and Indian people, that she wanted to stay there and get to know them and help them.

In the summer of nineteen seventy four, Dorothy landed in El Salvador. This was well before Oscar Romero was named archbishop, before Rorito, that we saw and had death squads, before the pressures of the country would boil over into all out war.

Wednesday around enjoying thirty first, I think, and we arrived here on Monday afternoon. A plane came in early, it was about four o'clock. We had a beautiful flight. The flight down was really nice.

Throughout her time there, Dorothy Kasel recorded audio cassette letters that she sent back to Cleveland.

The country is really exquisite. It's mountainous and green, very green right now, and you really have to see it to appreciate it. It really is beautiful.

Tapes that describe her new life in El Salvador. Listening to her, it kind of reminds me of my own reactions when I arrived, taking in the beauty but also the poverty of this place.

When you pull into Cherry Library, you just pull onside too a dirt road which.

Is really rocky and pitted. So we went around a village.

And if they say it's great powerty stricken, it's just something you.

Get used to living with and used to looking at it.

Really, it is amusing to see these pigs tranding around those too, big pigs, little pigs, big counse, little counts, big bulls all over the place.

It's different.

Dorothy worked with priests administering to the community. She worked in three different parishes and was eventually sent to the Immaculate Conception parish in La Libertad.

They planned an organized celebrate rations of the Eucharist and other liturgies. They played music and conducted choirs for the liturgies. They prepared adults and children for the reception of the sacraments.

They also visited the sick.

She also trained Salvadorans to be religious teachers. She distributed food to mothers and young children as part of Catholic relief programs. She and the other nuns they became a real presence in the area.

Now whereas a priest could only visit his entire area once a month, the sisters and laywomen visited their areas all ten or more villages weekly alone and usually on horseback or by motorbike because of the rough terrain. So since the women served as such a vital link of communication between the parishes and its prisoners, the sisters really guided the work of the parish.

Dorothy committed to stay six year years in El Salvador from nineteen seventy four to nineteen eighty. In those six years, she became part of the community. She slowly learned Spanish, learning the names of the towns that she was working in, and she grew to love the people that she was helping, and they too loved her. She became known as Madre de Rothera. In nineteen eighty, her term was ending and she was due to go back to Cleveland, but then Oscar Romero was killed.

Everybody's just in a stage of shot, because you know, it's just he had just given us beautiful, beautiful homily and Sunday very strong. It was very his message was very strong, you know, he says, and to the soldiers, I have a specialness. And she says, I beg of you.

I pleaded with you in the name of God, stop the repression.

Don't kill Oh it was you know and in your years.

Dorothy was at Romero's funeral. You can see her in the photos that were published from that day, standing by his casket. She was inside the cathedral while the bombing and the shooting was happening outside. In letters back home, she describes the horror of that day, watching the bodies of those killed be carried into the cathedral. Soon, Dorothy would be faced with a choice, one that directly tied

She so, well, of course I will stay, you.

Know, But this wasn't the same El Salvador that she had arrived to in her six year stay. The political landscape had completely changed that Wisun's TV programs and death squads were fully operational in two months. The leftis Gerrias the FMLN will declare war on the Salvadoran government. Suddenly, Dorothy and the missionaries are not just spreading the word of Jesus. They're tending to wounded civilians and assisting people who had become refugees within their own country.

A call would come for one of the gringas to transport refugees from a bombed out village to a refugee center.

The women helped refugees find whatever they needed, medicine, shelter. All four of the churchwomen who were murdered in El Salvador were involved in this kind of humanitarian work, including Mary Noll's sisters Mara Clark and Eda Ford, and lay missionary Jane Donovan.

So anyway, with their white Toyota van, Dorothy and Jean, who had been called the rescue squad by more and Ida, traveled through the hills, moving food supplies and refugees to refugee centers. They distributed medicine to the sick and wounded people, took them to medical clinics.

They couldn't take the people to.

Government hospitals for fear the people would be killed there.

It was clear to the sisters how bad things were getting, especially as they were working in and around towns with heavy Geria presences. They saw a lot of death.

On Friday, the next day and the twenty third, they found their bodies and I thought they were hacked. One of them was decapitated. I mean, it was just gruesome, just gruesome. So you know, it's just why why.

I couldn't believe, you know, how these people can endure all of this.

It's just been, you know, something's been happening like every week, you know, every day in the paper, ten bodies found in Santa on a five, and Ali Chapon with E M. The Squadron written on another twelve, and Son Miguel. It just gets to be too much. Sometimes it's so sad and it's just like so out of control.

But Dorothy was determined in her decision to stay.

She wrote, I could not leave Salvador, especially now, because I am committed to the persecuted church here.

Now. I don't doubt for a moment Sister Dorothy's resolve and her desire to help. But there's also something else that influenced her decision to stay.

They were well aware of the danger of doing that type of work, and they were fearful. But because they look so American with their blonde hair and blue eyes, Dorothy and Jean believed that they were safe.

Whiteness americanness. It was a kind of unspoken protection that they carried. Dorothy wrote in her letters that even the local priests liked to have the American women with them when they walked around because they knew it was a kind of armor.

Gane used to say, they the military don't shoot blonde, blue eyed North Americans, and Dorothy said, being a gringa is an asset. They wouldn't do anything to hurt you.

But that protection only went so Fardnesday, November twenty sixth of nineteen eighty, Dorothy and Jean were invited to visit the US Ambassador Robert White at his home.

They had met at a Thanksgiving ecumenical service the week before Thursday before, and they were talking about the political situation, and White said, well, why don't you come, We'll continue this conversation. Why don't you come to the American embassy. However, because of the curfew, please bring an overnight back, you know, so you could stay overnight.

They spent the night, and the next day sister Dorothy and Jean went to the airport to pick up sisters Mara Clark and Eta Ford, who had been at a conference in Nicaragua.

So the plane landed at seven o'clock. Dorothy and Jean greeted more and Ida, and they proceeded to the baggage claim to pick up their baggage there. And while they were waiting for their baggage, which they chatted with a group of Canadians who were arriving and.

Kind of milling around there.

The Canadians then got their luggage and said goodbye.

That's really the last time that anyone saw the four women alive. The next day, the pastor at Dorothy's parish went to Dorothy and Jean's apartment. He was confused when they weren't there. He and others in the surrounding parishes started to make phone calls searching for the women. The American Ambassador, Robert White and the Minister of Defense were alerted, and several of the sisters themselves started to search. Two

The numbers listed on the van's registration papers matched the numbers stamped on the motor block of the abandoned, burned out van, so they knew that that was their van.

The women's bodies would be found the day after they went missing, but now the question was who had taken them and why. That's after the break the bodies were buried in the red clay earth of Santiago Nonualco in the Salvadorn Hills. Local Gumpasinos were ordered to reopen the grave and pull up the bodies of the four churchwomen. When they were exhumed. US Ambassador Robert White was there. Just three days before he had dined with the women.

It was apparent they had been executed military style. When the back, they were probably forced to lie on the ground, face down, and they were shot by the way Dorothy was shot twice. She was shot in the shoulder, they missed her head. I know that sounds horrible, and she moved.

The investigations that followed showed that the women were not only murdered, they were also raped. Almost immediately. Robert White suspected that the Salvadoran government and the National Guard were involved. Sister Cynthia interviewed Robert White for her book in nineteen ninety three, and he told her that he began to think that something was fishy when he talked to the Minister of Defense hened al josegi More Garcia on the phone.

He told Garcia that the women were missing. The first thing Garcia asked was were they wearing habits. Ambassador White then said that he had a very very bad feeling. This is in his own words, because that's the kind of standard defense that they make.

As if not wearing habits, not being recognizable could have led to their deaths. This question, it got to the very core of the religious persecution in El Salvador. What he was really asking was were these traditional nuns who wore habits and stood with the elites, or were these part of the new and radical church that, in their eyes stood with the communists.

But I do think that because they were working with the poor, this seemed to be the pattern with the military, that they were considered subversives and they were maybe even being watched. I think that, you know, maybe that was it.

Whatever the reason, the killing of four Americans in Alsalvador was an undeniable shock to the United States.

Up until that time, American citizens had not been killed.

When the women were killed, Jimmy Carter was president. Like we mentioned in the last episode, Carter was concerned about human rights abuses, but he was also hesitant to clamp down on the Salvadoran government. Up until this point, he had resisted any calls to suspend AID, including a letter from Archbishop Romero himself, sent a few weeks before his death. In the letter, he pleaded with Carter to stop supporting

After the bodies of the women were found, the United States, and this was under President Jimmy Carter announced that it was suspending military and economic assistance pending clarification of the circumstances of the killings of the women.

Following the announcement of the churchwomen's murders, the US government sent two State Department officials to conduct a preliminary investigation. They would look into the killings of the churchwomen and whether the Salvadoran government had been involved. They sent FBI specialists to look at the evidence, fingerprints and bullet fragments. All the evidence pointed towards it being Salvadoran National guardsmen

The women got into their white Toyota van and proceeded to leave the airport and at the first toll station outside the.

Airport, National guardsmen.

Sergeant Louise Antonio Kalndra Aloman and four other guardsmen ordered the women to vacate the van, and then after they interrogated the women, the guardsmen ordered them back in the van, got into the van with them and proceeded to drive the van in the direction of the town of Santiago Nannualco to a deserted area a dirt lane by an empty field and Klendre Aloman then ordered the women out

Afterwards, the women's van was driven outside of La Libertad. Their personal items were removed, and so were the license plates on the van. The killers then.

Took a can of gasoline and poured gasoline on the inside and outside of the van and set the van on fire.

This information was all based on US led investigations. The US State Department wanted the Salvadoran authorities to conduct their own independent investigation and find out if these National guardsmen had acted on their own or on higher orders. The Salvadoran government assured the US that it was doing everything it could to figure out what had happened, but really

The argument was always that these lower National guardsmen would never have done this, They never would have singled out for American women to kill. From the beginning too, the Salvadoran government wanted to make clear that those guardsmen acted on their own see, because they wanted military aid.

Military aid. Jimmy Carter, a president committed to human rights, had suspended the aid immediately after their deaths, but that pause didn't last long. And how quickly does the aid resume?

It was resumed On December seventeenth.

Two weeks after the women were found dead. Twenty million dollars in economic aid resumed.

So and there was outrage in the United States.

Cynthia went to Washington, d C. To protest with an organization called the Religious Task Force.

We went on a bus, the big bus went from Cleveland, you know, filled with people, to go to this protest. And I remember it so well because it was just so moving with seeing so many people, you know, the crowds, and we carried coffins, cardboard coffins of the four women and had their names on the side, and we had a huge assembly at the Washington Monument.

Now by then, you know, Carter was out.

This was before Reagan was inaugurated.

The women had been murdered in December while Carter was on his way out. Reagan inaugurated the next month in January of nineteen eighty one, and despite those protests, he would continue to send aid to El Salvador.

Good evening, the Reagan administration today won preliminary approval in the Senate for its plans to increase military aid to El Salvador.

The Reagan administration approved a huge increase in military funding. Ambassador White began to speak out very publicly and criticized this continued aid, and he quickly became an enemy of Reagan's administration. Here he is testifying before Congress.

The security forces at Al Salvador have been responsible for the deaths of thousands and thousands of young people. Are we really going to send military advisors in there to be part of that type of machinery.

Ambassador White openly criticized the Gold government's investigation into the women's deaths.

And he told me that the Department wanted White to certify that there was progress in these investigations, and he refused because he said that simply was not true. And White said he wouldn't have any part in a cover up, and that decision not to participate in the cover up costom his job.

Two weeks after Reagan was inaugurated, Robert White was fired. White felt that the Reagan administration was downplaying the Salvadoran government's involvement in the killings because they wanted to support their ally in the proxy Cold War.

I think that the Reagan administration is so completely transfixed by their interpretation of Central America that it's an East where conflict, that they are ready to embrace anyone, no matter how reprehensible, as long as he or she will say that they are anti communists.

He also pointed to statements made by government officials about the nuns, statements that implied that the nuns weren't just innocent victims but part of the Gerria, or that they had been killed by accident. This is Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ambassador to the UN. I'll warn you the tape is a little hard to hear.

Not just now.

This, We're going to get a little more great cut. A participantly usually on.

It's hard to hear in the tape, so I'll say it again because it's worth repeating for just how tone deaf it is. The nuns were not just nuns. The nuns were also political activists. She made this comment on December twenty fifth of nineteen eighty, just weeks after the

And we were just outrage and we have a whole file of letters that some of our sisters wrote. Mother Bartholomew wrote a searing letter to Jan Kirkpatrick. She was a very wonderful, quiet, soft spoken, gentle person, and yet she wrote this letter really accusing Jan Kirkpatrick. It was just outrageous that the nuns would have guns and would have exchange fire and also that they were left as you know.

Our mission team.

They stayed out of politics, and they were there to be pastoral ministers and later to help the refugees, to give them food, to give them, you know, they were not to be involved in politics.

For years on end, this charade went on. The US would dangle its aid package in front of the Salvadorans and say, you need to show us that you're making progress on this investigation, threatening to stop aid, and the Salvadorans would call their bluff. They'd say sure, sure, we're looking into it and make no progress. Inevitably, another one

Robert White also told me quote that when the Reagan administration reached the conscious decision not to pursue this issue, meaning the churchwomen's murders, with the salvador military, they were giving a very clear signal to the military that we would not try to hold them accountable for civilian deaths, whether they were foreigners or whether they were Salvadorans.

End of quote.

I mean if the US government wasn't willing to protect their own citizens and was willing to defame nuns who are raped and murdered. What hope did the Salvadoran people have. I mean, honestly, there's no other way to interpret that. Eventually there would be some sort of justice once the Cold War connection and the allyship was no longer necessary to the US. Five National guardsmen, including Colindre A. Leimann, would be charged with the women's killings in the spring

Nineteen eighty four, the five men named responsible for the murders of the churchwomen went on trial and were found guilty of murder and sentenced to thirty years imprisonment.

The head of the Salvadoran National Guard, Vivez Casanova, spent years freely living in the US. So did the Salvadoran Minister of Defense, Jose Yermo Garcia, the one who White claims asked him if the nuns were habits.

Videes Casanova was in charge of the National Guard. They were in command when the women were killed and when a lot of other atrocities were taking place.

After ten years of lawsuits. In twenty fifteen, human rights groups finally succeeded in getting the US government to deport Videes Casanova for the killing and torture that happened under his command, including the killing of the four churchwomen. The next year, josegi Or moo Garcia was deported too, for his role in extra judicial killings, including the killing of

Lots of things have been happening that I want to tell you about, and again, I wish you would hold on to this tape for me.

She sent them to a friend of hers, trusting her to keep her words. And her record of her life in El Salvador. She wanted to remember everything she'd seen, but not scare her parents.

Please don't yeah tape over it.

Just save it for me, Remember the way that each day she and her sisters did what they could. Each day they lived with Salvadorans who never knew, moment to moment if they were safe.

So to this day, we don't know who knows. That we'll never know, but oh, the poor poor families. That was really a grueling thing for us. But it's over with and you know, we're still living with the sin of it.

On the next episode, my family finally tells me the story of what pushed them to leave El Salvador. Ra gea, Hey, yeah, aviao, ya ya lato, that's next time. A Nation of Saints Sacred Scandal. Nation of Saints is a production of a HA podcast in partnership with Iheartsmichael Dura podcast Network, and is hosted and written by me Jasmine Romero, produced by Jazmine Romero, Sofia Palita car Renald Gutierrez with help from Jorge Just and a research and reporting by Jasmine Romero,