Ignacio Ellacuría

Ignacio Ellacuría was a Spanish-Salvadoran Jesuit, philosopher, and theologian. He worked mostly as a professor and rector at the Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas" (UCA), a Jesuit university in El Salvador. Aside from being a professor, he was also a priest, missionary, and human rights activist.

Ignacio Ellacuría joined the Jesuits in 1947, studied throughout South America and Europe, and earned a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1965. He was a significant influence on the growth of liberation theology in El Salvador and stressed the need of serving the underprivileged. According to this theology, the ministry should aid the political struggle of the poor against wealthy elites. He received numerous death threats for this, and following the murder of a Jesuit priest in 1977 and the murder of Archbishop Juan Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez in 1980, he briefly departed El Salvador.

However, he still returned to fulfill his work. He assisted in mediating the release of President José Napoleon Duarte's daughter from the leftist guerrillas in 1985 and later won the International Alfonso Comn Award in Barcelona for his support of human rights. Despite being a respected Jesuit his whole life, Ignacio Ellacuría's life ended in tragedy, as he and several other Jesuits were assassinated by Salvadoran soldiers in the closing years of the Salvadoran Civil War.

Born: November 9, 1930

Died: November 16, 1989

Contribution: His work was defining for the shape UCA took in its first years of existence and the years to come. Ellacuría was also responsible for the development of formation programs for priests in the Jesuit Central American province.