Jon Sobrino, SJ
Jon Sobrino, SJ, is one of the leading voices of liberation theology in Latin America. He has written numerous books, including Jesus the Liberator (1991), The Principle of Mercy: Taking the Crucified People from the Cross (1994), Christ the Liberator (1999), and No Salvation Outside the Poor (2008). He holds a doctorate in theology from Sankt Georgen Graduate School of Philosophy and Theology in Frankfurt and has been awarded numerous honorary degrees.
Born in Spain, Fr. Sobrino has lived in El Salvador for most of his adult life, teaching theology at the Central American University, which he helped to found (Universidad Centroamericana). Passionate concern for the poor has been integral to his lifelong theological project. His writings reflect upon “the God of the poor and of the victims,” the God of Jesus of Nazareth.
Fr. Sobrino experienced firsthand the ravages of the bloody civil war that engulfed El Salvador from 1980 to 1992 and claimed the lives of some 75,000 Salvadorans. In 1989, members of the elite Atlacatl unit of the Salvadoran army burst into the Jesuit residence of the Universidad Centroamericana, and shot dead six Jesuit priests on the faculty, because of their “subversive” work on behalf of the poor. They also killed a housekeeper and her teenage daughter, as they had been ordered to “leave no witnesses.” Fr. Sobrino was the only survivor, as he happened to be in Thailand at the time, giving a talk.
This massacre was an act of such wanton brutality that it caused the light of international attention to shine on the conflict and hasten its resolution. The martyrs of El Salvador died in solidarity with many others who perished in that conflict. Their death drew attention to those whose lives have been destroyed through poverty, hunger, lack of basic human rights, violence, and war—lives deprived of hope and freedom.
It is perhaps inevitable for Christians to associate innocent suffering with the Cross. Yet the Cross is not the end of the story. In the midst of a world of injustice and death, what does it mean to believe in the Resurrection? In his writings Fr. Sobrino has said, “I am writing from a place of victims and I am trying to reflect from their situation on these texts [of Scripture] that speak about a crucified man who was raised.” We asked him to speak with us about resurrection.
Production Credits
Rita Ferrone, producer
Gene Palumbo, director
Sachin Ramabhadran, editor
Our sincere thanks to the Universidad Centroamericana “José Simeón Cañas” in El Salvador, where this interview was filmed, and the audiovisual department staff who filmed it.
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation: Sobrino, Jon. (2015) “Resurrection,” The Yale ISM Review: Vol. 1: No. 2, Article 11. Available at: https://ismreview.yale.edu
View article as a PDF: Resurrection
