Donovan, Jean (1953–1980)

Jean Donovan (b. 10 April 1953, d. 2 December 1980), U.S. Catholic lay missionary murdered in El Salvador. Donovan was born in Westport, Connecticut. Influenced by an Irish priest who had served as a missionary in Peru, she applied to and was accepted for the Salvadoran mission program of the Cleveland diocese. Sent to La Libertad, El Salvador, in 1979, she taught religion, hygiene, and nutrition and worked with a Christian Base Community. Due to the escalation of the civil war, the Cleveland team soon joined Maryknoll nuns in transporting displaced peasants from war zones to Catholic refugee centers. On 2 December 1980, Donovan and her partner, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, picked up Maryknoll Sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clarke at the San Salvador airport. Their van was stopped by Salvadoran national guardsmen, who raped and murdered the four women. Their deaths and the cover-up of the crime by Salvadoran authorities shocked millions of North Americans and awakened them to the violent realities of El Salvador.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ana Carrigan, Salvador Witness: The Life and Calling of Jean Donovan (1984).

Donna Whitson Brett and Edward T. Brett, Murdered in Central America: The Stories of Eleven U.S. Missionaries (1988), pp. 189-252.

Additional Bibliography

Dear, John, and William Hart McNichols. You Will Be My Witnesses: Saints, Prophets, and Martyrs. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006.

Keogh, Dermot, ed. Witness to the Truth: Church and Dictatorship in Latin America. Cork: Cork University Press, 1989.

                                        Edward T. Brett