The University of Central America (UCA) in San Salvador, El Salvador, has announced that Fr. Dean Brackley, S.J., passed away October 16, 2011. He was sixty-five years old and had been living, teaching, and ministering in El Salvador for the majority of the past eleven years.
After the 1989 murder of six Jesuit priests at the UCA in El Salvador, Brackley volunteered to leave the U.S. for the war-torn country and begin ministering as a professor, academic administrator, and pastoral minister to poor communities in El Salvador. He became known as a passionate theologian, writer, and advocate for the poor of Central America and throughout the world. He spoke at many Jesuit universities across the U.S. about solidarity and social justice and at various times taught at a number of them as well. In 2003, Brackley spoke at the Ignatian Family Teach-In for Justice, in Columbus, Georgia. In 2004, he released well known book “The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times”.
Brackley entered the Society of Jesus in 1964, became a priest in 1976, and earned a doctorate in Religious Social Ethics from the University of Chicago’s Divinity School in 1980.
Read the statement from the UCA at: https://www.facebook.com/UCA.ElSalvador/posts/10150363510022722
Articles, Audio, and Video Excerpts from Dean Brackley, S.J.:
Speech at Creighton University – November 4, 1999
PBS – 2001
Loyola Marymount University – January 25, 2005
John Carroll University – October 16, 2005
Commonweal Magazine – February 21, 2008
University of Scranton – May 3, 2010
National Catholic Reporter – March 14, 2010
National Catholic Reporter – March 24, 2011
National Catholic Reporter – October 17, 2011
America Magazine – October 19, 2011
YouTube – October 20, 2011
New York Times – October 29, 2011
Books written by Dean Brackley, S.J.:
The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times: New Perspectives on the Transformative Wisdom of Ignatius of Loyola Divine Revolution: Salvation and Liberation in Catholic Thought
