1 Introduction

There are a number of reasons why Ignacio Ellacuría is an important figure for twenty-first century Catholicism, Catholic theology and thinking about Catholic education. Ignacio Ellacuría was one of the six Jesuit martyrs murdered with their housekeeper and her daughter by government troops in El Salvador on November 16th, 1989. These brutal murders have had a deep and profound impact on the Church in Latin America and in the wider Catholic Church. As a Jesuit scholar, Ellacuría was a liberation theologian who was deeply immersed in philosophy and theology, and he was also heavily influenced by the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius. He was highly critical of some aspects of western philosophy and theology and he adopted and developed a theology of discipleship Christology (Ashley, 2000; De Schrijver, 2000). He was strongly connected to Jon Sobrino in terms of theology and ministry and they were also firm friends (Tombs, 2023). The death of Ellacuría (and the two women and the other five murdered Jesuits) was to have a life-long effect on Sobrino and his subsequent thinking and writings (Sobrino, 1990, 1994, 2003, 2020, 2023). Importantly, Ellacuría was the Rector of the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeon Cañas or University of Central America (UCA) in El Salvador, and he had a high profile as a public intellectual. The combination of his vision for the UCA, a Christian inspired university, and his practical application of this vision make a fascinating, original, influential and essentially challenging contribution to the contemporary discussion on Catholic universities. The main aim of this article is to explore and discuss the vision of the university that was promoted by Ignacio Ellacuría.

This article contributes to the scholarship focussed on three inter-related issues: (1) the role of Ellacuría and the UCA in creating a new perspective of the Catholic university that has a deep commitment to the preferential option for the poor in both vision and operation; (2) the influence of this new perspective on Jesuit and other Catholic universities and (3) the integral role of social projection or outreach in the activities of the university (Bergman, 2011; Gandolfo, 2014; Kolvenbach, 2000; Quinn, 2021; Sokol et al., 2021). This article draws all three together and presents them as challenges for the current and future direction of contemporary Catholic universities.

The article will begin with some important background detail: a short biographical note followed by an overview of his philosophy and theology, adding a new perspective on his thinking by drawing out some interesting and important comparisons with the theology of Gustavo Gutiérrez. This will lead into an account of the vision of the university held by Ellacuría, demonstrating (1) that some of this is strikingly consonant with passages of Ex Corde Ecclesiae (John Paul II, 1990), and (2) that the legacy of his vision can be observed in subsequent Jesuit thinking on Catholic social justice and Catholic universities. The article will then examine his idea and practice of social outreach and will end with some concluding remarks.

2 Biographical note

Ignacio Ellacuría was born on November 9 in 1930 in Portugalete in the Basque country in Northern Spain (Gould, 2015). He studied at a Jesuit High school in Tudela in Southern Navarro, and he entered the Jesuit noviciate at Loyola on September 14, 1947, when he was aged sixteen (Lassalle-Klein, 2006). This is significant because Loyola is the ancestral home of St Ignatius Loyola, one of the founders of the Jesuits. While he was at Loyola, he followed the 30-day Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, directed by Fr Miguel Elizondo SJ. After one year he volunteered, alongside five other novices, to accompany Fr Elizondo to establish the first Jesuit novitiate in Central America. Ellacuría took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in El Salvador in 1949 and then studied classics and philosophy at the Universidad Catholica del Ecuador in Quito, Ecuador. In 1955 he began teaching Thomistic philosophy at the San Salvador seminary. After three years he left for Innsbruck in Austria and studied for a Masters’ degree in Theology. While he appears to have found the Austrian context a little restrictive, he was heavily influenced by the teaching of Karl Rahner. The theology of Ellacuría is framed by a theology of sign that is a development of Rahner’s theology of symbol (Lassalle-Klein, 2006). This can be discerned in his understanding of Jesus as the perfect sign and the option of the poor as a sacramental or mediating sign of the church ‘of the ongoing presence of Jesus Christ to the crucified peoples of a broken world’ (Ellacuría, 1976, p. 87, 140; Lassalle-Klein, 2006).

Ellacuría was ordained a priest on July 26, 1961 in his final year at Innsbruck. He sought out the Spanish philosopher Xavier Zubiri to study his philosophy. In 1965, Ellacuría defended his doctoral thesis and took his final vows on the second of February in the same year. In 1967, Ellacuría was sent to work at the UCA which was founded in 1966, though he would return to Spain to work with Zubiri on a regular basis until Zubiri’s death in 1983 (Lee, 2013a). He was appointed to the board of directors of the UCA in 1968 (Tombs, 2023). As Ellacuría commented, in his commencement address at Santa Clara University in June 1982 when he received an honorary doctorate, the UCA was named after José Simeon Cañas who made a significant contribution to El Salvador and Central America:

… (our university) We bear the name of a Salvadoran priest, José Simeon Cañas, who as a congressman in the Constitutional Assembly in 1824, moved and obtained the abolition of slavery in Central America (Ellacuría, 1982).

In the late 1960s, the Society of Jesus was considering their response to Vatican II and were moving towards a greater concern for social justice. The Latin American Jesuit Provincials expressed a commitment to address the social problems of Latin America. Ellacuría and Elizondo led the Jesuits in the Central American province in a retreat in December 1969, a retreat designed to ‘nurture …a new way of seeing and acting’ (Burke, 2000, p. 17). Afterwards Ellacuría was asked to take charge of Jesuit formation in Central America. Between 1970 and 1975 he worked in the two roles as director of formation and in his work at UCA. As social tensions increased in El Salvador and he assumed a greater role in public life, he stepped down from the role of director of formation in 1975. After a trip to Spain, he was refused re-entry to El Salvador on 2 February 1977 and lived in exile in Spain for 18 months until he was permitted to return in August 1978. He was appointed Rector (president) of the UCA in 1979 until his untimely death in 1989 (Tombs, 2023). During his tenure as President, he was forced to flee El Salvador and return to Spain from November 27, 1980, until April 1982. This second period of exile was prompted by attacks on the UCA and his residence (Lassalle-Klein, 2014).

During the period 1980–1992, the civil war raged in El Salvador. This was a brutal conflict between the government military forces and the National Liberation Party (FMLN) (Chávez, 2015). On November 11, 1989, the FMLN began a major offensive on the government forces of El Salvador (Lassalle-Klein, 2014). This included attacks on the capital city, San Salvador. As part of the response, Colonel René Emilio Ponce, the chief of staff of the government armed forces authorised the elimination of the leaders of FMLN and their key supporters. One of the main targets was Ellacuría who was identified by the military as being involved in subversive movements. Even before the war, Ellacuría had been a prominent public critic of the oppressive military regime (Lee, 2013b). As President of the UCA, and with the support of the UCA, he was highly critical of the Government and the intervention of the United States during the war. He and the UCA were equally critical of the violent activities of the FMLN.

Troops from the Atlacati Battalion were ordered to eliminate Ellacuría and leave no witnesses (Betancur et al., 1993). When the six Jesuits and the two women were assassinated, Ellacuría was the main target (Lassalle-Klein, 2006). One of the other Jesuits killed was Ignacio Martín-Baró SJ (Gondra, 2013). Martín-Baró rejected psychologies imported into Latin America and was working on ‘liberation psychology’, a psychology of liberation for the people of Latin America (Gaztambide, 2010; McKinney, 2024a). Another of the Jesuits who was killed was Joaquín López y López SJ who had helped to found and establish the Fe y Alegria (Hope and Joy) organisation in El Salvador. Fe y Alegria was committed to setting up schools in marginalised communities (McKinney, 2024b; Universidad Centroamericana José Simeon Cañas, 2023). Jon Sobrino, who was a member of their community, was teaching in Thailand at the time of the assassinations. He was deeply shocked by their deaths and has devoted his life to keeping their memories alive.

3 The philosophy and theology of Ignacio Ellacuría

The theoretical foundation of the academic work of Ellacuría had a dual approach, or lens, of philosophy and theology (Hogue, 2018, p. 277). He was greatly influenced by his philosophical studies under the supervision of Zubiri (González, 2006). Ellacuría and Zubiri were deeply concerned about the dualisms that had become prominent in Western Philosophy. In their view, these dualisms ultimately served to disconnect God, faith and salvation from history, lived experience and the gospel. Ellacuría was also opposed to an ‘overly spiritualistic interpretation of the gospel message’ (Balch, 2017; Ellacuría, 1976, p. 120). This opposition to an overly spiritualistic interpretation can also be discerned in the work of Gustavo Gutiérrez (1971). Instead, Ellacuría advocated a discipleship Christology. This approach to following Jesus was understood as a means to avoid ‘dangerous abstractions and one-sided interpretations’. This discipleship Christology was rooted in redemption—in the resurrection but also the violence of the passion and death of Jesus (Ashley, 2000, pp. 28–29; Ellacuría, 1976).

His theology is positioned within Catholic Liberation Theology and the preferential option for the poor. The term preferential option for the poor has its roots in the response of the Latin American bishops to Vatican II (Gutiérrez, 1971). The Latin American Bishops met between August 26 and 6 September 1968 at Medellin, Colombia and were the first episcopal conference to accept the challenge of Vatican II ‘to read the signs of the times in light of the gospel’ and make an official response (Gaudium et Spes, 1965; Lassalle-Klein, 2014, p. 17). The Liberation theology of Ellacuría was heavily influenced by Archbishop Romero, Rutilio Grande and his colleague and close friend, Jon Sobrino (Tombs, 2023). His life and work were situated in a certain period of time, specific socio-economic context and an era of violent oppression of the people of El Salvador, especially during the civil war of 1980–1992. Like Gustavo Gutiérrez, Ellacuría understood the preferential option for the poor to be at the heart of Christian life (Ellacuría, 1976, 1982, 1989a; Gutiérrez, 2009). This is emphasised in his commencement address at Santa Clara University:

Liberation theology has emphasized what the preferential option for the poor means in authentic Christianity. Such an option constitutes an essential part of Christian life-but it is also an historic obligation. For the poor embody Christ in a special way; they mirror for us his message of revelation, salvation and conversion. And they are also a universal social reality (Ellacuría, 1982).

In the oppressive regime of El Salvador, the people became non-persons. This was exacerbated during the civil war through the violent repression of many poor people and groups opposed to the government, and even those who were perceived to be dissidents or subversives (Betancur et al., 1993). Gutiérrez also referred to the ‘absent ones’ and the ‘anonymous’ who despite being present in concrete history, have been excluded from the historical narratives by the privileged and the oppressors (Gutiérrez, 1984). Gutiérrez considered the role of European theology to be focussed on a response to the challenges presented by the nonbelievers, whereas Latin American theology is focussed on a response to the challenge of the plight of the non-person (Gutiérrez, 1983, pp. 92–93, 1990, p. 7, 24; Shadie, 2018).

Ellacuría is described by Inczauskis (2021) as ‘an anti-capitalist revolutionary intellectual’ and, at times, his thinking was influenced by Marxism and Marxist conceptual tools in the harsh context of the reality of the oppression of the poor in El Salvador. Nevertheless, he promoted the idea of a Christian utopia and was acutely aware of the limitations and dangers of Marxist ideology and the use of Marxist conceptual tools. Notably, he never belonged to a left-wing party. He identified the failures of socialist regimes and rejected any political solution that proposed violence over dialogue (Ellacuría, 1989a, 1989b; Tombs, 2000). Ultimately, he rejected the atheism, reductionism and dogmatism of Marxism (Vink, 2017). Again, similar to Gustavo Gutiérrez, he was insistent that the gospels provided a more radical template and a more effective set of hermeneutical tools than Marxism (Gutiérrez, 2009). The gospels were more useful in analysing the social evils and the causes and effects of structural sin in El Salvador.

Ellacuría was deeply influenced by the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius and, true to the direction of his philosophical and theological positions, he avoided the dualism of spirituality and theology. He understood spirituality and theology to be integrated (Ashley, 2000). His conception of following Jesus, a discipleship Christology, led him to embrace the Spiritual Exercises as opportunities for encounter, a personal encounter with God and the will of God. This is especially the case with week two of the Exercises which is concerned with the contemplation of the life of Jesus (Ellacuría, 2010). Ashley (2010) provides a helpful example of the link between the Spiritual Exercises and the work of UCA. The preparation to dispose of all disordered affections in Exercise one of the Spiritual Exercises can be translated into the idea that the Ignatian University must be constantly vigilant about the ‘potential for ideologies and lies that justify, exonerate or cover over distortions in history’ (Ashley, 2010, p. 25). The founding of two Institutes in the UCA in the mid 1980s provided public examples of the UCA being proactive in the search for truth within a university setting. The Human Rights Institute of UCA (IDHUCA) was founded by Fr Segundo Montes SJ in 1985 and the University Institute of Public Opinion (IUDOP) was founded in 1986 by the liberation psychologist Fr Ignacio Martín-Baró SJ. As has been noted above, both Fr Montes and Fr Martín-Baró were assassinated alongside Ignacio Ellacuría in 1989.

One of the key ideas of the theology of Ellacuría was to take the crucified people down from the cross (Ellacuría, 1996). Like Jesus, they are innocent victims. However, there was a major difference between the plight of the oppressed in El Salvador, the crucified people, with the crucifixion of Jesus (Castillo, 2023). Ellacuría argued that Jesus willingly took up the cross, but the people did not agree to be crucified. The crucified people were, and are, crushed and crucified by oppressive actions and structures (Shadie, 2018). Brackley (2005) draws on Ellacuría and summarises this theology of the crucified people:

In language of faith – the cross is the center of reality, the center of history – Jesus’s cross and all the crosses of our own time. It is from the foot of the cross that the most important questions arise: Who are the crucified people of today? What do they suffer and why? How can we bring them down from their crosses? How can we help them rise again?

In his theology, Ellacuría makes a strong biblical connection between the suffering servant of Yahweh in Second Isaiah and the crucified Jesus and the crucified people (Ellacuría, 1996). He highlights that the connection between the suffering servant and the crucified Jesus may be one of the earliest Christologies in the Christian Church. He argues that the contemporary oppressed class and ‘people who struggle for justice’ in the Third World are in the line of the Suffering Servant, though he adds that this does not apply to everything they do. In typically forthright and uncompromising fashion he points out that the rich and oppressive classes of the First World are not in this line.

An alternative and equally powerful analogy would be with the figure of Abel in the book of Genesis (Castillo, 2023). The Cain and Abel story appears in chapter four of the book of Genesis and is the first murder in the Old Testament and an example of fratricide:

When they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord asked Cain, Where is your brother Abel? He answered, ‘I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?’ God then said: What have you done? Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground! (Genesis, 4:8–10)

The name Abel has been interpreted as nothingness or worthlessness (Vermeulen, 2014). In other words, the crucified people of El Salvador have been reduced to the status of non-persons, similar to the position of Abel who was regarded as a non-person. Castillo points to the prophetic power of the words of Genesis verse 10, ‘your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground’. These words can be applied to the suffering of the oppressed people of El Salvador who seek justice.

The life, theology and vision of the university of Ellacuría have been very influential on the reflections of the world-wide Jesuit community on their aim and mission and their understanding of the purpose of the Jesuit education and the role of the Catholic university. The next section will discuss some of the key ideas of his vision for the Catholic university.

4 The university

Jon Sobrino comments that Zubiri taught Ellacuría to ask ‘what is the university in the midst of reality? And what is the reality of the university?’ (Lassalle-Klein, 2014, p. 35). The UCA was a very distinctive type of university and very atypical. It was founded as a special kind of not-for-profit public university but was not an official Catholic university. This meant that it was not owned by the state, nor was it accountable to the Vatican, local Church leaders and not even to Jesuit superiors but to a Board of Directors (Lassalle-Klein, 2014). Despite this freedom from accountability, the vision of the UCA was underpinned and inspired by Christianity, leading to a mission and enactment of the preferential option for the poor. Jon Sobrino (1990, p. 37) argued that the UCA presented a new idea of a Christian university and a vision that ‘academic and Christian knowledge must be and can be at the service of the poor’. Sobrino took this further and thought that the importance and impact of the UCA could be compared to the importance and impact attributed to the ideas of Saint John Henry Newman on the university in the late nineteenth century.

The UCA was opened in 1966 and initially had 309 students (136 in engineering and 173 in Economics). Ellacuría envisioned the university as a new way of practicing Higher Education (Quinn, 2021). He outlined three aims for the university as teaching, research and proyección social (social projection) which is social outreach or service. In his commencement address at Santa Clara University in June 1982, Ellacuría summarised the ways in which the UCA embodied the aims of liberation theology (Ellacuría, 1982). He positioned the work of the university within the plight of the dispossessed of El Salvador:

Our university's work is oriented, obviously, on behalf of our Salvadoran culture, but above all, on behalf of a people who, oppressed by structural injustices, struggle for their self-determination - people often without liberty or human rights (Ellacuría, 1982).

He added that this structural injustice experienced by the people of El Salvador is the plight faced by many people in the ‘Third World’, most of whom live in poverty:

A university cannot always and in every place be the same. We must constantly look at our own peculiar historical reality. For us in El Salvador, the historical reality is that we are a part of the Third World which is itself the major portion of human kind. Unfortunately, the Third World is characterized more by oppression than by liberty, more by a terrible, grinding poverty than by abundance (Ellacuría, 1982).

The role of the university is deemed to be crucial in the fight against oppression. The Christian university must be a voice for the voiceless, fight for legitimate rights and empower people with intellectual skills:

A Christian university must take into account the gospel preference for the poor. This does not mean that only the poor will study at the university; it does not mean that the university should abdicate its mission of academic excellence - excellence which is needed in order to solve complex social issues of our time. What it does mean is that the university should be present intellectually where it is needed: to provide science for those without science; to provide skills for those without skills; to be a voice for those without voices; to give intellectual support for those who do not possess the academic qualifications to make their rights legitimate (Ellacuría, 1982).

It is interesting to note that Peter-Hans Kolvenbach SJ, the Jesuit Superior-General, used the above quote in his speech in 2000 that commemorated 25 years of the 32nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus (Kolvenbach, 2000). The 32nd General Congregation acted as a catalyst for a new direction for the Society of Jesus which was that ‘the service of faith must also include the promotion of justice’. This union of faith and justice was not simply a recognition of the work being undertaken among the poor and marginalised by some members of the order but was conceived as being essential to the purpose and work of the Society as a whole. In the same speech, Kolvenbach referred to one of the powerful passages in the 32nd General Congregation:

We can no longer pretend that the inequalities and injustices of our world must be borne as part of the inevitable order of things. It is now quite apparent that they are the result of what man himself, man in his selfishness has done… (General Congregation 32, 1975, decree 4, 27)

This line of thinking moves away from a view of a ‘preordained’ social order, where different people have their allotted roles and destinies, to a scrutiny of social reality and the concrete causes of injustices perpetrated in that social reality. As part of his vision of the university, Ellacuría perceived an inescapable connection between the university and social reality and the issue was not whether the university should transform society, but how this transformation was to be accomplished:

…it (the university) must be concerned with the social reality-precisely because a university is inescapably a social force: it must transform and enlighten the society in which it lives. But how does it do that? How does a university transform the social reality of which it is so much a part? (Ellacuría, 1982).

If the thinking of Ellacuría on the role of the university appears to be quite radical, it can be rightly considered to be in alignment with some of the vision statements that are contained in the Apostolic Constitution of Pope John Paul II, Ex Corde Ecclesiae. Take, for example, section 32:

A Catholic University, as any University, is immersed in human society; as an extension of its service to the Church, and always within its proper competence, it is called on to become an ever more effective instrument of cultural progress for individuals as well as for society. Included among its research activities, therefore, will be a study of serious contemporary problems in areas such as the dignity of human life, the promotion of justice for all, the quality of personal and family life, the protection of nature, the search for peace and political stability, a more just sharing in the world's resources, and a new economic and political order that will better serve the human community at a national and international level. (John Paul II, 1990).

John Paul II argues further that a Catholic university must be willing to articulate truths that will be unpopular (section 32):

If need be, a Catholic University must have the courage to speak uncomfortable truths which do not please public opinion, but which are necessary to safeguard the authentic good of society (John Paul II, 1990).

Ellacuría was well aware of the potential consequences for a university that is willing to speak out and fight for justice in a culture of oppression and violence. He quotes Archbishop Romero who was a friend and another high-profile martyr of El Salvador:

But we also have been encouraged by the words of Archbishop Romero — himself so soon to be murdered. It was he who said, while we were burying an assassinated priest, that something would be terribly wrong in our Church if no priest lay next to so many of his assassinated brothers and sisters (Ellacuría, 1982).

Ellacuría then immediately turns his attention to the role of the university in the midst of injustice:

If the University had not suffered, we would not have performed our duty. In a world where injustice reigns, a university that fights for justice must necessarily be persecuted (Ellacuría, 1982).

There are a number of points that are important here and deserve some attention. First, it has to be recognised that there has been considerable disquiet and debate about some aspects of Ex Corde Ecclesiae, especially regarding the mandatum for professors of Theology and the interpretation of academic freedom that is contained in this Apostolic Constitution (King, 2015). While fully acknowledging that there has been a mixed response to Ex Corde Ecclesiae, a number of more contemporary studies have sought to recover some of the more positive elements of this document (Bellacosa, 2017; Ormerod, 2013). The two inspirational quotes from John Paul II, presented above, are located in the first part of Ex Corde Ecclesiae and were published a year after the assassination of Ellacuría. These quotes are clearly consonant with the vision and operation of the UCA.

Second, the importance of the speech by Peter-Hans Kolvenbach SJ (also quoted above) and the references to Ellacuría cannot be underestimated (Bergman, 2011; Garanzini SJ & Baur, 2022; Locatelli, 2005). This speech generated great interest, and the contents were discussed in much detail. One good example is that the speech inspired sixty of his Jesuit colleagues to meet in 2002 at Loyola University, Chicago where they founded a National Steering Committee (Center for Social Justice, Research, Teaching and Service, 2023). This Committee organised a series of Jesuit Higher Education conferences that focussed on justice.

Third, it is instructive to return to the second quote from Ex Corde Ecclesiae. We read this call for courage to speak uncomfortable truths from 1990 in the contemporary climate of the widespread effects of the sex abuse scandals throughout the Catholic church. This means that we must extend the courage to speak uncomfortable truths about society to speaking uncomfortable truths about the Church and the inability of the institutional Church to effectively address the sex abuse scandals and support victims with consistency and compassion (Formicola, 2020). It is pertinent to revisit and deliberate the insights of Justice in the World which called for an ‘examination of the modes of acting…found within the church itself’ (World Synod of Catholic Bishops, 1971, section 40). Recent public revelations mean that abuse of power and collusion in cultural genocide of first nation peoples in the United States and Canada can be added to the abuses of the Church (McKinney, 2024c).

4.1 Social projection or outreach

The idea of social projection or outreach has been particularly influential on contemporary thinking about the aim and purpose of Jesuit universities. Social projection or service should not be abstracted from teaching and research, nor should it be less valued and less influential than teaching and research (Sokol et al., 2021). Social projection should constitute an integral part of the mission and operation of the university (Quinn, 2021, pp. 6–7). Kolvenbach (2000) is insistent that outreach programmes ‘should not be too optional or peripheral, but at the core of every Jesuit university’s program of studies’. He paraphrases Ellacuría:

…it is the nature of every University to be a social force, and it is the calling of a Jesuit university to take conscious responsibility for being such a force for faith and justice (Kolvenbach, 2000).

Sokol et al. (2021) provide some helpful insights into a well-developed vision and practical application in a programme of student action (or outreach) at St Louis University, a Jesuit university in America. The programme is organised by the Centre for Service and community Engagement and the student engagement is categorised in three ways, or at three levels: (1) service doers; (2) service learners and (3) service transformers. Service doers tend to engage in philanthropic activity and one-off events but with little sense of self-reflection. Service learners, however, do engage in reflection on their volunteer work and relate this to their learning in the University and their spiritual lives. Finally, service transformers are those who are transformed though service and choose to follow a path of ‘service living’.

This resonates with the vision of Pedro Arrupe SJ that the Jesuit university has a ‘gospel inspired mission to form men and women for others’ (Sokol et al., 2021). Arrupe stated in his speech ‘Men for Others’, delivered in 1973, that they should be men and women with:

…a firm resolve to be agents of change in society; not merely resisting unjust structures and arrangements, but actively undertaking to reform them (Arrupe, 1973).

The three ways or three levels are probably best understood as a potential two stage or three stage trajectory rather than as a series of static categories. In other words, students may remain as service doers or may develop along the trajectory to become a service learner and may even further develop as a service transformer. Many students in Catholic universities do engage in work for social justice, though many will remain, of course, within the first category of service doer and, while limited, this still represents social projection or service (Toton, 2009). This student engagement, even at the superficial level of service doers, is highly laudable but the social projection or service of Catholic universities cannot be reduced to student action or service, or support for the development of student action. If we return to the vision and practice of Ellacuría, the institution as a whole has a responsibility to engage in social outreach and service. Student action or service has to be part of a much more comprehensive approach by the university. However, the approach by the university must be one that does not simply engage with the problems of social reality through the literature (academic or otherwise) that is produced about this social reality, but the reality itself (Brackley, 2005).

4.2 Some contemporary issues for Catholic universities

In the twenty-first century, there is the issue about the extent to which Catholic universities, in different national contexts and different funding models, adopt contemporary neoliberal principles in educational policy and economic practice and how these are coherent with the mission of a Catholic university to have a prophetic role (Bernardo & Butcher, 2023; Selak, 2016). There are searching questions about how far a Catholic university has to compromise and engage in competitive practices, publicity exercises, Higher Education league tables and matrices. These are perceived to be vital to: the creation of a ‘good’ reputation; the recruitment of students; retention of a sustainable business model and the support of the various stakeholders. Deeper questions emerge about the extent to which Catholic universities serve to maintain the status quo, instead of presenting an alternative view of reality that includes the marginalised (Gandolfo, 2014). There are serious challenges about how all this can be balanced with the vision of a university that espouses a preferential option for the poor and strives to promote social justice (Brackely, 2005). Further, it is problematic to balance all this in a university that is committed as an institution (and on individual bases within the institution) to social outreach, such as that modelled by UCA. There are no quick and simple answers in trying to resolve these uneasy and uncomfortable tensions.

Another of the related key issues for a contemporary Catholic university is around the leadership and the academic and professional qualifications and experience that they possess that makes them suitable for this role. The well-educated Jesuit leaders of the UCA were theologically literate and literate in other disciplines, and they were men who were fundamentally committed to social justice for all and especially the poor. This included practical action in the form of education for the poor whether through their own Jesuit school, the Fe y Alegria schools in El Salvador or the UCA. An integral part of the mission of the UCA was social projection and the support for social justice as a lived reality for the people and not some term to be inefficaciously discussed in the abstract within the confines of academia. John Paul II has commented that a Catholic university should be involved in research on pressing social issues such as the promotion of justice for all (John Paul II, 1990). If this is to be enacted, the Catholic university has to be grounded in, and motivated by, Catholic teaching on social justice. There are serious questions about who will safeguard this grounding and motivation and promote this research. Related questions emerge, as stated above, about the educational background and formation of leaders in Catholic universities and their knowledge, understanding, interest and practical application of Catholic Social teaching and the principles of Catholic social justice. Further, the decrease in the influence of the Humanities, especially theology, in contemporary universities means that there are less people who are qualified to provide advice and guidance to the leadership in a Catholic university and act as pressure groups (Bigelow Reynolds, 2022).

5 Concluding remarks

Ignacio Ellacuría was a key figure in the evolution of the preferential option for the poor in Catholic liberation theology and the practical application of this option for the poor in the UCA. His public life and persistent demands for justice for the poor, for the non-persons, within the oppressive context of El Salvador, demonstrate his courage and commitment to the preferential option for the poor. He was a prophetic voice and teacher who was in solidarity with the poor (Baum, 2006). His deep philosophical and theological reflections resulted in an internal consistency in his thinking and practical application of the preferential option for the poor. Gutiérrez (2006, p. 71) comments:

Because he did not see history as something abstract but rather as the concrete field where human beings encounter each other and where human beings encounter God, he drew near the suffering of the poor and marginalised with such dedication and examined their suffering in the light of faith. This is what led him to call the Latin American people a ‘crucified people’, an expression that still offends many ears but moves our hearts.

Undoubtedly, Ellacuría and the vision and operation of UCA were inspirational and very influential for subsequent thinking on the direction and development of Jesuit education and Catholic universities. However, the idea and practice of social projection or social outreach as an essential university-wide activity in Catholic universities have faced hard challenges. This is the tension between envisioning and maintaining a balance of teaching, research and an authentic social outreach in a Catholic university within the competitive, neoliberal culture of contemporary Higher Education. The thinking of Ellacuría and the work of the UCA, in the sense that they present an alternative vision and exemplar of a Catholic university, serve as a stimulus to question the accepted norms of the neoliberal model. Ultimately, this is a discussion that is focussed on the contemporary identity and mission of the Catholic university.