Tributes to Father Dean Brackley SJ

Father Dean Brackley

Jesuit priest Father Dean Brackley died on Sunday. Eugene Palumbo, Heather Lyons and Rafael de Sivatteh, have written the following tributes.

In August, I wrote to you all, saying, "This is the email I was hoping I'd never have to send." That was when Dean - having gotten the scan results that showed the tumor continuing to grow, despite the chemotherapy - decided to forego further treatment and return to El Salvador for palliative care.

Now, sadly, I write to you again, and again could begin with those same words.

I sent an update yesterday morning to tell you that Dean had left the hospital. Then I went over to see him. He had said he wanted to be in touch with his two brothers and his sister in the USA. I called each of them from my cell phone and held the phone to his ear. He could hear them but, given his weakened state, was able to say very little to them. This morning, (16 October 2011) Father Jose María "Chema" Tojeira called to say that Dean had grown much weaker. My wife, Guadalupe, and I went to see him immediately.

When we got to his room, we found him surrounded by brother Jesuits and his doctor. We took turns sitting beside him, holding his hand and whispering in his ear. His breathing continued to slow, and shortly after 11am, he died.

As you know, Dean came to El Salvador to help replace the six Jesuits murdered in 1989. Today, his life as a Jesuit ended in the place where their lives as Jesuits began: the Santa Tecla residence, where they did their two-year novitiate.

One of my tasks, in my role as Dean's "secretary" in these last months, was to check his email. I don't know why, but it occurred to me to check it again before sending you this note. I'm so glad I did that, because I found something that had just arrived: a note from Rafael de Sivatte. He's another of the six Jesuits who came here to take the places of their murdered brothers. He, too, has been keeping a list of people abreast of how Dean has been doing. He copied Dean on those emails, and so it was that this turned up in Dean's inbox just now:

Subject: Dean still with us

I write to give you the painful and joyful news that God, Father and Mother, has taken to his side our brother, friend, father, and companion in solidarity, Dean. I can tell you that he died so peacefully that those of us who were with him at that moment felt filled with peace ourselves. I send you a fraternal embrace, united with you in prayer and in the commitment to the Kingdom for which he worked and continues to work.

Born in upstate New York in 1946, Dean Brackley entered the Jesuits in 1964. He was ordained a priest in 1976 and received a doctorate in Religious Social Ethics from the University of Chicago's Divinity School in 1980.

For most of the 1980s Brackley worked as an educator, teaching at Fordham University, and as a community organizer in Manhattan's Lower East Side. He also led a church-sponsored leadership program in the South Bronx. He described witnessing the reality of poverty and drug-related violence, and spoke of how this experience of dense life and death drama, with its "daily crucifixions and resurrections" helped gather together his scattered self, that followed years of soul searching living as a privileged man in a world of injustice. For him, this gathering together occurred not only in response to this social ministry but because as he was emerging from a long and continued discernment on these experiences the Jesuits' 32nd General Congregation convened and "affirmed the service of faith and the promotion of justice," providing a framework for his experiences. (Heather Z Lyons, "A Summary and Reflection on Dean Brackley SJ, Justice and Jesuit Higher Education.")

After graduates of the School of the Americas killed six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter in 1989 at the University of Central America in San Salvador, Brackley volunteered to take the place of one of the martyred Jesuits.

He joined the staff of the Universidad Centroamericana in 1990 and administered the university's School for Religious Education and assisted in schools for pastoral formation sponsored by the UCA. He was the author of The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times: New Perspectives on the Transformative Wisdom of Ignatius of Loyola (Crossroad, 2004) and of numerous articles in America, Revista Latinoamericana de Teología, and Grail.

Beyond his academic responsibilities, Brackley did pastoral work in a poor urban community in San Salvador. He described life in El Salvador as, "a mix of economic, political, generational, moral and religious crosses and resurrections." He reflected:

"When I worked in the South Bronx in New York in the 1980s, I saw how the exclusion of large sectors of the population from a decent way of life produces a threefold crumbling: of communities, families and individuals themselves. In El Salvador it feels like I'm witnessing the globalisation of the old South Bronx. In today's more urban society, social exclusion generates tremendous insecurity, rampant delinquency with urban gangs that, in tandem with organised crime, drug dealing and violence, undermine a state of law. The violence sometimes surpasses that of the civil wars in the 1980s. With 92 homicides per 100,000 young people, El Salvador is among the most dangerous places for young people in the world."

Lecturing extensively in the USA and Europe, Brackley did much to keep the memory of the recent martyrs of El Salvador alive and to continue their struggle for social justice.

Funeral arrangements will be announced later.

Source: Martin Pendergast/Thinking Faith