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“TRIBUTE TO FATHER HENNESSEY” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Senate section on pages S4931 on May 6, 1999.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
TRIBUTE TO FATHER HENNESSEY
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I would like to pay tribute and say goodbye to a long time friend, Father Ron Hennessey, whose recent passing is a great loss not only to his colleagues, his family, and his friends but to everyone who knew him. I'm saying goodbye to Father Ron, but we will never say goodbye to his heart, his spirit, or his soul.
Father Ron was a native of Iowa and graduated from St. Patrick's High School in Ryan, Iowa. After graduating, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and served as a mechanic and later a Motor Sergeant in Korea. While in Korea, he was awarded three Bronze Stars for valor during his military service. Under the Eisenhower Christmas Program, he returned to the United States and was released from active service on December 9, 1953. He entered Maryknoll Junior Seminary in Pennsylvania and five years later graduated from Maryknoll College in Illinois in June of 1958. Father Hennessey was ordained at Maryknoll Seminary in New York on June 13, 1964.
Father Ron devoted his life to international peace and justice, Mr. President, dedicating almost 35 years of his life as a Maryknoll priest in Central America. Much of this time was spent in Guatemala and El Salvador. Soon after being ordained, he was assigned to the Diocese of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Several years later, he became the Pastor in San Mateo Ixtatan, Guatemala. It is during this time that Father Hennessey became very involved in the human rights struggle of the local Mayan Indians. He placed himself in great danger by smuggling letters out of Guatemala detailing the atrocities committed against the Mayan Indians in his rural parish. Those atrocities, Father Ron wrote, were being committed by the Guatemalan military under the orders of President Rios Montt. I remember one letter in particular in which Father Ron listed 20 instances in his parish alone in which military forces committed gross acts of violence.
Sadly, the United States Government at the time, supported this oppressive regime. In fact, our own State Department downplayed the human rights violations being committed in Guatemala, and in my view making us complicit in those heinous crimes.
By shining the spotlight on these atrocities, Father Ron's life was in constant danger. But that did not stop him. He stayed in Guatemala until 1986 despite having three opportunities to leave.
From Guatemala he went to El Salvador to re-establish a Maryknoll presence there after a five year absence. There he served in a parish on the outskirts of San Salvador that had had no priest since the Church was bombed in 1980.
In 1989, when the Salvadoran military murdered six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter, Father Hennessey and his fellow Maryknollers chose to remain in the country even as scores of North American missionaries and aid workers decided to leave because the situation had become too dangerous for those who stood up for human rights and the rule of law. But Father Hennessey continued his work, standing side by side with his parishioners.
Father Hennessey once again took up residence again in Guatemala in 1992 until earlier this year when he was assigned to the Maryknoll mission in Los Angeles.
And so, Mr. President, Father Hennessey will be greatly missed by all of us. And while he may have physically departed, his spirit will never desert us.
Which is the second reason I rise today, Mr. President--to affirm an ancient native American saying: To live in the hearts of those you love, is not to die.
Father Ron, your spirit does live on through who knew you, whose lives you touched, and through them the countless thousands whose lives were enriched because of you. You will be remembered by us, each in a different way.
Finally, Mr. President, I can think of no better way to remember my friend Father Ron than with the words of Archbishop Oscar Romero: I have no ambition of power, and so with complete freedom I tell the powerful what is good and what is bad, and I tell any political group what is good and what is bad. That is my duty.
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