"The whole community, my whole community, had been murdered. In addition, two women had been murdered with them." Fr Jon Sobrino SJ narrowly escaped death on 16 November 1989, when his six Jesuit companions and colleagues at the Central American University (UCA) of El Salvador were brutally executed by the army. Their cook, Julia Elba, and her 15-year-old daughter, Celia, were killed too.

Fr Sobrino had a speaking engagement in Thailand, where he was also joining the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) for a meeting. He later recalled how another Jesuit called him to break the shattering news: "They have murdered Ignacio Ellacuría, Segundo Montes, Ignacio Martín-Baró, Amando López, Juan Ramón Moreno and Joaquín López y López. My friend read the names slowly, I was writing them down, hoping that the list would end after each name. But after each name came another, on to the end."

The Jesuits were massacred at the height of fierce civil war in El Salvador, which claimed some 75,000 lives before ending with UN-brokered peace agreement in 1992. Their murder caused an international outcry and eventually, three army officers and six enlisted men were tried on charges of murder and terrorism in 1991. The jury acquitted the soldiers who confessed to the killings, and the commanding officer and his deputy were sentenced to the maximum 30-year sentence for murder. Both were amnestied in 1993. The Truth Commission which investigated violence committed during the Salvadoran war found that several members of the Salvadoran Army high command ordered the killings.

The six Jesuits were killed because they courageously told the truth and denounced the gross injustices and violations of human rights inflicted upon the people of El Salvador. Fr Ellacuría, 59, was the university rector, a highly respected intellectual. A sociologist, Fr Montes, 56, was director of the UCA institute of human rights; he studied especially the link between human rights and refugees. Fr Martín-Baró, 'Nacho', 57, was a social psychologist and vice-rector. Fr Moreno, 56, was master of novices, theology professor, and vice-director of the Archbishop Romero Centre, while Fr López, 53, was rector of the diocesan seminary of San Salvador and theology professor. Seventy-year-old Fr Joaquín López y López, 'Lolo', ran the Fe y Alegria education programme.

Paying homage to his martyred brothers, Fr Sobrino went beyond their academic and professional distinction: "And as well as all these 'titles', we will have to mention all their devotion in their daily work of looking after the ordinary people who came to them with their problems, their Sunday pastoral work in parishes and in poor suburban and rural communities, their struggles to build things in these poor places… If they worked like fanatics and ran very conscious risks, it was because they had a gut reaction – like the Good Samaritan, Jesus and the heavenly Father – when they saw a whole suffering people on the road."

Today, 18 years after their murder, the example of those Jesuits, who laid down their lives for peace and justice for the poorest of the poor, is as relevant as ever. As their companion, Fr Sobrino, wrote shortly after they were killed: "May their peace give hope to us and their memory not let us rest in peace."

For more information about the anniversary, go to www.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/10th-anniv.html.

The quotes by Fr Jon Sobrino SJ are taken from his essay, Companions of Jesus, which was first published in English by the Catholic Institute for International Relations (copyright CIIR 1990) and in the United States by Orbis Books (copyright 1990).