Akron priest leaves parish to return to El Salvador

AKRON -- Father Paul Schindler will celebrate his last Mass at St. Bernard's in downtown Akron on January 27th. He's been the pastor there for 26 years.

"[I'm on] the rollercoaster right now. I'm so happy to be able to go back to Salvador, and yet I'm sad when I think about leaving here," says Fr. Schindler, who started working at St. Bernard's shortly after the murders of Cleveland missionaries Jean Donovan and Sister Dorothy Kazel.

They and two Maryknoll nuns, Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, were killed by a death squad in El Salvador in December, 1980.

"Dorothy and Jean were killed so I knew it was time to come home," recalls Fr. Schindler. "When I came here twenty-six years ago, they were thinking of closing the place.

"About 70,000 people died in the violence of El Salvador's civil war. Among them were 19 Catholic priests and Archbishop Oscar Romero.

"Those were very, very hard years," Fr. Schindler remembers. But he says neither he nor the Cleveland Catholic Diocese ever thought of abandoning their El Salvador missions. "After the sisters were killed and we came, we brought Dorothy back and we buried Jean and Dorothy. We went back and that was significant for (the Salvadorans) that we didn't pick up and run. We were part of them. And of course, the blood of our Americans being shed, to share our blood with theirs, the blood of martyrs.

"Leaving the safety of his St. Bernard's parish church might seem like a strange decision to some, but to Paul Schindler it makes perfect sense.

"People ask me, why do you want to go there? We need you here, we need priests here. I say, in the United States, there's one priest for every two thousand Catholics.

"In El Salvador, you have one priest for every seventy-thousand Catholics so I think the need is there and I think that, everything you do down there, they're so grateful.

"Father Schindler begins his permanent work in El Salvador on February 15th. Rev. Clyde Foster will be the new pastor of St. Bernard's.


Esther M. Portillo