photo courtesy of Mary Pimmel Mary Pimmel’s portraits of Father Ignacio Ellacuria and the other seven victims of the University of Central America massacre hangs in Sedgwick Hall at Rockhurst University in Kansas City.

She still fell in love with the six Jesuit priests of the University of Central America, their cook and her daughter. Or rather, she fell in love with their love of El Salvador’s poor, a love that they paid for with their lives.

A 2007 graduate of Rockhurst University, Pimmel said the eight martyrs of El Salvador began to change her life when she attended the annual Ignatian Teach-In at Fort Benning, Ga., home of the School of the Americas where 19 of the 26 Salvadoran military officers implicated in the murders received training.

Speaking Nov. 10 to a new group of Rockhurst students who were about to make the same journey marking the 20th anniversary of the Nov. 16, 1989, assassinations, Pimmel said she immersed herself into learning everything she could about the lives of the eight.

That knowledge then burst into creativity of eight acrylic on canvas portraits, including one surprise.

Each of the six Jesuit priests are portrayed individually. The two women, Elba and Celina Ramos, are portrayed together — as they died holding each other.

The eighth portrait is of Obdulio Ramos, husband of Elba and father of Celina, who was the first person to find his wife, his daughter and the six priests on the morning after Salvadoran troops burst into the campus Jesuit residence in the middle of the night to kill Father Ignacio Ellacuria, the university rector, and leave no witnesses.

The portrait of Obdulio Ramos, the university’s gardener, is the largest at two feet by three feet. It depicts him tending the rose bushes he planted — six red, two yellow — in memory of the priests and the women he loved.

In the background are names of some of the 70,000 victims of the decade-long civil war on a memorial wall not unlike the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.

“I did this painting to share the legacy of the Jesuits,” Pimmel said. “This shows the power of the Jesuits. It is the power of falling in love with the people. Obdulio believed that this should not be a place where life ended, but a place of beauty.”

Pimmel, who is now studying for her master’s degree in social justice at Loyola University in Chicago, explained to the students each portrait that now hangs in the university’s original building, Sedgwick Hall, as Rockhurst’s memorial to the six Jesuits and two women.

She said she strived to capture the essence of each of the priests which she said was rooted in their love and service to the poor, even at the price of their lives.

Each portrait also incorporates the words of each priest.

“Telling the truth becomes the unmasking of lies, and that is not forgiven,” said Father Ellacuria, whom Pimmel depicted in bright yellow tones as a “beacon of truth.”

“He was very outspoken and well-spoken,” Pimmel said. “He was extremely courageous.”

Father Ignacio Martin-Baro was one of the world’s leading psychologists and was making breakthroughs in the study of the post traumatic stress syndrome of war upon civilian populations.

“He was known as a workaholic, who would be so busy that he wouldn’t return greetings,” Pimmel said. “Yet he was very compassionate and considerate.”

She painted Father Martin-Baro in shades of red and purple to show both his passion and his compassion.

“What places some close to death opens for others the possibility of new life,” Father Martin-Baro said.

Father Segundo Montes had a fiery temper. Chair of the university’s sociology department, he immersed himself in the study of issues surrounding land reform, refugees and immigration.

He is portrayed in fiery red, reflective of his “passionate spirit,” Pimmel said.

“This is my country and these are my people,” Father Montes said. “God’s grace does not leave, so neither can we.”

Father Armando Lopez had recently arrived in El Salvador from Nicaragua. “He had connections, and he helped people escape the dangers,” Pimmel said. “He talked about how his hope was in the people of El Salvador.”

Father Lopez is painted in green, the color of hope.

“If I leave, the crisis will stay,” he said. “Here, I may be able to affect change.”

Father Juan Ramon Moreno was painfully shy, Pimmel said.

“He would practice speaking to walls so that he would be more confident,” she said. “He was a lot quieter and less charismatic, but he chose to stay with the other Jesuits.”

Father Ramon was also head of the Jesuit noviate in El Salvador, charged with spreading the fire of Ignatian spirituality to the next generation of Jesuits. For that reason, she painted him in fiery orange, mixed with cooler blue tones of shyness.

Father Joaquin Lopez y Lopez, “Padre Lolo” to those who knew him, was the eldest of the Jesuits at 71 when he died. He helped establish the Jesuit “Fe y Allegra” (Faith and Joy) system of elementary schools in El Salvador that educated thousands of poor children.

“He believed that if he were to truly transform El Salvador, he had to work to educate the people,” Pimmel said.

Father Lopez y Lopez had been diagnosed with cancer shortly before he was gunned down. Pimmel portrayed him in cool blues.

“If your projects are for five years, sow wheat. If they are for 10, plant a tree. But if they are for 100 years, educate a town,” Father Lopez y Lopez said.

“Because of their ability to fall in love with the people, they were able to do extraordinary things,” Pimmel said. “That power transforms an ordinary Jane or Joe into someone who can do things that are extraordinary.”

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