Thanks to an oral histories project led by Suffolk University's Archives office, here you will find a testimony of Congressman John Joseph Moakley about his involvement in the investigation of the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador. On November 16, 1989, members of the Atlacatl Battalion assassinated the Jesuit priests on the University of Central America (UCA) campus. Twenty-one years later, on November 13, 2008, charges were filed by two human rights groups in Spainish National Court against former Salvadoran president Alfredo Cristiani and 14 members of the army in connection with the 1989 slaughter.

Moakley's work as chairman of a special task force investigating the murders in the early 1990s placed enough pressure in the United States to support a peaceful resolution to the conflict in El Salvador. He was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1953 to 1963 and a member of the Massachusetts Senate from 1964 to 1970. He died of cancer on May 28, 2001.