"Rest In Peace" Fr. Paul Tipton, S.J.

Paul Tipton; Exposed Jesuit Deaths in El Salvador
Rev. Paul Tipton was president of St. Mary's Ryken High School.

By Patricia SullivanWashington Post Staff Writer Sunday, June 1, 2008; Page C08
Paul Smallwood Tipton, 69, who, while president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities helped expose the assassination of six Catholic priests, their housekeeper and her daughter by the Salvadoran army, died of cancer May 25 at Georgetown University Hospital. He lived in the District and Lusby. Rev. Tipton had just started at the association when he received a call telling him that the sole witness to the Nov. 16, 1989, murders of six Jesuits and two women at Central American University in San Salvador was detained and interrogated by Salvadoran officials, the U.S. State Department and the FBI. He flew from Washington to Miami and took custody of Luisa Cerna, the housekeeper, and her husband. He became active in the case, writing letters that accused the U.S. ambassador of attempting to discredit her. "The reason we Jesuits in the United States are very angry is that the mistreatment of the Cernas effectively has neutralized the only witness who has come forward, and it means probably no other witness will come forward," he told the New York Times at the time. "This particular institution is a voice for peace and justice, and pursuing the people who pulled the triggers is a very personal matter for us." Rev. Tipton later made several trips to El Salvador with U.S. Rep. Joe Moakley, the Massachusetts Democrat who led the congressional task force investigating the killings. The revelations led to a cut in U.S. foreign aid to the Salvadoran government, resolution of the country's civil war and election of a new government. Rev. Tipton was born in Birmingham, Ala., and began studying to be a Jesuit priest in 1958. He attended the University of Virginia and graduated from Spring Hill College in Mobile, Ala. He taught at an El Paso high school while attending graduate school at the University of Texas at El Paso. In 1968, he joined the staff of U.S. Rep. Richard C. White (D-Tex.) and did further graduate work in theological studies at Woodstock College in Maryland, Union Theological Seminary in New York and Catholic University.

He was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1971 in New Orleans. The following year, he was named president of Spring Hill College, where he worked for 17 years.

While there, he and a crew of students raced a 40-foot sloop, "Holy Smoke," in a 180-mile overnight trip in the Gulf of Mexico in 1983. Halfway through the race, an intense storm with near-hurricane strength winds generated 20-foot waves. Rev. Tipton and his crew headed home but almost a third of the 29 boats had major problems. The Coast Guard responded to three Mayday calls and one sailor drowned. Rev. Tipton, who was chairman of the offshore committee of the Gulf Yachting Association, which had sponsored the race, found two of the missing crews the next day on a barrier island, according to a contemporaneous article in the New York Times. He worked at the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities in Washington from 1989 until 1996, overseeing the legislative activities of the 28 Jesuit postsecondary schools in the United States.

When Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School caught fire July 8, 1993, Rev. Tipton helped lead the nuns out of their monastery into the courtyard, then joined other priests in rescuing priceless vestments, chalices and paintings. With a friend, Davis Feickert, he removed a massive 1821 painting of Jesus, Mary and Martha in prayer, donated to the Sisters of Visitation by Charles X of France.

By 1996, when he became president of Jacksonville University in Florida, Rev. Tipton had left the Jesuits and become a diocesan priest. He returned to Washington in 2000, working as a counselor to the secretary of labor. In 2001, he started the Provident Consulting Group to provide services to nonprofit and faith-based organizations, a group he ran until his death. In 2003, he became president of St. Mary's Ryken High School, a Catholic college preparatory school in Leonardtown, where for the next two years he developed a long-range financial plan, recrafted the mission statement and increased annual giving by 100 percent. He was a member of numerous educational and civic boards. He had no immediate family survivors. Link (here)

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