The complaint filed Nov. 13 in the Spanish High Court against the former president of El Salvador and 14 former members of the Salvadoran military charging complicity in the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests is a reminder that good deeds by members of Congress may bear fruit even decades after those members are gone.

Those charges might well never have been filed had it not been for a self-described “bread and butter politician,” U.S. Rep. Joe Moakley, who represented South Boston from 1973 until his death in 2001.