Bishop Cortez was a professor at the National University of El Salvador between 1976 and 1982. The university was violently closed by the army in 1982 adding to the many acts of repression the Salvadoran government was doing during those years against its people. Faculty and students were accused of fueling the insurrection.

It was during this time Bishop Cortez began her collaboration with the Salvadoran Lutheran Synod founding Socorro Luterano Salvadoreño (Salvadoran Lutheran Aid). This organization provided refuge to the displaced women and children that were escaping the government’s persecution and bombings in the countryside. They were arriving by hundreds into San Salvador City and the Lutheran church was helping them to find a safe place to stay. The government immediately targeted Bishop Cortez alleging she was a subversive guerrilla because of her work with the Salvadoran Lutheran Aid and because of her former ties to the university. She and her family began to be politically persecuted.

Fearing for her life, Bishop Cortez went into exile in Nicaragua in 1983. Bishop Cortez continued her work with the Lutheran church tending to Salvadoran refugee camps in Nicaragua. In 1990, close to the signing of the peace accords, Salvadorans living in Nicaragua began to return to El Salvador. However, Bishop Cortez responded to a call to stay in Nicaragua to establish the Lutheran church “Fe y Esperanza” (Faith and Hope Church) in Nicaragua. She now serves as the Bishop of the Lutheran Church in Nicaragua and the Executive Director of the “Fe y Esperanza” church.

She served as the Vice President of the World Federation for Latin America between 2003 and 2010. Bishop Cortez’s undergraduate study concentrated in economy and sociology. She later pursued graduate studies in education, theology, gender and social development. She holds a doctorate degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary of Chicago. On 23 August 2017, the Central American Women Forum awarded Bishop Cortez recognition for her trajectory as a refugee and visionary. Bishop Cortez has three adult children and her eldest daughter is an ordained Lutheran pastor.