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Mission Cooperative Plan Intro Introduction 2021 Mission Co-operative Plan, Pastor’s talk Catholic Diocese of Columbus COAR Peace Mission, www.coarpeacemission.org Mission Cooperative Plan Intro • Each year our diocese selects a mission for our parish to bring us news of the mission work of the universal church. • This year, because of the extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic, missions were asked to send us a written appeal [as well as a short video.] So, I will read this year’s appeal and ask for your support. • This year the mission selected for our parish is the “COAR Peace Mission.” Introduction (pronounced: COE’-are) • COAR, C-O-A-R, stands for the “Community of St. Oscar A. Romero”, located in El Salvador in Central America. • COAR is a school for 1,000 impoverished children, pre- kindergarten – 12th grade. • COAR is a home for 50 children in foster care. • COAR has a clinic, vocational training, and other resources for the entire impoverished community. COAR_2021-MissionCoopPlan_Columbus.doc Page 1 of 7 2021 Mission Co-operative Plan, Pastor’s talk Catholic Diocese of Columbus COAR Peace Mission, www.coarpeacemission.org History • COAR’s story begins in 1964, when the Diocese of Cleveland, Ohio, took El Salvador as its mission territory. They sent priests, nuns, and lay volunteers to work in parishes. They offered mass, the sacraments, and catechism classes. • In the late 1970’s, as El Salvador’s civil war began, the Cleveland mission team found itself working alongside San Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Romero. • Archbishop Romero denounced the violence of the war during his Sunday homilies, which were broadcast over the entire country. He created a human rights office to investigate atrocities happening in the countryside, and he opened refugee camps for people fleeing those atrocities. • He asked members of the Cleveland Mission Team to help with the refugees. • Those missionaries saw orphaned children in the camps who were particularly vulnerable: sick, hungry, and traumatized. So, they brought them back to their parish for extra care. • For his acts of courage, Archbishop Romero was murdered, while saying mass, on March 24th 1980. • Later that same year, on December 2nd, two members of the Cleveland Mission Team were also murdered: Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel and a young lay woman, Jean Donovan. • The shockwave of these murders increased the violence of the war and greatly increased the number of refugee children needing care. • So, the missionaries at the parish created a separate orphanage, named it after Archbishop Romero, and COAR was born. COAR_2021-MissionCoopPlan_Columbus.doc Page 2 of 7 2021 Mission Co-operative Plan, Pastor’s talk Catholic Diocese of Columbus COAR Peace Mission, www.coarpeacemission.org Sr. Dorothy Kazel, OSU with refugee children who would become COAR children Current conditions in El Salvador/state of poverty • The war in El Salvador ended in 1992. So why does COAR still need our help? • COAR still needs our help because the legacy of the war is a shattered economy. The children of that war are now adults who have problems with drugs and violence or simply cannot feed their children. • The poverty has led to criminal gang violence that is among the worst in the world. COAR_2021-MissionCoopPlan_Columbus.doc Page 3 of 7 2021 Mission Co-operative Plan, Pastor’s talk Catholic Diocese of Columbus COAR Peace Mission, www.coarpeacemission.org COAR’s Current services • COAR provides hope amidst these problems. • The school is one of the best in the area. The impoverished students learn literature, math, English, computers, and business skills. • Because the campus has security walls and armed guards, COAR can stay open when gang threats close the schools around them. • COAR’s clinic, large chapel, and other services can also remain safe and available despite the surrounding threats. • COAR’s residential program for children, who cannot live with their families or who have no families, is their most important program. • COAR provides a family atmosphere where 5-10 children live together in a small house with a caring housemother. • They eat together, pray together, play together, do homework together, do chores together, and learn to care for each other as a family. • For the children who have been victimized by violence COAR has special services, psychologists, and social workers, to bring them back to wholeness. • COAR hopes to give them alternatives to joining gangs or being victimized by the gang violence that is devastating El Salvador. COAR_2021-MissionCoopPlan_Columbus.doc Page 4 of 7 2021 Mission Co-operative Plan, Pastor’s talk Catholic Diocese of Columbus COAR Peace Mission, www.coarpeacemission.org Illustrative story of a particular child • Your support will directly touch these children, for example, two children who are true orphans are a girl with Down syndrome and a boy with severe health problems. • Both of them were abandoned at the hospital at birth. COAR is the only home that they have ever known. They get excellent medical care and a warm and loving family. • Several of the children lived on the streets, begging for food or stealing it, before they came to COAR. • Now they have good nutritious food every day. • Half of the children came to COAR as young teenagers who had never been to school. Now they are learning to read and write and do math. They even learn computers. • For many, the simple fact that they have a bed and a safe house to live in is a miracle. • But it is a miracle brought to them by you. • COAR invites your support, and needs your support. COAR_2021-MissionCoopPlan_Columbus.doc Page 5 of 7 2021 Mission Co-operative Plan, Pastor’s talk Catholic Diocese of Columbus COAR Peace Mission, www.coarpeacemission.org PARISH-READ the people can support • Our parish has established the following means to give your gifts for COAR . • • 100% of what we send to COAR from this [collection] will go to the COAR children. • You can learn more at COAR’s website: coarpeacemission.org • Or, watch the video posted to our website and/or facebook page. • We have also placed a flyer/article in the parish bulletin. COAR_2021-MissionCoopPlan_Columbus.doc Page 6 of 7 2021 Mission Co-operative Plan, Pastor’s talk Catholic Diocese of Columbus COAR Peace Mission, www.coarpeacemission.org These COAR facts do not need to be part of the talk but are frequently asked of speakers and can help inform someone about COAR, overall. Timeline: • 1964 – Cleveland Latin American Mission (CLAM) Team starts work in parishes in El Salvador. Parish in Zaragoza (where COAR began) opened by the CLAM Team in 1972. • 1977-1980 – Oscar A. Romero Archbishop of the capital city of San Salvador. • 1980 March 24 – Romero assassinated • 1980 August 15 – COAR permanently established and named after Msgr. Romero • 1980 December 2 – The Four North American Church women killed: From the Cleveland Latin American Mission Team (CLAM Team) Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel. OSU and Ms. Jean Donovan and Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clark and Ita Ford, MM • 1983 – Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, Houston, TX (CCVI) take over COAR from the Cleveland Diocese (the take-over date is a little fuzzy given conditions at the time; they took over due to death threats against the CLAM Team.) • 1985 – COAR Peace Mission formally established as 501(3)(c) charitable corporation in the U.S. to enable fundraising, fund transfers, education, and outreach for the COAR Children’s Village; listed annually in the National Catholic Directory as a miscellaneous section of the Diocese of Cleveland. • 1989 June 19 – Sr. Stanislaus Mackey, CCVI, shot in the head as she returned to COAR • 1989 November 16 – 6 Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter murdered • 1992 – El Salvador civil war peace accords signed • 2009 – CCVI relinquishes their administration of COAR and turn it over to the Archdiocese of San Salvador. Average budget values over the past several years: • Annual income and expenses = $600,000-700,000 (approx.) • COAR Peace Mission supplies 100% of the funding • 82% of every dollar goes to COAR, but 100% of MCP money goes to the COAR children Donor population (in North America, associated with COAR Peace Mission): • Number of donors about 4,000 • Average gift size $25-100 annually • Individual donors represent 65% of total donations • MCP 2nd collections represent about 25% of total income in a normal year. • In 2021-2022 we expect to raise $100,000 LESS than usual from the MCP. COAR_2021-MissionCoopPlan_Columbus.doc Page 7 of 7 .
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