-
October 14, 2013
VASJ religion teacher Chris Janezic vividly remembers the day El Salvador became a part of his life. It was 1980 and he was enrolled at Borromeo Seminary in Wickliffe when he heard the tragic news that four women – Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel and lay missionary Jean Donovan from Cleveland and Marynoll Sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clarke – had been martyred in El Salvador.“The churches in Cleveland shook when the news came out that those women were killed,” Janezic says. “It changed the direction of my life. I felt a calling to get involved. Sometimes you choose an issue but in this case, the issue chose me. “
Janezic has spent the last 33 years with the organization Community of Oscar A. Romero (COAR), founded in 1980 by Rev. Ken Myers, a Catholic priest from Cleveland. Fr. Ken, whose mission was to promote justice, community and peace in El Salvador, died in 2002.
At an awards reception on Saturday, October 5, Janezic was honored for his 10 years of service on the COAR Board of Directors. For six of those years, he served as the Board President. Janezic was the recipient of the Rev. Ken Myers COAR Service Award at the reception held at the site of the COAR office, the same Borromeo where he first felt the calling to serve the people of El Salvador.
“I never thought of this work having that kind of public recognition,” Janezic says. “That’s not why I do it. It’s part of who I am now and to not do it would be to lessen myself.”
He has learned a lot from his 33-year involvement with El Salvador and COAR. “I understand the world better,” Janezic says. “Change happens much slower than what I thought when I was in my twenties. You think that you can change the world really fast but it doesn’t work that way.”
This understanding of the need for patience and accepting of slow change has changed the way he teaches, too. “The experience of brokenness in El Salvador has translated into a better understanding of the lives of the students and the way it impacts them,” Janezic says. It has made him a more relaxed and understanding teacher.
El Salvador and its connection to Cleveland and VASJ through Sister Dorothy is an important part of all the religion classes at VASJ. Janezic has taken a delegation of VASJ seniors to El Salvador for 10 years. Janezic has taken a total of 33 trips there.
“The goal of COAR is to raise Salvadoran children to be good Salvadoran citizens and leaders,” Janezic says. Over the past 33 years, he has had the gratifying experience to see this goal become a reality among many of the children served through COAR. “You do a lot of work and don’t get to see the end result but occasionally you get to see a glimpse of success,” Janezic says.
The entire VASJ community salutes Chris Janezic for his service and congratulates him for his much-deserved honor.
Family, friends and colleagues were there to watch as Chris Janezic
received the Father Ken Meyers COAR Service Award on October 5.