COAR, the Community of St. Oscar Arnulfo Romero, is a pre-K through 12th grade school and residential foster-care home in Zaragoza, El Salvador.
As with many international missions of the church, a portion of COAR’s funding is raised through the Mission Cooperative Plan or “mission appeal” at churches in North America. COAR speakers often enjoy meeting new supporters, connecting with people when talking about El Salvador or the school’s mission, and occasionally running into donors who are familiar with COAR.
This year, one of the speakers met someone who might know COAR even better than she does. COAR programs director, Susan Barnish, makes most of the arrangements for the speakers, so she was surprised when the pastor of a church in San Antonio responded to her introduction of COAR by saying, “Why yes, of course I know COAR. I graduated from high school there!”
Meeting Father Juan Carlos Morales Tejada was special. It is rare for COAR staff members to encounter a COAR graduate as an adult. Staff members know they are doing all they can to send them out into the world prepared to be good community members, with an excellent education based in Catholic values, but like all good parents, they set them free and don’t often see the fruits of their labors until years later.
Father Juan Carlos grew up in San José Villanueva, near Zaragoza. He is the oldest of six children. As a child, he was an altar server, and his friends and neighbors would always tell him what a good priest he would make. He began to feel a calling to the priesthood.
However, as he started high school, he began to wonder if God was really calling him or if he just considered the priesthood because so many people had mentioned it to him.
In his years at COAR, Father JC (as his parishioners call him) played for the school soccer team and started to think he might want to become a civil engineer. As the oldest child, he was also thinking about providing for his younger siblings.
However, Father Juan Carlos still maintained a relationship with Father Mario Cruz, his parish priest in San José, and Father Mario encouraged him to go on a retreat at the seminary in San Salvador, reminding him that if God was really calling him to the priesthood, He would provide for Father Juan Carlos’ family in his absence.
He’ll tell you candidly that the retreat talks were sleep-inducing, but that at a holy hour on that retreat, Father JC was especially called to an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe and prayed for her intercession. He told her that if she wanted him to become a priest, she must take care of his family.
And she has ever since, he says. He was sent to study in Mexico City, where he felt at home in prayer at the Cathedral of the Assumption, and then to San Antonio, at Assumption Seminary. When his mother passed away, on Aug. 15, the Feast of the Assumption, he was comforted knowing that the Blessed Mother continued to watch over him.
Coincidentally (or not!), Aug. 15 is also the birthday of St. Oscar Romero, and the day staff members celebrate the anniversary of COAR.
Father JC has shared about the impact COAR can have on a child’s life and about a scholarship he received through a sponsorship program that gave him access to workshops, sports teams and opportunities he might not otherwise have had.