COAR Peace Mission Annual Benefit
Celebrating 37 years of protecting, educating, and healing
impoverished children in El Salvador.
Fr. Ken, COAR’s founder, pictured with Bishop Pilla in 1981, right, died in his sleep, in El Salvador, in 2002. Fr. Ken’s Brother, Ron, presented Bishop Pilla with the Fr. Ken Myers Service Award. Among Ron’s remarks were these:
“ He [Fr. Ken] was a man of action and very few words . . . he just got things done. . . He sacrificed everything and gave up everything to serve the people of El Salvador. . . As Pope Francis says, ‘The Church is out there with the people’ . . . Ken was ahead of his time. He understood that.”
From Bishop Pilla’s “Church in the City” initiative in 1990’s:
“We can create new cities, the kind our society longs for . . . Cities where the poor and disadvantaged will be able to live and achieve beyond their initial circumstances to the fullness of their human potential; where the weak and the powerless will be freed from chains forged by fear of violence and delivered from the destructiveness of drugs. We can build new cities where children will be able to live in decent homes, have sufficient food and receive an education which will prepare them for a life of meaningful employment.”
“When we speak for the poor, please note that we do not take sides with one social class. What we do is invite all social classes, rich and poor, without distinction, saying to everyone let us take seriously the cause of the poor as though it were our own.” – Monseñor Romero, 9/9/1979
