The St. Edward High School visitors (June 2022) learned of El Salvador past at Park Cuscatlan, which has a wall of names (like that in the US for the Vietnam war) of those who died in the war.  Then, at the Chapel of the Four North American Churchwomen, they had mass said by Fr. Paul Schindler.  Fr. Paul is a member of the Cleveland Latin American Mission (CLAM) Team serving in El Salvador since 2008.  He was also in El Salvador from 1972-1981, including the terrible time of the martyrdoms of St. Romero (March 24, 1980) and the Four North American Churchwomen (December 2, 1980).  He told the young men of that day when he helped to recover the bodies of the four women, as well as answering questions about the current difficulties of El Salvador.

Fr. John Ostrowski invited the St. Ed group to a “canton” mass: a mass in a countryside chapel outside of the town where he lives in the parish of Teotepeque for the CLAM Team. The visitors were treated to a festival after mass. Then they loaded into Fr. John’s pick-up to visit the homes of several parishioners. The setting is beautiful but in a health crisis or in the drought that has devastated the local corn crop, the poverty becomes overwhelming.

The best way out of this poverty is the education and vocational training provided at COAR.