For 25 years, Laurenţiu Lazar comforts the sick, feeds the poor, takes care of orphans, in short, gives help to anyone who needs it, when no one else does.
At the most recent Gala of Excellence in Social Assistance in Romania, an annual event organized in Bucharest, the Orthodox priest received the award for social worker of the year in the field of protection and promotion of the rights of people with disabilities. A distinction that, without a doubt, he deserved.
Nobody’s children
In 1998, after graduating theology studies in Cluj-Napoca and after 5 years in which he worked in the print media, as an editor at a Cluj magazine, and then a journalist at Jurnalul de diminea in Oradea, Laurenţiu Lazăr received the mission to serve in the small chapel of the Rogerius Children’s Hospital.
There he would meet the children whom the communist regime wanted dead. “The hospital was full of abused children before the Revolution in the so-called hospital dormitories. We have the impression that the abuse ended in 1989, but that was not the case. These children were just moved to hospitals, where whole wards were blocked because of this “, recalls the father, now 53 years old.
After almost a decade since journalists found them starving and dirty in homes where they were sent to die, such as the one in Cighid, children with disabilities of all kinds were once again destitute, lying in hospitals as in prisons.
The priest also remembers that mortality was high among these children, and they thus became a logistical problem. “The hospital’s freezers were full, so I started to bury them. In the cemetery, it was just me and the buried child,” says the father. They were nobody’s sons and daughters, so they had no one to mourn them…
Education for Roma mothers
In the same year 1998, the priest baptized more than 50 children abandoned in the hospital, inviting local officials to be their godparents, from the then prefect, Lucian Silaghi, to various other local elected officials or heads of institutions. “I told them: “They are the children of the state, therefore yours, you must come and baptize them”. Some, like the prefect, came and even kept in touch with the children over the years”, says father Laurentiu.
Also in the hospital, the first project with non-reimbursable financing took place, a grant won from the Princess Margareta Foundation, for the health education of the Roma mothers who filled the hospital in winter with their sick babies. “The show «De 3 x woman» was in fashion and we also created a club with the same name in the hospital, where women learned about hygiene and more. But I realized that they have much more serious problems than washing their hands , hunger, cold…”.
Since then, he has never missed an opportunity to do good for a group of people, no matter how big or small, convinced that everyone deserves to be helped to have a better fate. “I used to get involved in any project, as I actually do today. It’s a behavioral deviant,” says the father, smiling.
Youth projects
He then came to support the disabled, who, likewise, belonged to no one then. For years he coordinated the Locomotive Disabled Association, and the experience helped him to learn European opportunities in terms of social work, volunteering, and youth. He carried out numerous projects and exchanges of experience, succeeding in helping pupils and students from Oradea, healthy but also with disabilities, to broaden their horizons. “Back then it was much easier to attract young people to such projects than it is now,” notes Father Laurentiu.
He knows, however, that the experiences were useful to the participants. He remembers a young man whom he met when he was 18 years old, but he had dropped out of school in the 8th grade, tired of being bullied by his colleagues, who made fun of him because he did not speak Romanian well, as he was of Hungarian ethnicity. After an exchange of experience in Germany, the boy became so ambitious that he obtained his German speaking certificate, and then he not only finished high school and went to college, but became a German teacher. “These stories seem trivial, but I see them so useful”, says the priest from Oradea, proud of each of the children he met and who managed to progress.
Treatment and socialization
Since 2000, Laurenţiu Lazăr has started working at another NGO, the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation, which promotes the rights of these patients. He was part of the group of activists who managed to convince the governors that a national program dedicated to sclerosis was needed, and if then only 150 patients from the whole country had the right to settled treatments, today any patient has access and thus manages to block the evolution of the disease. “Although the prevalence of multiple sclerosis has increased a lot, life expectancy has also increased,” the priest emphasizes.
On Buzăului street in Oradea, the foundation has a day center, where patients with multiple sclerosis, but also with other conditions, find support or simply friends. The center has become a place where adults with disabilities do various therapies, socialize, participate in creative workshops, all under the supervision of specialists.
“It’s important to get them out of the house, to “wipe the dust” off them, this brings a sense of well-being to the whole family. It’s like a club where they change their mood”, explains father Laurentiu.
House, table, love…
The only years in which the priest was not an NGO-ist were between 2006 and 2009, when he held the position of deputy director of the Oradea Social-Community Administration (ASCO), also being responsible for social issues. Also, for over 15 years, Lazar has been the social-philanthropic advisor of the Orthodox Diocese of Oradea, leading the Philanthropy Association, which belongs to the diocese.
Among many others, in recent years he has carried out projects such as “Angel Wings”, through which he collected, together with students from several schools, funds for the construction of 5 houses for orphaned children, “Prima camara”, which involves supporting young people who come out of orphanages, or “Masa saracilor”, a program initiated by a disabled man from Oradea, through which 50 families receive a hot meal every week.
The father continues to campaign for the orphaned children he saw in the hospital in the 90s, also being part of a small group of specialists who, at the initiative of PNL senator Adrian Hatos, are working on a bill aimed at compensating the victims of communist orphanages.
In addition, for over a year, Father Laurentiu has been providing important support to Sîrmanca Fechete (photo), a survivor from Cighid whom the priest – who also became her godfather – helped her find a job and supports her in raising her babies. As a true parent of those forgotten by their peers…
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