SW News: A Polish missionary priest serving the indigenous people in Alaska has been given the Lumen Christi Award for exemplary evangelization. Fr. Stan Jaszek has been serving  the indigenous people in the Diocese of Fairbanks for almost 14 years. Lumen Christi Award is given by the non-profit organizaion  Catholic Extension that is based in Chicago.
The organization funds rural dioceses and mission stations in the US in order to build vibrant and transformative Catholic faith communities.
According to Catholic  Extension president Fr. Jack Wall, the parish priest was chosen for the award because he understood that the Church could be used as a powerful tool for a positive transformation of indigenous people. In spite of having grown up during the communist regime in Poland, Fr Stan was deeply influenced by the impact of Pope Saint John Paul II during the Solidarity Movement. Fr. Jack went on to say, “That conviction is what took him as a missionary priest from Poland to Peru early in his priesthood, then later from post-apartheid Africa to Alaska, in the Diocese of Fairbanks; where he has faithfully served nearly two decades.”
Fr. Stan is currently ministering to the Native people of the Alaskan villages of the remote Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region, along the coast of the Bering Sea. Out of the 19 years of his missionary work at the Diocese of Fairbanks, Fr. Stan spent 14 years of his life residing with the Yup’ik people. The priest very much follows their way of living by fishing, hunting, and gathering berries.
Catholic Extension has been the benefactors of the native people of Alaska for 115 years and has helped raise funds to support their parishes.
Fr. Jazsek grew up amidst the communist rule in Poland. He felt the call to serve as a missionary since his teenage years. In 1983, he began studies at the Metropolitan Major Seminary in Lublin. He was ordained as a priest on December 10, 1988. Fr. Stan said that “The church was the only force that was able to contradict the lies that communism spread about the dignity of workers, about the value of work, about the freedom of the people, about the right to choose their leaders.” The church was actually the place where people could feel free,” he said. The award comes with a purse of $50,000.