Yesterday, we were all surprised by the sad news on the radio. After a long illness, our colleague and friend Stipe Ćavar died on Monday evening, December 4, at the age of 65.
Stipe was born in Krehin Gradac in 1959. He completed primary and secondary school in Čitluk. In 1978, he graduated from the Department of Electronics at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Sarajevo.
In 1993, Stipe worked as the first employee of the Information Center Mir Međugorje. He sent Our Lady’s messages by fax to addresses all over the world every 25th in the month, later came a technical miracle called Robofax, something between a fax machine and the Internet, and then the Internet. Stipe put all these instruments into use in order to send Our Lady’s message and news from Medjugorje to the whole world in seven languages.
Thinking about her closest collaborator and a friend, Marija Dugandžić wrote this: “How much knowledge and courage you had, the fact that you were the first in Bosnia and Herzegovina to create a website, the same one that lives on today, indeed speaks a lot. It is impossible to list everything you have done here. One thing is certain: you made such a good foundation that others could build future floors of that home. You were not afraid of anything, nothing was insurmountable, impossible when it came to achieving a goal: and your goal was to send Our Lady’s motherly invitations to the whole world. Today it is something completely natural and not at all demanding, at that time it was equal to a miracle! You had to have that courage and great knowledge, and you had both. So many times I would find you in the office ‘talking’ to the computer. I stand, I look, I don’t understand anything, I admire. I must confess to you now: often I could neither understand nor follow you. It was not only me. That’s why I’m asking you now: forgive me! Yet, you would be so benevolently angry in an attempt to explain to me and others, how all this something should be done, always move forward, so that Our Lady’s message would reach every corner of this country.”
Everything he did, he did with so much zeal, dedication, fervor and responsibility according to his own conscience. With his inner attitude towards the work, he developed to the end all the talents that God gave him. In all this, he was an exceptionally a good soul, a good man. When it was necessary to protect this project and desire of Our Lady with work and deeds, you were not afraid to expose yourself and your family. You did not fear anyone, only the Lord.
He was not afraid to embark on a new project in 1997, namely the establishment of Radio Station Mir Međugorje. Not even in 1999, when he established his own web server that enables the broadcasting of a radio program to the world and the live broadcasting of a video evening prayer program from the Church of St. James via the Internet.
“It was incredible the desire, the will, the enthusiasm… in small, leaky rooms. When people from the big centers and radio stations of the world came, they could not believe that a program from that area was going out into the world with such love. Work was done, a solution was sought, rooms were built, sound systems were built… All within the possibilities we had then, but they were not great,” Stipe Ćavar said about those beginnings, visiting Radio Station Mir Međugorje, which he founded and this was said on the occasion of its 20th birthday.
Stipe always said that he was in Our Lady’s service with the aim of spreading peace throughout the world, calling everyone to conversion, and many were converted thanks to Stipe’s wire through which the evening prayer program reached every corner of the world.
Stipe Ćavar also published the book “The first months of apparitions in Medjugorje: a personal diary about external events with today’s reflection on them”.
In addition to the Mir Međugorje Information Center, since 1994, Stipe Ćavar has also worked in the Institute for Education of the Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosna as an informatics and electrical engineering consultant and as an informatics professor in the Grammar school in Čitluk.
You loved our Lady as a child, obeyed and respected her like a mother. He did everything for her! Dear Stipe, you did a lot in your life, you left with your hands full, and now you can do even more: follow us on the road where we were friends and companions. May his soul rest in peace!
Your colleagues!
