Visoko, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Photographer: Jasmin Brutus

Year of Submission: 2016 (Educators Edition) 

As well as teaching, Fra Ivan oversees his school’s 60,000-book library and curates its collection of fossils, minerals and other natural specimens.

“I am not for tolerance between the religions,” says Fra Ivan, “I am for love. Tolerance means that you are merely tolerating the others’ presence.”

Fra Ivan teaches Latin and Croatian in a school run by Franciscan monks in Visoko, a town of 17,000 people close to Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Twenty years ago, it stood on the frontline of fighting between Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats. Today, government-funded and free for all, its students include Muslims and Orthodox Christians as well as Catholics. Now in his mid-40s, Fra Ivan has been with the Franciscan order for twenty years. “Silentium est approbationem – silence is approval,” he tells his pupils. “If you see someone beating a child or a dog and you walk by, you are giving your approval.”