Sudanese survivor, enslaved as child, asks Marin Catholic to help build school
Catholic san Francisco Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper
Francis Bok puts a human face on the reality of human slavery in the 21st century – and on building a country. Bok, a Catholic Dinka tribesman from southern Sudan, was 7 and on his first trip with older children to sell peanuts and boiled eggs at a marketplace when he was captured during a raid by Arab Muslim marauders from the country’s north in 1986. He spent 10 years as a slave to a wealthy Arab Muslim family in northern Sudan, sleeping with animals, herding goats and sheep, and then cows, and eating food scraps, often rotting, from the family’s table. He was forced to become a Muslim, even as he was taunted as “abeed” – or black slave. The wife of the man who captured him regularly threatened to kill him, the man threatened to cut off his arm if he fled, and the children beat him. “When you are in trouble, you have to turn to God,” Bok told the students at Marin Catholic during a March 4 visit to thank the students for their prayers and ask their help in building a 12-classroom school, complete with a traditional boarding high school, in his village in the newly created country of South Sudan. At 17 – on his third escape attempt – Bok walked away from his life as a slave, making his way to Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, then to Egypt and finally to the U.S. In 2000, Bok was the first escaped slave to testify SCHOOL IN SUDAN, page 6
(CNS PHOTO/CYNTHIA KARAM, REUTERS )
By Valerie Schmalz
A Maronite Catholic wears a cross of ashes after attending Ash Monday service in Beirut March 7. Eastern Catholic churches mark the start of the penitential season of Lent before the Latin-rite church.
Double win for SHCP in basketball sectionals; girls beat rival SI By George Raine The Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory girls and boys basketball teams are riding high on San Francisco’s Cathedral Hill.
Special sports section inside Both have moved on in Northern California competition, after the Fightin’ Irish girls defeated the St.
Ignatius College Preparatory Wildcats 64-48 and the boys clinched their third consecutive CCS title by beating Burlingame, 41-32. Both games were played March 5 at Santa Clara University. On paper, the girls team, and head coach Mike Carey, faced a formidable opponent. The Wildcats beat them badly, by 29 points, on Jan. 11 at the University of San Francisco. The Irish girls turned the ball over 28 times in that game. The Wildcats beat them a second time during the season, by a margin of 10.
“It’s all that we had heard – that they were the best team in the city – but we can play with them,” said Carey, in his second year as varsity head coach after serving as Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep junior varsity coach for 12 years, and before that varsity coach at Mercy High School in San Francisco for six years. Carey said he studied film of the Wildcats and watched them play in a game last week and crafted a plan: “If we could limit their second opportunities to shoot, not give SHCP BASKETBALL, page S2
Priest-composer meets new challenges in setting missal to music Should he scrap his worldly life plan in favor of becoming an other-worldly liturgical music minister? After more An invitation by his pastor to give religious educadiscernment, a second question emerged: Should he comtion students lessons in singing liturgical bine music ministry with the priesthood? music became a life-changing event for Today, now-Father Manalo is doing Ricky Manalo. just that as a Paulist priest/composer, Manalo accepted the priest’s offer living at Old St. Mary’s Cathedral in San one day 25 years ago but had no plans to Francisco’s Chinatown. He was ordained continue with church music. He was comin 2000 at St. Paul the Apostle Church in pleting his studies in classical composition New York City, the mother church of the at the Manhattan School of Music in New Paulist fathers. York. After graduation he planned to comFather Manalo grew up in a deeply pose Broadway musicals, film scores and religious – and deeply musical – FilipinoTV commercials. His career plans were set. American family. Every night his physician Or so he thought. dad’s stereo would blast Beethoven and Paulist Father Manalo’s Mass music teaching stint Mozart. Meanwhile, mom the pharmacist Ricky Manalo turned out to be a new adventure for the would hum melodies, some of them original. Stephen Sondheim hopeful. Introducing kids to hymns at Today, Father Manalo enjoys widespread note for St. Gabriel Parish in Marlboro, N.J., and seeing that church introducing Asian liturgical music into mainstream U.S. music had become their daily prayer deeply affected him. Roman Catholic song books through his compositions, (PHOTO BY JOSE LUIS AGUIRRE)
By Sharon Abercrombie
“Many and Great,” “By the Waking of our Hearts,” and, “Ang Katawan ni Kristo” (the Body of Christ), published by Oregon Catholic Press. In 2006, he served as main facilitator for the first national gathering of Asian and Pacific Catholics at a meeting sponsored by the U.S. bishops. In 2007 his hymn, “That All May be One in Christ,” won the national competition sponsored by the National Association of Pastoral Musicians and the Atonement Friars. This year Father Manalo, who is teaching a course in liturgical theology at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley while completing his doctorate in liturgical studies, is experiencing new challenges in the form of the revised Roman Missal. To be introduced in the U.S. church this Advent, this latest version of the Mass prayers returns to the formal translation of ancient Latin texts. In a recent interview, Father Manalo discussed his three-year musical involvement with the project. PRIEST-COMPOSER, page 10
INSIDE THIS WEEK’S EDITION On the Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 News in brief. . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 St. Joseph’s silent power . . . 12 My quartet of saints . . . . . . 13
The Gabriel Project now in 12 parishes ~ Page 3 ~ March 11, 2011
Loaves & Fishes Award ~ Page 7 ~
Film ponders discipleship’s cost ~ Page 16 ~
ONE DOLLAR
Datebook of events . . . . . . . 17 Classified ads . . . . . . . . . . . 20
www.catholic-sf.org VOLUME 13
•
No. 9