On church altar, priest memorializes Shoah’s ‘staggering’ evil and that the story of the genocide of six million European Jews, recalled in a small All of the photographs in the small but telling way at the purgatory altar at St. Holocaust memorial on a side altar at Dominic, deserves our attention. St. Dominic Church in San “I wanted images to sink Francisco are arresting and into their hearts,” Father disturbing, but the one that Lavagetto said of the parishcaptures a pretty woman ioners and visitors who pass about to be executed at by, “because unless you pray the death camp at Belzec, with your heart it can remain Poland, will stop you cold. very academic.” She was standing in the Father Lavagetto is the snow. She was holding her son of an iconic professional hands as in prayer. It was baseball player and manager, her last day. Cookie Lavagetto, who made Dominican Father It’s a reminder, said his name as an infielder for Dominican Father Xavier the Brooklyn Dodgers, in Xavier Lavagetto Lavagetto, the pastor, that the 1930s and 1940s. He had “the size of inhumanity is staggering,” many Jewish friends, said his son. “To dad,
By George Raine
anti-Semitism was repugnant, and he gave it no truck,” said Father Lavagetto. The lessons from the Holocaust – chief among them that we are all brothers and sisters – have long been part of Father Lavagetto’s portfolio, as teacher and pastor. He was a Christian Brother for 25 years, before his ordination as a priest in 1996, and taught chemistry and religion for 11 years at Cathedral High School in Los Angeles – and to the religion students he showed film on concentration camp liberation. He recently visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., where he wept, and, once home, assembled his own memorial. There are three candles illuminating the collected pieces, which also include three framed photographs; a map of the
major concentration camps in Europe in 1944; the back story on the Shoah, meaning calamity in Hebrew; a copy of Psalm 130, “A Cry from the Depths;” the Kaddish Prayer, required in Jewish law to be recited for the dead but which is also a prayer for peace, and a copy of Pope John Paul II’s speech at Yad Vashem, in which he noted that “only a world at peace, with justice for all, can avoid repeating the mistakes and terrible crimes of the past.” In the book of photographs, there is an image of a burning synagogue in Siegen, Germany, during “Kristallnacht,” meaning Night of Broken Glass, on Nov. 10, 1938; a shot of the crematorium furnaces in SHOAH, page 8
Catholic san Francisco
(CNS PHOTO/DARON DEAN)
Northern California’sIrish Weekly Catholic Newspaper At prayer service, archbishop repents for clergy sexual abuse
Dale Recinella, a former financier turned prison chaplain, talks to inmates about suffering during religious education instruction at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Fla., May 11. He chronicled his journey in a new book, “Now I Walk on Death Row.” Read the story on catholic-sf.org.
Enhanced curriculum, and lighter backpacks, seen as Mercy adopts iPads By Valerie Schmalz A pilot iPad program begins in the fall at Mercy High School, Burlingame with all teachers beginning to teach with iPads and students encouraged to bring iPads to class. If all goes well with the pilot program, in the 2012-13 school year students will be required to purchase iPads and will download available texts onto their com-
puters rather than purchasing hard copies of the texts, said principal Lisa Tortorich. The pilot program is a way to work out the bugs before iPads become mandatory, social studies chair Linda Townsend said. “It’s an absolute shift in our institutional strategy,” said Tortorich, saying the impetus for the change came from the faculty. “We are very proud that we are leading the area of technology.” “There are so many apps that are creative
and fun,” said the principal, who also teaches technology and education at the University of San Francisco. Several Catholic high schools in the Archdiocese of San Francisco are investigating implementation of iPad technology, said Schools Superintendent Maureen Huntington. Setting up a one-to-one system for iPads or laptops requires sinking funds into a school technology upgrade to handle the
increased traffic and to ensure there are sufficient firewalls and monitoring tools. Mercy Burlingame is installing a wireless Internet system this summer in preparation for the changeover to the tablet, which weighs slightly more than 1 pound, Tortorich said. The system is designed so the students log on to it and have limited access to sites that are IPAD, page 8
INSIDE THIS WEEK’S EDITION On the Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Bishops’ “Quest” comment. . 4 Charismatic conference . . . . 6 Rome issues abuse norms . . 9 Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Scholars challenge Boehner on social justice ~ Page 5 ~ May 20, 2011
Kinship ties lead prep team to league sweep ~ Page 7 ~
USF honors immigrant’s Cross of Nails . . . . . . . . . . . 13 risky fight for justice Father Rolheiser . . . . . . . . . 15 ~ Page 10 ~ www.catholic-sf.org
ONE DOLLAR
VOLUME 13
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No. 19