‘ART OF DYING’:
RETIRED PRIESTS:
‘The last act of living well is dying well’
500 gather to honor retired clergy
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MISSIONERS: Mission group hopes to re-evangelize faithful in Asia
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CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO Newspaper of the Archdiocese of San Francisco
SERVING SAN FRANCISCO, MARIN & SAN MATEO COUNTIES
www.catholic-sf.org
NOVEMBER 8, 2013
$1.00 | VOL. 15 NO. 32
East Palo Alto parishioners join hands in housing battle EDISON TAPALLA CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO
With Internet giant Facebook moving its headquarters to the area and the Silicon Valley tech boom pushing up land prices, East Palo Alto is becoming a battleground between real estate investors and local residents struggling to maintain the city’s social and economic diversity. In what is seen as a fight against gentrification, St. Francis of Assisi Parish is playing a key role as a group of parishioners opens dialogue to find common ground between the Peninsula city’s AfricanAmerican and Latino communities. Many African-American property owners and Latino renters have been at odds over the issue of
All Souls’ Day prayers at cemetery
SEE EAST PALO ALTO, PAGE 20
Dominican Sister Maria Catherine Toon is pictured at Holy Cross Cemetery, Colma, Nov. 2 before the All Souls’ Day Mass celebrated by Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone. In the morning before the Mass, a group of Dominican sisters walked silently among the graves praying.
Bishops asked to assess marriage, family life
Mater Dolorosa to build light-filled confessional inside church
CINDY WOODEN CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE
VATICAN CITY – Bishops around the world are being asked to take a realistic look at the situation of families under their care and at how effective pastoral and educational programs have been at promoting church teaching on sexuality, marriage and family life. The preparatory document for the extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the family, which will be held in October 2014, ends with 38 quesPope Francis tions about how church teaching is promoted, how well it is accepted and ways in which modern people and societies challenge the Catholic view of marriage and family. Archbishop Lorenzo Baldisseri, general secretary of the synod, asked bishops to distribute the document SEE SYNOD, PAGE 20
(PHOTO BY EDISON TAPALLA/CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO)
VALERIE SCHMALZ CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO
Mater Dolorosa’s pastor is building a confessional inside the South San Francisco church – restoring the penitential sacrament to the church interior about 30 years after it was removed to a storage room off the church foyer. “This is a very important significant sacrament, a vehicle of God’s mercy and love for us,” said pastor Father Rolando De la Rosa. He hopes the new light-filled confessional room –with opportunities for both private and faceto-face confession– will be ready for the Advent season, which begins Dec. 1. “My focus was to make it available to all penitents, to make available the great mercy and love of God,” Father De la Rosa said, recalling a man in a wheelchair who fortunately was willing to make a face-to-face confession because there was no way for him to receive the sacrament privately.
The existing room is also difficult for elderly and disabled people with canes and walkers to use, he said. The red/green light isn’t clearly visible, so at times confessions have been interrupted by a waiting penitent. In addition, Father De la Rosa said some parishioners have told him: “I don’t even know where the confessional is.” The new confessional will be in the far back corner of the church interior, with a glass roof to let in the natural light filtered through the stained glass windows that line the top of the church wall. A fixed wall between confessor and penitent will include a sliding grille that allows the penitent to choose face-to-face confession while remaining physically separate on the other side. The pastor is particularly delighted with the glass roof “to get the rays of the sun.” “A confessional is a place to have peace, of course SEE CONFESSION, PAGE 20
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