VOCATION: Religious life home run for Millbrae sister
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SENIOR STORIES:
SISTER STORIES:
Student aspires to be foreign correspondent
Week celebrates nuns’ national impact
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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
MARCH 14, 2014
$1.00 | VOL. 16 NO. 7
Bishop Justice leads outdoor Stations of the Cross for peace in East Palo Alto VALERIE SCHMALZ CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO
(PHOTO BY JOSE LUIS AGUIRRE/CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO)
Several hundred parishioners of St. Francis of Assisi walked their neighborhood March 8 praying the Stations of the Cross for an end to the gang violence that is taking the lives of their young people. Eight of the 16 homicides in San Mateo County last year were in East Palo Alto.
Josue Barbosa Zamora died in a drive-by shooting Jan. 13, 300 feet from his front door, the latest young man to die violently in East Palo Alto. “Every day I ask myself if it was worth it. We escaped from Mexico because of the violence and poverty and now we found this,” said Lorena Zamora, who left her husband behind 10 years ago to bring her three children to the U.S. Zamora spoke in Spanish to Catholic San Francisco photographer Jose Luis Aguirre. Lorena Zamora joined other grieving mothers, San Francisco Auxiliary Bishop William J. Justice, community members and parishioners and the priests of St. Francis of Assisi to walk her neighborhood for peace, praying the Stations of the Cross March 8. In 2013, there were 16 homicides in San Mateo County, eight of those in East Palo Alto, a city with a population of less than 30,000 people. Several hundred people, many mothers pushing strollers, youngsters from Saturday catechism and their parents, as well as grandmothers and grandfathers, prayed and sang in a SEE STATIONS, PAGE 20
Parishioner campaigns to include Irish famine in state curriculum CHRISTINA GRAY CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO
If John O’Riordan has his way, the Irish famine of 1845-1852 will one day be integrated into an American ethnic studies program in the California public school curriculum. O’Riordan, a parishioner at St. Dominic Parish in San Francisco, was part of a local delegation of the California Democratic Party’s Irish American Caucus that met with California State Superintendent of Public Instruc-
tion Tom Torlakson to ask the state to create a more comprehensive course on what the Irish call “The Great Hunger.” He says the famine is central to the history of California, the state with the largest Irish population in the United John O’Riordan States. “There are more people in San Francisco who can trace themselves back to the Irish
famine than to the American Revolution,” said O’Riordan, a County Cork native who left Ireland for San Francisco more than 20 years ago. O’Riordan and others leaders in the city’s Irish community are raising money to have a monument to victims of the famine installed in San Francisco in 2016. Boston, Chicago and New York City all have famine monuments. “There were many repercussions of the famine,” said another leader of the San Francisco effort, Roger
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Gargano, a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. He is sure his grandfather, born in 1881, would have experienced some of them. “The full story of the heartbreak of the Irish experience is a lesson that needs to be shared within the school system in California,” O’Riordan said. New York and Massachusetts, both with a large percentage of Irish residents, have Irish famine studies in their public school curriculums. SEE FAMINE, PAGE 20
INDEX On the Street . . . . . . . . .4 National . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Opinion. . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Faith. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Calendar. . . . . . . . . . . .26