May 8, 2015

MURAL:

SHC SCHOLAR:

YEAR OF MERCY:

New artwork adorns Church of the Visitacion

Sacred Heart Cathedral senior wins Gates scholarship

Vatican unveils logo, prayer, details of Holy Year

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CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO Newspaper of the Archdiocese of San Francisco

www.catholic-sf.org

MAY 8, 2015

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Speakers: Canonizing Serra is call to new evangelization

Pope defends Serra, prays for mission zeal in Americas CINDY WOODEN

CINDY WOODEN

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

VATICAN CITY – People seem to enjoy finding the shortcomings of candidates for sainthood like Blessed Junipero Serra, but they should ask themselves if they would have his generosity and courage to leave everything behind to care for the poor and bring them the Gospel, Pope Francis said.

Visiting the Pontifical North American College, the U.S. seminary in Rome, Pope Francis insisted Blessed Serra fits into a host of saints who shaped the history and culture of the Americas, particularly by spreading Christianity, caring for the poor and defending the oppressed.

The pope’s Mass May 2 with 250 seminarians from more than 100 U.S. dioceses, as well as Australia and Canada, came at the end of a symposium on Blessed Serra organized by the seminary, the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Knights of Columbus.

Although the college is on the Janiculum Hill overlooking the Vatican,

ROME – Defining Blessed Junipero Serra as a “working-class missionary,” Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez said the 18th-century Franciscan deserves to be made a saint and to have his record as a defender of native peoples made known.

Pope Francis’ announcement that he will canonize Blessed Serra in September “has opened old wounds and revived bitter memories about the treatment of Native Americans during the colonial and missionary period of America’s history,” the archbishop said.

Speaking May 2 at Rome’s Pontifical North American College, Archbishop Gomez said the legacy of Blessed Serra, who founded nine California missions, has been “distorted” by “anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic propaganda.”

“Sometimes it seems like scholars and activists have made Father Serra a symbol for everything they believe was wrong with the mission era,” he said, and it prevents people from appreciating “America’s religious beginnings.”

(CNS PHOTO/PAUL HARING)

Pope Francis passes an image of Blessed Junipero Serra as he leaves after celebrating Mass at the Pontifical North American College in Rome May 2.

SEE SERRA, PAGE 14

SEE SPEAKERS, PAGE 14

Catholics’ clash over policy in Romero’s time recalled CHAZ MUTH CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

(CNS PHOTO/ULISES RODRIGUEZ, REUTERS)

A flag with an image of the late Archbishop Oscar Romero is seen during a march prior to the 33rd anniversary of his assassination in San Salvador March 16.

WASHINGTON – The upcoming beatification of Archbishop Oscar Romero has inspired many U.S. Catholics to book flights to El Salvador for the May 23 ceremony in San Salvador.

The long hoped-for event has also reminded many that Catholics and other religious groups implored the U.S. government to change its policy

toward the Salvadoran government before and after Archbishop Romero was gunned down during a March 1980 Mass in a hospital chapel in San Salvador.

Throughout the 1970s, the U.S. government paid close attention to political upheavals in Central America. Among the factors driving policy decisions were fears that the Soviet Union would gain influence by propping up communist regimes, as it had in Nicaragua after the Sandini-

sta revolution. Populist movements in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador were sources of concern, said Tom Quigley, former foreign policy adviser on Latin America and the Caribbean to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

It was a Cold War-driven policy, Quigley told Catholic News Service.

Congressional and administration analysts feared the Central American SEE ROMERO, PAGE 11

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CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO | MAY 8, 2015

New Marian mural adorns Church of the Visitacion San Francisco artist Stefan Salinas created new devotional artwork to adorn the facade of Church of the Visitacion in the city’s Visitacion Valley neighborhood.

With manufacturing and construction by Tile Mural Creative Arts, Jesus Lara and Miguel Campos, “The Mural of the Visitation” was ceremonially blessed April 26 after the 5 p.m. Vietnamese-language Mass. Salinas shared these images and a description of the project with Catholic San Francisco. The pastor of the parish is Father Thuan V. Hoang.

At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”

LUKE 1:39-45: MARY VISITS ELIZABETH

Here we have a printed tile mural proposal to accompany a very modern church structure. What ceramic and pottery adornments outside church buildings have we to look to for inspiration? Very striking examples can be found in Italy, and date from the 15th century: the glazed terra cotta works of Luca della Robbia. With the gentle, classically posed figures and compositions, glazed in palettes usually limited to two to five colors, the tableaus sit well with tradition and yet are bold and easy to read from a distance. I felt that referencing clayware for porcelain tile work was apropo. Plus, employing the European technique of trompe de l’oeil and having the pop art movement of the 1960s somewhere in my mind (since the church that stands today was erected in the 1950s, with windows made within the next few decades) – it all came together.

And now for the rest of the elements: God the Father is represented by the Eye of God at the upper left corner, shining down upon Mary. The sun is

LIVING TRUSTS WILLS

(PHOTOS COURTESY STEFAN SALINAS)

A newly installed Marian tile mural was ceremonially blessed at Church of the Visitacion May 26. Below, a worker is pictured during the installation.

backing the triangle, as there are many references to Christ, God and the Holy Spirit as being sun-like. To the right is the starry sky, with the Star of Bethlehem shining brightly.

Across the top, starting from the corner of the Eye of God (Have you heard the saying “when you were just a twinkle in your father’s eye”?) are seven spheres = the seven days of creation. Each is divided into more sections, and the sphere’s increase in size, alluding to a human embryo

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developing, and traveling through the fallopian tube.

White roses = Mary’s purity.

Easter lilies: In early Christian art, the Angel Gabriel offers pure white lilies to the Virgin Mary, and this symbolizes that she will be the mother of Jesus. Purity; hope; life; Easter.

Daffodils = Eternal life; the resurrection.

Egg-and-dart motif in the frame: It is a pattern that has been in use from ancient Greek times, through the

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Renaissance and to the present day. It is a classical design celebrating life and death; the life cycle.

The tiles are made of very durable porcelain, kiln-fired at 1,800 degrees, able to withstand the elements for decades to come, and were manufactured

by Tile Mural Creative Arts, out of Calabasas. They make the tiles featured in the Monastery Icons catalog. Amid the blood, sweat and tears, working on this image has been a true blessing.

– STEFAN SALINAS

CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone Publisher Rick DelVecchio Editor/General Manager EDITORIAL Valerie Schmalz, assistant editor Tom Burke, On the Street/Calendar Christina Gray, reporter

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ARCHDIOCESE 3

CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO | MAY 8, 2015

NEED TO KNOW LIFE OF ST. FAUSTINA: A onewoman play about the life of St. Faustina, who lived with special attention to God’s mercy, will take place May 24 at Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Church, Nancy Scimone 600 El Camino plays St. FausReal, Millbrae, at tina 2 p.m. Singer and actress Nancy Scimone wrote the script she performs from diaries of the saint she has read. Faustina “teaches us that God’s abundant grace, forgiveness and mercy are available to each of us,” Scivone said in material about the show. “This is truly a story of God’s Mercy and forgiveness.” St. Faustina, born Helen Kowalska, was a Polish nun and mystic who died in 1938 at the age of 33 and was canonized by Pope John Paul II in April 2000. She lived much of her life in the obscurity of the convent both in Poland. Obeying her confessor’s directives she kept a diary of her daily convent life as well as the extraordinary graces she experienced. Her diary “Divine Mercy in My Soul” has been published in several languages. She is the saint associated with Divine Mercy Sunday which the church celebrates on the Sunday after Easter. Admission is free. Freewill offerings accepted.

Contact music@nancyscimone. com, www.SaintFaustinaDrama.net, (571) 232-1873 CONTEMPLATIVE ROSARY: Begin the Pentecost novena on the traditional Ascension Thursday with the St. Catherine of Siena Parish choirs and “A Contemplative Rosary: The Glorious Mysteries,” composed by Bob Hurd. The rosary combines Scripture readings for each mystery and icons with the simply chanted prayers of the rosary. Please join the St. Catherine community for this hour of prayer for the coming of the Holy Spirit. May 14, 7 p.m., St. Catherine of Siena Church, 1130 Bayswater Ave., Burlingame.

DAY OF PRAYER FOR MARINERS: The National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for Mariners and People of the Sea will be celebrated May 22, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced.

Catholic witness: Advocacy Day in Sacramento CHRISTINA GRAY CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO

Delegates from the Archdiocese of San Francisco joined other Catholic advocates from around the state in Sacramento Apr. 28 to talk to legislators and their staffs about how Catholic voters view some of the bills in session.

Catholic Advocacy Day, an annual event at the state Capitol sponsored by the California Catholic Conference, began with a prayer service in the basement hall of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament.

Carolina Parrales, Lorena Melgarejo and Kelley Cutler crowded into offices to advocate for nearly a halfdozen bills that support families and low-income workers, and to oppose assisted suicide and a bill that would

require pregnancy centers to offer referrals for abortion. Parrales and Melgarejo work in the archdiocese’s Office of Public Policy and Social Concerns, and Cutler is a longtime advocate for the homeless and a parishioner of St. Dominic in San Francisco.

“We had some really good discussions,” Cutler told Catholic San Francisco, even if they weren’t able to entirely sway lawmakers on all issues.

“A huge thing that they understood was when we talked about how poverty, housing and homelessness are connected to so many of these bills.”

The bills span several categories of concern to Catholics, including life and family, promotion of human dignity, education, restorative justice, economic justice and naturalization program funding.

Among the bills are SB 128, which

would legalize physician-assisted suicide, and AB 775, the Reproductive FACT Act, which would force certain licensed pregnancy medical centers to notify potential clients that they have access to free or low-cost public programs for family planning, including abortion services.

Other bills the delegates spoke to legislators about are SB 23, which calls for the repeal of the Maximum Family Grant rule which denies parents additional CalWorks benefits upon the arrival of another child.

California bishops call the rule a “misguided effort to limit family size of those receiving assistance.”

The California Catholic Conference has detailed information on all 10 bills and their status on its website www.cacatholic/take-action/catholicadvocacy-day.

Sacred Heart Cathedral senior wins Gates scholarship CHRISTINA GRAY CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO

A Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory senior who grew up in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district is one of 1,000 high school scholars nationwide selected as a 2015 Gates Millennium Scholar, the Precious Listana school announced May 1.

Class of 2015 Valedictorian Precious Listana, 18, was chosen from an application pool of 57,000 high school seniors nationwide who met scholastic and community service requirements and will be enrolled at an accredited college or university this fall as full-time students. Listana will receive a grant to fund her tuition to the University of California at Berkeley which she enters this fall as an applied mathematics major. She will also be eligible to receive scholarship funds for postgraduate study.

The Gates Millennium Scholars Program, funded by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was created to provide an opportunity for outstanding African

American, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian American/Pacific Islander or Hispanic American students to reach their highest potential by removing financial barriers to college education.

Scholars were selected based on nine essays, SAT or ACT test scores, high school transcripts, two letters of recommendation and involvement in their communities. As youth commissioner and vice president of the Keystone Club of the Tenderloin Boys and Girls Club, Listana has shown leadership in making recommendations to the city on present and future youth policies.

SHC Principal Gary Cannon said the Gates Foundation is making a wise investment in Listana and her future.

“Precious has internalized and models SHC’s mission as a serviceoriented leader with a commitment to living the Gospel,” he said. “She is passionate about taking her gifts and using them for the good of others.”

Listana’s family emigrated from the Philippines in the mid-1980s fleeing Marcos-era martial law. Her family which includes three siblings, settled in the Tenderloin and belong to St. Boniface Parish.

After attending De Marillac Academy next to St. Boniface, she entered SHC as a member of the Piro Scholar Program which aims to end the cycle of poverty by providing a Lasallian and Vincentian education to students in need.

“Growing up in the Tenderloin, you see the drugs, the prostitution, all of those vices every day,” said Listana.

“Life isn’t fair, but you have to choose to take advantage of the opportunities in front of you. This is the one message I want to share with other underprivileged youth: There are people out there who believe in you … you just have to believe in yourself.”

This summer, Listana will travel to India to spend eight weeks as an intern researching agriculture and food security.

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CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO | MAY 8, 2015

Baltimore prays for peace, progress in addressing systemic injustices ERIK ZYGMONT CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

BALTIMORE – Prayer provides the strength and patience needed to love neighbors and will help Baltimoreans as they address the injustices that led to a night of rioting and looting, Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore said.

“Given my occupation, I think it’s important to start every occasion this way,” Archbishop Lori said in response to a reporter’s question May 3, which was designated by Maryland Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. as a day of prayer and peace for Baltimore’s healing.

The calls for prayer followed hours of rioting and looting the night of April 27-28 that rocked West Baltimore. The violence came in response to the death of Freddie Gray, who died April 19, a week after he was seriously injured while in police custody.

Joined by Hogan, his wife, Yumi, parishioners and a dozen news crews, Archbishop Lori celebrated the day with a special Mass at St. Peter Claver Parish, located in Baltimore’s SandtownWinchester neighborhood, where Gray lived, and which was the center of the violence.

Residents and parishioners were hopeful that change was in motion.

“This is a beginning process,” said parishioner Jamie Johnson. “We all want the same thing – peace. We want justice, peace and unity in the city.”

Darlene Allen is a resident of East Baltimore, but became a parishioner of St. Peter Claver because,

(CNS PHOTO/KAREN OSBORNE, CATHOLIC REVIEW)

Christy Lewis and a neighborhood youth sweep broken glass and debris outside a looted store in West Baltimore April 28.

“the moment I stepped inside the church, I knew I belonged because of the sense of community.”

“It was extremely hard to watch (the violence) on the news, because that is not the community I understand,” she said. “This was more than an unfortunate death. The youth feel that nobody’s listening to them. ... I pray that things are on the upswing.”

Auxiliary Bishop Denis J. Madden celebrated Mass at St. Gregory the Great Parish, located near where Gray was initially arrested. At 5:15 p.m. Mass May 2 at St. John the Evangelist Parish in Severna Park south of the city, Father Marc Lanoue, associate pastor, connected the fear referenced in Acts 9:26-31, the first reading of the day, to the situation.

“We can’t always be in control, so we become fearful,” Father Lanoue said. The accountability for which the people of Baltimore are asking “is an accountability we must demand of ourselves,” he said.

At Our Lady of Hope Parish in suburban Dundalk, parishioners sang the “Prayer of St. Francis,” the words of which took on special meaning in the wake of Gray’s death and the subsequent riots: In his homily, Father T. Austin Murphy Jr., pastor, said he noticed that some are asking the question, “What would Jesus do?” The question is flawed, he said, because Jesus is very much alive today. A better question, he said, is, “What is Jesus doing?”

USCCB president calls same-sex marriage great social experiment NATE MADDEN CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON – The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called same-sex marriage “the greatest social experiment of our time” and said that “children do not need experiments,” but rather the love of a mother and father at the third annual March for Marriage rally supporting traditional marriage on Capitol Hill.

Addressing the march sponsored by the National Organization for Marriage, Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, described traditional marriage between one man and one woman as a “beautiful truth,” saying its protection is necessary to “protect the children.”

When asked afterward to elaborate on his statement, Archbishop Kurtz told Catholic News Service that “basically, every child comes into the world through a mother and a father. That child not only deserves to know, but to be loved by the mother and father. Children flourish when they are able to be loved and raised by their mothers and fathers.”

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A pre-march rally began with a prayer from Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, chairman of the bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, in which he thanked God for “the diversity” of the group present and asked for the protection of religious freedom in the United States.

When asked about the religious liberty language in his prayer, Archbishop Lori told CNS that “the word marriage appears hundreds of thousands of time in federal, state and local laws.”

“If that’s completely redefined across the board, it represents a sea change. And not only our preaching and our worship, but also our social services, our education, all the things we do for the common good rest on the understanding that marriage is between one man and one woman and that it’s a lot to do with bringing children in the world and their well-being,” he said.

“So (a marriage re-definition) will raise a lot of religious liberty questions. It raises the question of whether or not churches and individuals who sincerely believe this might not be penalized or denied

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contracts or the ability to serve the common good,” the archbishop explained.

The march came three days before the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments April 28 in four cases weighing whether states that bar same-sex marriage must recognize such unions that are legal in other states.

Brian Brown, National Organization for Marriage president, said planners wanted to bring a diverse group of people together for the event to highlight to the Supreme Court “that people have embraced the redefinition of marriage is simply untrue.”

“Marriage is based upon the fundamental, biological reality of husband and wife, mother and father, and that the court has no authority to redefine that truth,” Brown said.

Stressing the march’s theme of religious liberty, Jennifer Marshall, vice president for the Institute for Family, Community and Opportunity at the Heritage Foundation, said standing for traditional marriage often comes with a cost. She cited recent incidents in which individuals have lost jobs and business because of their public expression of traditional marriage.

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CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO | MAY 8, 2015

Couple’s ancestors ministered to lepers, hanged for witchcraft MARY SOLBERG CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

OIL CITY, Pa. -- The roots of Jerry Nurss’ family tree are tangled up in the infamous Salem witch trials. But his wife, Pat, shares her bloodline with a saint.

The Oil City, Pennsylvania, couple -- who will celebrate their 55th wedding anniversary in August -- quip that their disparate backgrounds have kept them together all these years.

“If you go back a couple of centuries or more, people definitely wouldn’t talk about the witch connection, but today when we mention it to anyone, we make a joke out of it,” says Jerry, whose seventh great-grandmother, Rebecca Nurse (original spelling), was hanged for witchcraft on July 19, 1691.

“I’m protecting him,” teases Pat, whose second cousin is St. Damien of Molokai, the Flemishborn priest who ministered to lepers in Hawaii in the late 19th century.

The Nurss’ parish priest, Father Justin Pino, pastor of St. Joseph Church in Oil City, finds their family backgrounds historically interesting.

“In Salem, they had to fight for justice. St. Damien had to fight for dignity for lepers. The connections are fascinating,” Father Pino says.

Jerry Nurss learned about his seventh greatgrandmother’s hanging through genealogical research done in England in the 1950s.

According to historical reports, Rebecca Nurse was a 71-year-old widowed mother of eight who was falsely accused for instigating the odd behavior of several young girls in Salem Village, now Danvers, Mass. The town doctor bowed to Puritanical fear, concluding that the girls’ “horrid fits” were a direct result of witchcraft.

Rebecca Nurse was dragged from her bed chamber and put on trial. Forty neighbors signed a petition recommending she be released; her children fought for her life. Initially, a jury found Rebecca innocent, but then it reversed its decision after her accusers began to experience “terrifying torments.”

Rebecca Nurse was hanged on a summer day in 1691. Her children secretly buried her in an unmarked grave, but 200 years later, her progeny erected a memorial in the family graveyard, now known as the Rebecca Nurse Homestead.

Jerry and Pat Nurss, both in their 70s, traveled to Salem in 1993 to see the homestead and mark the 300th anniversary of the end of the Salem witch trials.

“I don’t believe she was a witch any more than I believe I am,” Jerry says. “It’s not an honor

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Pat and Jerry Nurss of Oil City, Pa., display some of the reams of documents and photographs about their family lineage April 8, which includes a saint and a seventh great-grandmother hanged for witchcraft. that she was hanged, but I still feel honored that I am part of her family; it’s my bloodline.”

Pat Nurss also is proud of her family heritage.

But hers isn’t as difficult or controversial as her husband’s.

According to Pat, her grandfather’s first

cousin was Joseph DeVeuster, known today as St. Damien of Molokai. He was canonized in Rome Oct. 11, 2009. Pat Nurss is St. Damien’s second cousin.

“I feel very honored. He must have been a really kind-hearted person to live his life helping other people,” Pat says.

Joseph DeVeuster was born Jan. 3, 1840, in the hamlet of Tremeloo, Belgium. When his older brother came down with typhus and could not leave for mission work in Hawaii, the young Joseph offered to go instead. He reached Honolulu in March 1864 and two months later was ordained a priest -- taking the name Damien -- with the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

Eventually, Father Damien developed a keen interest in helping those with Hansen’s disease, or leprosy, at a settlement at Kalawao on the island of Molokai in Hawaii. The peninsula, surrounded by rough seas and 2,000-foot cliffs, had become an ideal place for isolating people with leprosy.

Father Damien offered hope to lepers, helping them build houses, plant trees and construct a water system, according to family archives. He pushed the Hawaiian government and his church for supplies and resources, attracting worldwide attention.

“I feel so blessed to be related to St. Damien,” Pat Nurss says, looking at her husband. “It’s so amazing with his great-grandmother accused of witchcraft and my cousin a saint.

6 NATIONAL

CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO | MAY 8, 2015

WISCONSIN PROGRAMS HELP LATINO FAMILIES PUT FAITH INTO ACTION

GREEN BAY, Wisconsin– Juanita Fiscal and her husband, Julio Zuniga, enrolled in the “Discipulos de Cristo” (Disciples of Christ) lay formation program, sponsored by the Diocese of Green Bay, three years ago. As members of St. Willebrord Parish, they wanted to learn more about their faith.

“We were lacking so much knowledge about our Catholic faith, especially about the Mass,” Fiscal told The Compass, newspaper of the Diocese of Green Bay. “We are here almost every Sunday, and not knowing exactly what was happening or the meaning of certain things. That was embarrassing.”

As they prepared for graduation from the program in early May, along with 16 other Latino Catholics from around the diocese, Fiscal said the program not only taught them about the Mass, it inspired them to start a youth program with other parents at St. Willebrord. The “Amigos de Jesus” (Friends of Jesus) group helps children learn about the Mass and participate in liturgical roles. As part of the Discipulos de Cristo program, young participants are asked to return to their parishes and find a way to put their faith into practice.

“We noticed that we needed some type of program that would bring those kids who made their first Communion” back to church by getting them involved in Sunday liturgies, Fiscal said.

MERTON DOCUMENTARY CELEBRATES CENTENNIAL OF MONK’S BIRTH

WASHINGTON – Morgan Atkinson’s new documentary on Thomas Merton, the famed Trappist monk from the Cistercian abbey in Gethsemani, Kentucky, was “40 years in the making,” he joked.

Actually, it was closer to two, but it was Atkinson’s own pilgrimage to Gethsemani 40 years ago Thomas Merton that not only broadened his exposure to Merton, but led him to become a Catholic himself.

Atkinson long had dreams of being a Hollywood filmmaker. Living in his native Louisville, Kentucky, though, wasn’t going to cut it. “If I want to make films, I should go to Los Angeles,” he recalls thinking. “After a year, I was not exactly tearing things up.” So he headed back home. “To say I was at loose ends was probably an understatement,” he told Catholic

(CNS PHOTO/KELLY MESCHER COLLINS, DIOCESE OF DES MOINES)

Iowa deacons revive farm blessings Deacon Eric Bertrand of Warren County, Iowa, and Deacon Tom Hunkele of Des Moines bless hogs April 10. The Iowa deacons are reviving the ancient Catholic tradition of Ember days. Deacon Bertrand was inspired to reintroduce the prayer and fasting traditions of Ember days while reading Pope Francis’ 2013 apostolic exhortation, “Evangelii Gaudium” (“The Joy of the Gospel”). The tradition focuses on giving thanks while remembering our dependence on God.

News Service in a telephone interview from Louisville. “I was aware of Merton growing up, but I wasn’t thinking about him, at least consciously. For some reason, I thought it would be interesting to read his book, ‘The Seven Storey Mountain.’ I read it. A lot of it was off-putting to me, frankly, but there was something about the man that was interesting to me.”

From there, “I went to the abbey of Gethsemani, which is about 60 miles from Louisville. It had a profound impact on me. From that, I became a Catholic, and have been practicing for the last 40 years.”

‘ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL’ WINS SIGNIS AWARD AT FILMFEST DC

WASHINGTON – A new movie, “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl,” was given the Signis Award at the conclusion of Filmfest DC, the annual independent film festival in the District of Columbia. Signis, the official world Catholic association for communica-

tion, also gave special commendation to two foreign films: Iran’s “Today” and New Zealand’s “The Dark Horse.”

“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl,” written and directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, is the story of a high school misfit, Greg, who with his only friend, Earl, spends his time creating parody remakes of classic movies. Greg’s mother pushes him to befriend a selfisolated classmate, Rachel, who is diagnosed with leukemia. When it turns out that they actually get to like one another, the trio’s interactions become transformative for each of them. Karel Deburchgrave, a Belgian member of the Signis international jury, declared the film “exceptionally well written and directed, with top performances by a young cast.” He called it “both a work of art and a warm affirmation of human possibility.”

SUPREME COURT TAKES CLOSE, CONTESTED LOOK AT LETHAL INJECTION DRUG WASHINGTON – Exactly one year

after a botched execution in Oklahoma, the Supreme Court took a close look at the effectiveness of a specific drug used in the state’s lethal injections to determine whether it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

The April 29 oral arguments were at times bogged down by medical details and at other times were argumentative about the drug in question and the death penalty in general. The case, Glossip v. Gross, was presented by lawyers for three Oklahoma death-row inmates claiming the drug midazolam, the first drug administered in the state’s three-part lethal injection process, does not effectively put inmates into a coma-like state that prevents them from feeling pain.

It was the first time the justices reexamined lethal injections since 2008, when they ruled in Baze v. Rees that a three-drug protocol used in Kentucky executions did not violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

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CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO | MAY 8, 2015

ARM YOURSELVES WITH GOSPEL, POPE TELLS SWISS GUARD SOLDIERS

Vatican unveils logo, prayer, details of Holy Year of Mercy

VATICAN CITY – Wearing armor and carrying medieval-era weaponry – halberds and swords – is not enough. Pope Francis told Swiss Guards that they should always be armed with a pocket-edition of the Gospel and a rosary. In addition to serving and protecting the pope, a Swiss Guard “is a Christian with genuine faith,” he told members of the corps May 4.

Living that faith means receiving the sacraments by attending Mass regularly, going to confession frequently, but also reading the Gospel daily, he said. “The thing I say to everyone, I’ll also say to you: always have on hand a small Gospel to read as soon as you have a quiet moment.”

He also told them to pray the rosary, especially when they are serving as honor guards and must stand immobile and at attention for hours.

The pope made his remarks during a private audience with members of the Swiss Guard, including new recruits, who will be sworn in May 6.

maternal solicitude” is to send out “missionaries of mercy” – that is, specially selected priests who have been granted “the VATICAN CITY – The Holy authority to pardon even those Year of Mercy will be an opporsins reserved to the Holy See,” tunity to encourage Christians to the pope wrote in “Misericordiae meet people’s “real needs” with Vultus,” (“The Face of Mercy”), concrete assistance, to experithe document officially proclaimence a “true pilgrimage” on ing the Holy Year. foot, and to send “missionaries Archbishop Fisichella said the of mercy” throughout the world priests will be chosen on the basis to forgive even the most serious of their ability to preach well, of sins, said Archbishop Rino especially on the theme of mercy, Fisichella. and be “good confessors,” meanThe yearlong extraordinary ing they are able to express God’s jubilee also will include several love and do not make the confesindividual jubilee days, such as sional, as Pope Francis says, like for the Roman Curia, catechists, “a torture chamber.” teenagers and prisoners, said The priests will also have to the president of the Pontifi“be patient” and have “an undercal Council for Promoting New standing of human fragility,” the Evangelization, the office orga(CNS/COURTESY OF PONTIFICAL COUNCIL archbishop said. nizing events for the Holy Year of FOR PROMOTING NEW EVANGELIZATION) Bishops can recommend to the Mercy.

This is the logo for the Holy Year council priests from their own During a news conference at of Mercy, which opens Dec. 8 and dioceses to serve as missionarthe Vatican May 5, Archbishop runs until Nov. 20, 2016. ies of mercy, he said, and priests Fisichella unveiled the official themselves can submit their request to serve, he prayer, logo, calendar of events and other details said. of the special Holy Year, which will be celebrated When a priest volunteers, however, the counfrom Dec. 8, 2015, until Nov. 20, 2016. cil will confer with his bishop to make sure he The motto, “Merciful Like the Father,” he said, would be “suitable for this ministry” and has the “serves as an invitation to follow the merciful bishop’s approval to serve temporarily as a misexample of the Father who asks us not to judge sionary of mercy, he said. or condemn but to forgive and to give love and The archbishop emphasized the importance of forgiveness without measure.” living the Holy Year as “a true pilgrimage” with Pope Francis announced in March his intention the proper elements of prayer and sacrifice. to proclaim a holy year as a way for the church to “We will ask pilgrims to make a journey on foot, “make more evident its mission to be a witness of preparing themselves to pass through the Holy mercy.”

Door in a spirit of faith and devotion,” he said.

One way the pope wants to show “the church’s CAROL GLATZ

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

ER REGIST !

TODAY

POPE: ‘PROBLEMS ARE OVERCOME WITH SOLIDARITY’

VATICAN CITY – Solidarity and Christian hope are key during difficult times, said Pope Francis to a group of pilgrims from a southern Italian region struggling with high unemployment and poor social services. Several hundred pilgrims from the Diocese of Isernia-Venafro paid the pope a return visit at the Vatican May 2, after his pastoral visit there July 5 last year.

In his message to the pilgrims, the pope noted that high unemployment and inadequate social services for families, the elderly, and people with illness and disability, continue to afflict the region.

A “general mobilization” at all levels of society, both public and private, is necessary to remedy this “worrying situation,” he said. “Concrete steps” in job creation “cannot be postponed,” especially for young people, he added. Honest work gives people dignity and “the possibility to realize oneself,” he continued.

However, times of difficulty and failure are moments for “Christian hope, founded on the resurrected Christ, and accompanied by a large charitable effort toward those most in need,” he said. “Problems are overcome with solidarity,” he repeated twice to applause, directing his message specifically to young people.

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CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO | MAY 8, 2015

FRIDAY, MAY 8 DIVORCE SUPPORT: Healing the Wounds, a divorced and separated Catholics support group, second Friday of the month, Tarantino Hall, St. Hilary Parish, Tiburon, 6:30-8 p.m., professional childcare available at $10 per child. Karen Beale (415) 250-2597 Amy Nelis, (916) 212-6120; Father Roger Gustafson, (415) 435-1122.

SATURDAY, MAY 9 PORZIUNCOLA ROSARY: Knights of St. Francis Holy Rosary Sodality meets Saturdays for the rosary at 2:30 p.m. in the Porziuncola Nuova, Vallejo Street at Columbus Avenue, San Francisco.

Chaplet of Divine Mercy is prayed at 3 p.m. All are welcome; www.knightsofsaintfrancis.com.

‘WHALE OF A SALE’: St. Sebastian Church, Sir Francis Drake Boulevard at Bon Air Road, Greenbrae, 9 a.m.-2 p.m., with vendors of all kinds; vendor spaces available, $35, with room for one 8 foot table and you bring your own table. whalesale94904@gmail. com; (415) 461-0704.

MEMORIAL MASS: The life of Blessed Alvaro del Portillo, late prelate of Opus Dei, will be commemorated May 9 with Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral, Gough Street at Geary Boulevard, San Francisco, 11 a.m. Blessed Alvaro del Portillo was beatified on Sept. 27, 2014. All are invited. Msgr. James Kelly of Opus Dei’s Menlough Study Center can be reached at (650) 327-1675.

AUDITIONS: Auditions for the San

SATURDAY, MAY 9 MEMORIAL MASS: The life of Blessed Alvaro del Portillo, late prelate of Opus Dei, will be commemorated May 9 with Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral, Gough Blessed Alvaro Street at Geary del Portillo Boulevard, San Francisco, 11 a.m. Blessed Alvaro del Portillo was beatified on Sept.

27, 2014. All are invited. Msgr.

James Kelly of Opus Dei’s Menlough Study Center can be reached at (650) 327-1675.

MONDAY, MAY 11 HOLY LAND: A meeting regarding the construction of a conference and multi-media center being built near Jerusalem in memory of Blessed Alvaro del Portillo, late prelate of Opus Dei, 7 p.m., San Francisco Airport Marriott Hotel. RSVP saxumsanfrancisco@yahoo. com, (415) 481-0592.

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The San Francisco Boys Chorus holds weekly rehearsals in San Francisco, the East Bay and Marin during the school year and serves at Oakland’s Cathedral of Christ the Light. Visit www.sfbc.org/ auditions; (415) 861-7464.

THURSDAY, MAY 14 CONTEMPLATIVE ROSARY: The Glorious Mysteries, St. Catherine of Siena Church, 1310 Bayswater Ave. at El Camino Real, Burlingame, 7 p.m. Pray with us Bob Hurd’s setting of the Glorious Mysteries to begin the Pentecost Novena on the traditional Ascension Thursday led by our parish music ministry; (650) 766-0364; music@stcsiena.org.

PRO-LIFE: San Mateo Pro Life meets second Thursday of the month except in December; 7:30 p.m.; St. Gregory’s Worner Center, 138 28th Ave. at Hacienda, San Mateo. New members welcome. Jessica, (650) 572-1468; themunns@yahoo.com.

SATURDAY, MAY 16 SOLEMN HIGH MASS: Corpus Christi Monastery, 215 Oak Grove Ave., Menlo Park, 9:30 a.m., Dominican Father Ambrose Sigman, principal celebrant.

Liturgy is followed by presentations from Dominican friars, nuns and laity about Dominican life as well as a reception. The morning commemorates the Year of Consecrated Life. Founded by St. Dominic

800 years ago, the Order of Friars Preachers was commissioned to contemplate God and share with others the fruit of that contemplation, preaching the Gospel for the salvation of souls. Today, the sons and daughters of St. Dominic continue to embrace and live out that charism as religious friars and nuns, sisters and laity.

For more information, please contact Dominican Sister Joseph Marie, DominicanNuns@nunsmenlo.org; (650) 3221801. The Mass will be according to the Dominican rite, a form of the extraordinary form unique to the Dominican Order.

HANDICAPABLES MASS: The first 50 years of this good work continues to be celebrated throughout 2015 with monthly Mass and lunch at noon in lower halls of St. Mary’s Cathedral, Gough Street at Geary Boulevard, San Francisco, Gough Street entrance. All disabled people and their caregivers are invited. Volunteers are always welcome to assist in this cherished tradition. Joanne Borodin, (415) 239-4865.

DAY AT THE RACES: Fundraiser at Golden Gate Fields benefiting Dominican Sisters Vision of Hope inner-city elementary schools. Racing starts 11:45 a.m. Deadline to purchase tickets is May 4. (510) 533-5768 or register online at www.visionofhope.org.

FAMILY PICNIC: Sponsored by SFCatholics.org, Sue Bierman Park next to Justin Herman Plaza, San Francisco, 11 a.m. Bring your own picnic foods and beverages as well as chairs and blankets.

The day is in support of the ministry of San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone. Donations welcome at www. gofundme.com/archbishop. For complete details on the event visit www.SFCatholics.org; email SFCatholics@gmail.com.

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CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO | MAY 8, 2015

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FROM THE FRONT 11

CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO | MAY 8, 2015

ROMERO: Catholics’ clash over policy in slain archbishop’s time recalled FROM PAGE 1

countries would go the way of Cuba as it all but became a Soviet satellite following its 1953-59 revolution, he said, and the Soviets would gain a foothold in the Americas.

The administrations of President Jimmy Carter and later President Ronald Reagan supported military aid for the Salvadoran government to fend off insurgencies under the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, an umbrella organization of five guerrilla groups.

While he had previously been thought of as a supporter of El Salvador’s ruling class, when thenAuxiliary Bishop Romero became archbishop of San Salvador in 1977, he emerged as a champion for the poor and an uncompromising critic of a government he said legitimized terror and assassinations.

While the new archbishop had no affection for the rebels, he strongly opposed North American military intervention or aid to a government he saw as oppressive.

“Many U.S. Catholics cited Romero in arguing for a change” in U.S. policy, said Theresa Keeley, a historian of foreign relations and religion and a visiting assistant professor at Georgetown University.

First the Carter administration and then the Reagan administration in the 1980s “characterized the Salvadoran government as centrist and in need of U.S. aid to withstand attacks from both the right and left,” Keeley told CNS. Archbishop Romero used his pulpit to denounce actions of the government including its use of death squads and other violence and military occupation of churches, said Julian Filochowski, chairman of the Archbishop Romero Trust in London.

U.S. bishops and their policy staff

(CNS PHOTO/OCTAVIO DURAN)

A large canvas depicting Archbishop Oscar Romero hangs on the facade of the National Theater in San Salvador, El Salvador, March 24, 2014. A small copy of this painting was given to Pope Francis by the president of El Salvador. listened to Archbishop Romero and began to lobby their own government to stop sending military aid to El Salvador, Keeley said.

Then-Archbishop Joseph Bernardin, who was president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, issued a major statement in July 1977 on persecution of the church in Central America. That was followed by congressional testimony on behalf of the church that same month, focusing mainly on the threats against the Jesuit community in El Salvador, following the murder of Jesuit Father Rutilio Grande, Quigley said.

“No one was in any doubt, least of all those in the State Department or the White House, that the official (U.S. bishops’) position was highly critical of much of U.S. policy toward the region and was especially op-

posed to the provision of military aid to any parties in conflict there,” he said.

“Despite requests from religious groups that Carter end military aid to El Salvador as Archbishop Romero implored, the Carter administration continued with its request for Congress (for) $5.7 million for military aid to El Salvador,” Keeley said. “In fact, the Foreign Operations Subcommittee approved the administration’s request the day after Romero’s murder.”

Though the U.S. bishops were inspired by Archbishop Romero during his three-year tenure as archbishop of San Salvador, they were incensed by his assassination and it galvanized them to press their country’s leaders even harder to change course on Salvadoran policy, Quigley said.

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Among U.S. critics of American policy, the bishops led the field.

“Local, national and international radio and television units interviewed (U.S. Catholic leaders) on what seemed at the time an almost routine basis,” Quigley said. “In 1980 and 1981 alone, (the U.S. bishops) issued no fewer than 14 official statements or letters expressing opposition to military aid.”

The Salvadoran civil war (19791992) brought more bloodshed to El Salvador, especially after Archbishop Romero’s murder. In December 1980, four churchwomen – Maryknoll Sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, and lay missioner Jean Donovan – were raped and murdered outside San Salvador.

“It was really the murders of the churchwomen... that galvanized a larger number of U.S. Catholics” to begin protesting support for the Salvadoran government, Keeley said. A major guerrilla offensive in January 1981”did not see the kind of spike in activity as these murders did.”

The war also took a toll against non-combatants, including the Nov. 16, 1989, murder of six Jesuits and two women at Central American University in San Salvador.

“The U.S. government, in my recollection, had little to say about the several murders of religious in the region except for those who were U.S. citizens,” Quigley said.

“The church, however, was active in pressing the human rights and religious freedom issues throughout the region.”

Despite reports of the savage murders of men, women and children in El Salvador, the U.S. continued to provide the Salvadoran government with weapons, money and political support into the early 1990s.

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CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO | MAY 8, 2015

The courageous witness of Blessed Oscar Romero

W

ho would have predicted it?

Who would have imagined on Feb. 23, 1977, the day of his appointment as archbishop of San Salvador, that the highly conservative Oscar Romero – who was suspicious of the Catholic Church’s involvement in political activism – would die a martyr’s death for courageously defending his people against the murderous assaults of the Salvadoran government, military and right-wing death squads?

Romero’s appointment TONY MAGLIANO was welcomed by the government, but many priests were not happy. They suspected their new archbishop would insist they cut all ties to liberation theology’s defense of the poor.

One of the priests who worked with Romero, Father Inocencio Alas, recalled key moments leading to the archbishop’s dramatic conversion.

According to Alas, the archbishop began realizing that the poor laborers waiting for work at the coffee plantations were sleeping on the sidewalks.

“What can be done”? Romero asked. Alas replied,

E

“Look at that big house where the school used to be. Open it up!” And Romero did.

Next, he started talking with those poor workers, and began to understand their problems.

But Romero had difficulty believing Alas’ claim that plantation owners treated workers unjustly.

Alas said, “Why don’t you go to the plantation of this friend of yours … Go find out for yourself.”

After visiting the plantation, Romero said to Alas, “You were right Father, but how is so much injustice possible”? Alas replied, “This world so full of injustices is exactly what they [the Latin American bishops at their famous meeting in Medellin Columbia] were talking about in Medellin.”

But the most important event affecting Romero’s decision to wholeheartedly stand with the poor and oppressed was the assignation of his close friend Jesuit Father Rutilio Grande; who was promoting land reform, worker unions, and organizing communities to have a greater voice regarding their own lives.

Romero, who was deeply inspired by Grande said, “When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead I thought, ‘if they have killed him for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path.’”

A shameful chapter in American history reveals the U.S. government supplied the brutal Salvadoran military with millions, and later, billions of dollars in weapons and training.

Evolution’s ultimate wisdom

volution, Charles Darwin famously stated, works through the survival of the fittest. Christianity, on the other hand, is committed to the survival of the weakest. But how do we square our Christian ideal of making a preferential option for the weak with evolution?

Nature is evolutionary and, inside of that, we can perceive a wisdom that clearly manifests intelligence, intent, spirit and design. And perhaps nowhere is this more evident than how in the process of evolution we see nature beFATHER RON coming ever-more unified, ROLHEISER complex and conscious.

However, how God’s intelligence and intent are reflected inside of that is not always evident because nature can be so cruel and brutal. In order to survive, every element in nature has to be cannibalistic and eat other parts of nature. Only the fittest get to survive. There’s a harsh cruelty in that. In highlighting how cruel and unfair nature can be, commentators often cite the example of the second pelican born to white pelicans. Here’s how cruel and unfair is its situation: Female white pelicans normally lay two eggs, but they lay them several days apart so that the first chick hatches several days before the second chick. This gives the first chick a head start and by the time the second chick hatches, the first chick is bigger and stronger. It then acts aggressively toward the second chick, grabbing its food and pushing it out of the nest. There, ignored by its mother, the second chick normally dies of starvation, despite its efforts to find its way back into the nest. Only 1 in 10 second chicks survives.

And here’s nature’s cruel logic in this: That second chick is hatched by nature as an insurance policy, in case the first chick is weak or dies. Barring that, it is doomed to die, ostracized, hungry, blindly grasping for food and its mother’s attention as it starves to death. But this cruelty works as an evolutionary strategy. White pelicans have survived for 30 million years, but at the cost of millions of its own species dying cruelly.

A certain intelligence is certainly evident in this, but where is the compassion? Did a compassionate God really design this? The intelligence in nature’s strategy of the survival of the fittest is clear. Each species, unless unnaturally interfered with from the outside, is forever producing healthier, more robust, more adaptable members. Such, it seems, is nature’s wisdom and design – up to a point.

Certain scientists such as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin suggest that physical evolution has

reached its apex, its highest degree of unity, complexity and consciousness, inside the central nervous system and brain of the human person and that evolution has now taken a leap (just as it did when consciousness leapt out of raw biology and as it did when self-consciousness leapt out of simple consciousness) so that now meaningful evolution is no longer about gaining further physical strength and adaptability. Rather meaningful evolution is now concerned with the social and the spiritual, that is, with social and spiritual strength.

And in a Christian understanding of things, this means that meaningful evolution is now about human beings using their self-consciousness to turn back and help nature to protect and nurture its second pelicans. Meaningful evolution now is no longer about having the strong grow stronger, but about having the weak, that part of nature that nature herself, to this point, has not been able to nurture, grow strong.

Why? What’s nature’s interest in the weak?

Why shouldn’t nature be happy to have the weak weeded out? Does God have an interest in the weak that nature does not?

No, nature too is very interested in the survival of the weak and is calling upon the help of human beings to bring this about. Nature is interested in the survival of the weak because vulnerability and weakness bring something to nature that is absent when it is only concerned with the survival of the fittest and with producing ever-stronger, more robust, and more adaptable species and individuals. What the weak add to nature are character and compassion, which are the central ingredients needed to bring about unity, complexity, and consciousness at the social and spiritual level.

When God created human beings at the beginning of time, God charged them with the responsibility of “dominion,” of ruling over nature.

What’s contained in that mandate is not an order or permission to dominate over nature and use nature in whatever fashion we desire. The mandate is rather that of “watching over,” of tending the garden, of being wise stewards, and of helping nature do things that, in its unconscious state, it cannot do, namely, protect and nurture the weak, the second pelicans.

The second-century theologian, Irenaeus, once famously said: The glory of God is the human being fully alive! In our own time, Gustavo Gutierrez, generally credited with being the father of liberation theology, recast that dictum to say: The glory of God is the poor person fully alive!” And that is as well the ultimate glory of nature.

OBLATE FATHER ROLHEISER is president of the Oblate School of Theology, San Antonio, Texas.

In a letter to U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Romero warned continued U.S. aid to the government of El Salvador “will surely increase injustices here and sharpen the repression.” Romero asked Carter to stop all military assistance to the Salvadoran government.

Carter ignored Romero. And later, President Ronald Reagan greatly increased military aid.

During his March 23, 1980 Sunday national radio homily, Romero said, “I would like to make an appeal in a special way to the men of the army …

You kill your own campesino brothers and sisters … The law of God must prevail that says: Thou shalt not kill! No soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God … In the name of God, and in the name of this suffering people … I beg you … I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression!”

The next day while presiding at Mass in the chapel of the hospital compound where he lived, Romero’s loving heart was pierced with an assassin’s bullet.

On May 23, the holy archbishop of San Salvador will henceforth be known as Blessed Oscar Romero.

But for the people of Central America, especially the poor and oppressed, he is already known as St. Oscar Romero.

MAGLIANO is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist.

No matter what you seek in life, keep Christ close

Y

ou’ve probably heard the phrase, “To thine own self be true,” spoken by Polonius in one of William Shakespeare’s works. These words have an important meaning in everyone’s life. This saying means we should follow what our conscience tells us in order to be true to ourselves.

But we should be true to ourselves with the certainty we’ve been told about since we were children: That God loves us.

If you’re the kind of person who wants more control over life, your thoughts and your feelings, then make Jesus the FATHER JOHN Lord of your life and believe CATOIR that he wants you to live joyfully because you know he loves you. This should allow you to live without anxiety.

If you’re the kind of person who wants to grow in self-respect and win the respect of others, then make Jesus the Lord of your life and live joyfully because of the knowledge of God’s love.

If you’re the kind of person who wants to be remembered as someone who made a difference in this world, then make Jesus the Lord of your life and live joyfully because of the knowledge of God’s love.

If you’re the kind of person who believes in an afterlife and wants to attain the goal of eternal happiness, then make Jesus the Lord of your life and live joyfully because you know he loves you.

If you’re the kind of person who wants to believe deeply in the forgiveness of sins and who knows that the good we do in this life will live after us, then make Jesus the Lord of your life and live joyfully because God loves you.

If you’re the kind of person who feels that you need greater strength to accomplish your most noble intentions, then make Jesus the Lord of your life and live joyfully knowing God loves you.

If you’re the kind of person who wants to be liberated from anxiety, fear and doubt, then by all means make Jesus the Lord of your life and live joyfully because you know God loves you.

If you’re the kind of person who believes that secular values have contributed to a lowering of ethical standards and want to follow the highest values of the human spirit, then make Jesus the Lord of your life and live joyfully because God loves you.

If you’re the kind of a person who wants to be a saint, not primarily for your own glory but for the glory of God and for the good of souls, then make Jesus the Lord of your life and live joyfully because God loves you.

FAITH 13

CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO | MAY 8, 2015

SUNDAY READINGS

Sixth Sunday of Easter

Jesus said to his disciples: ‘As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.’

JOHN 15:9-17 ACTS 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48 When Peter entered, Cornelius met him and, falling at his feet, paid him homage. Peter, however, raised him up, saying, “Get up. I myself am also a human being.” Then Peter proceeded to speak and said, “In truth, I see that God shows no partiality.

Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him.” While Peter was still speaking these things, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who were listening to the word. The circumcised believers who had accompanied Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit should have been poured out on the Gentiles also, for they could hear them speaking in tongues and glorifying God. Then Peter responded, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit even as we have?” He ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

PSALM 98:1, 2-3, 3-4 The Lord has revealed to the nations his saving power.

Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done

wondrous deeds; His right hand has won victory for him, his holy arm.

The Lord has revealed to the nations his saving power.

The Lord has made his salvation known: in the sight of the nations he has revealed his justice. He has remembered his kindness and his faithfulness toward the house of Israel.

The Lord has revealed to the nations his saving power.

All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation by our God. Sing joyfully to the Lord, all you lands; break into song; sing praise.

The Lord has revealed to the nations his saving power.

1 JOHN 4:7-10 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world

so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.

JOHN 15:9-17 Jesus said to his disciples: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.

“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another.”

What it means to truly love

E

ven though it came out a while ago, I recently found myself watching the very popular movie called “The Hunger Games.”

The heroine is a young lady named Katniss Everdeen. Katniss lives with her mom and her little sister, a delicate girl named Prim. Katniss provides for them and is the strong glue that holds the family together. Early on, Prim is chosen to participate in the violent, futuristic Hunger Games. Horrified as she realizes that this means Prim will almost surely die, Katniss volunteers to go in Prim’s place, even though she knows the odds of her own survival are also very low.

She makes this incredible DEACON MICHAEL sacrifice because the love she has for Prim is so great.

MURPHY This is an example of what it means to truly love someone.

We often tend to see love as sort of a soft, romantic thing. We link it with poetry,

SCRIPTURE REFLECTION

sunsets and quiet walks on a beach. This, of course, can all be true, but love is so much more than that. We often forget that love can also be an extraordinarily hard and difficult thing, requiring a lot of work and sacrifice. However, in saving her sister, it’s clear that Katniss knew this, and so, as we see, does Jesus.

Our readings this week speak of the love that God has for us and the love that he hopes we will share with each other. John reminds us that God so loved us, he sacrificed his Son so that our sins might be forgiven and that we might have eternal life. The Gospel goes even further as Jesus asks that we love one another in the same incredible fashion that God loves us, laying down our lives for each other. This week, the Lord gives us this tremendous challenge: That like Him, like, Katniss, we have the strength and the courage to give ourselves totally, without setting limits, as we love each other in the same unbelievable, overwhelming, all-consuming way that God loves each and every one of us!

We get so used to hearing the words “God loves us” that I think they sometimes lose their power. It would be great if we could take a second and remind ourselves of what it really means. God loves us so much that he created the entire universe for us; not for ALL of us, but for each and every individual one

of us. God loves us so much that he knows everything about us, good and bad, yet still is totally and absolutely, unconditionally and completely, devoted and dedicated to us. God loves us so much that he made us an eternal people, people who can never be lost, who for all eternity will be surrounded and embraced by Him and by those we’ve always loved.

Yet all of this would be empty and meaningless, if God hadn’t already lived what love truly means.

God loves us so much that he gave everything for us, he suffered and gave his very life for us. He’s been there, he’s made the hard choices, he himself has shown us what it takes and what it means to love, and so this week he’s able to ask the same of us.

Of course, the beauty of it, is that so many of you already know what love is, and that filled with faith and the power of the Holy Spirit, you’re living the Gospel, you’re living that love, right now. Whenever we give ourselves and sacrifice for another, knowing that it may be very hard and requires great courage, we are living as Jesus did, doing as Jesus asked, and bringing God, who is love, into the world and into our lives and the lives of those around us.

DEACON MURPHY serves at St. Charles Parish, San Carlos, and teaches at Sacred Heart Schools, Atherton.

LITURGICAL CALENDAR, DAILY MASS READINGS

POPE FRANCIS

Put your problems, concerns, loved ones in the Lord’s hands CINDY WOODEN CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

VATICAN CITY – Trials and tribulations are part of life for Christians, like anyone else, but believers draw strength and hope from entrusting themselves and their problems to the Lord, Pope Francis said at his morning Mass.

“A prayer of entrustment” is something many Christians do not do very often, but they should, the pope said May 5 during the Mass in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae.

“Entrust something to the Lord. Entrust this difficult moment to the Lord, entrust yourself to him, entrust our faithful, our priests and bishops, entrust our families to the Lord,” the pope said.

“Say to the Lord, ‘Take care of them, they are yours.’”

Prayers of entrustment, he said, are signs of “trusting in the power of the Lord and in the tenderness of the Lord, who is our Father.”

The first reading at the day’s Mass, Acts 14:1928, recounted how Paul and the other disciples had to endure hardship and even persecution as they preached the Gospel, but they commended each other to the Lord and to his grace and kept going.

“To endure is to have patience, to carry the weight of tribulations on your shoulders,” the pope said. “It’s not a masochistic attitude,” but a realistic one that recognizes some things just must be endured.

MONDAY, MAY 11: Monday of the Sixth Week of Easter. ACTS 16:11-15. PS 149:1b-2, 3-4, 5-6a and 9b. JN 15:26b, 27a. JN 15:26-16:4a.

TUESDAY, MAY 12: Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter. Optional Memorial of Sts. Nereus and Achilleus, martyrs; Optional Memorial of St. Pancras, martyr.

ACTS 16:22-34. PS 138:1-2ab, 2cde-3, 7c-8. SEE JN 16:7, 13. JN 16:5-11.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 13: Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Easter. Optional Memorial of Our Lady of Fatima. ACTS 17:15, 22-18:1. PS 148:1-2, 11-12, 13, 14. JN 14:16. JN 16:12-15.

THURSDAY, MAY 14: Feast of St. Matthias, ACTS 1: 15-17, 20-26. PS 113: 2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8. JN 15: 9-17.

FRIDAY, MAY 15: Friday of the Sixth Week of Easter.

Optional Memorial of St. Isidore. ACTS 18:9-18. PS 47:2-3, 4-5, 6-7. SEE LK 24:46, 26. JN 16:20-23.

14 FROM THE FRONT

CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO | MAY 8, 2015

SERRA: Pope defends ‘Fra Junipero,’ prays for missionary zeal in Americas FROM PAGE 1

Pope Francis’ was the first papal visit to the campus since 1980, when St. John Paul II went.

Pope Francis is scheduled to canonize Blessed Serra, the 18th-century Spanish missionary to California, during his September trip to the United States. “This meeting at your college and around the eucharistic table is a beautiful and meaningful introduction to my apostolic trip to the United States of America,” he told the students, staff, bishops and cardinals at the Mass.

Giving his homily in Italian, Pope Francis noted how Spanish missionaries in the 16th century had preached the Gospel across what is now the southern and southwestern United States from Florida to California. “This was long before the pilgrims of the Mayflower reached the North Atlantic coast,” he noted.

While critics of the canonization have claimed that Blessed Serra was part of a system that destroyed native cultures and that he abused Native Americans at his missions, Pope Francis said Blessed Serra, like other Catholic missionaries in the Americas, “defended the indigenous peoples against abuses by the colonizers.”

Referring to the Franciscan missionary as “Fra Junipero,” Pope Francis said the Spaniard was motivated by a desire to share the Gospel with the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

“He was filled with joy and the Holy Spirit in spreading the word of the Lord,” the pope said.

“Such zeal excites us, it challenges us!”

People study the lives and works of the missionaries, he said. They look at their strengths and, unfortunately, especially “their weaknesses and their shortcomings.”

“But I wonder if today we are able to respond with the same generosity and courage to the call of God, who invites us to leave everything in order to worship him, to follow him, to rediscover him in the face of the poor, to proclaim him to those who have not known Christ and, therefore, have not experienced the embrace of his mercy,” the pope said.

The witness of Blessed Serra, he said, is a call for all Catholics to get personally involved in missionary activity across the Americas, motivated by “the joy of the Gospel.”

Referring to Blessed Serra as “one of the founding fathers of the United States” – his missions were settlements that grew into some of the major cities of what is now the state of California – Pope

(CNS PHOTO/PAUL HARING)

Pope Francis accepts a relic of Blessed Junipero Serra from Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles at the conclusion of Mass celebrated at the Pontifical North American College in Rome May 2.

Francis said the Franciscan is a reminder of the important role the Spanish had and their descendants continue to have in the U.S. Catholic community.

Blessed Serra is part of a long line of holy men and women who preached and lived the Gospel of charity in the Americas, he said, listing two dozen male and female saints who ministered everywhere from Canada to Chile. He included the indigenous “humble workers in the vineyard of the Lord, like Juan Diego and Kateri Tekakwitha,” as well as “martyrs like Roque Gonzalez (a Jesuit killed in Brazil in 1628), Miguel Pro (a Mexican Jesuit killed in 1927) and Oscar Arnulfo Romero,” the assassinated archbishop of San Salvador, who is scheduled to be beatified May 23.

“There has been holiness in America – much holiness,” Pope Francis said. “May a powerful gust

of holiness sweep through all the Americas during the coming extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy.”

Pope Francis, the first pope from the Americas, prayed that “the life of our American continent may be rooted ever more deeply in the Gospel it has received; (and) that Christ may be ever more present in the lives of individuals, families, peoples and nations, for the greater glory of God.” “We pray, too, that this glory may be manifested in the culture of life, brotherhood, solidarity, peace and justice, with a preferential and concrete love for the poor,” he said.

As is customary, Pope Francis asked the congregation at the college to pray for him and he entrusted his July trip to South America and his September trip to Cuba and the United States to the protection of “Our Lady of Guadalupe, Fra Junipero and all the American saints.”

SPEAKERS: Canonizing Blessed Serra is call to new evangelization FROM PAGE 1

“It is clear that Pope Francis – the first pope from the New World – understands the Christian roots of the Americas and the continent’s importance for the church’s mission in the 21st century,” the archbishop said at the symposium organized by the U.S. seminary in Rome, the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Knights of Columbus.

Archbishop Gomez said Blessed Serra “will be the first American saint to be canonized on American soil. And of course, he is being canonized by the first Hispanic pope,” the first pope to “speak the Spanish language as his native tongue, and a pope who himself is an immigrant’s son.”

At a time when the people of the United States are “caught up in a divisive political and cultural debate over immigration and the future of its historic identity as a multicultural nation of immigrants,” he said, the canonization is a “prophetic response to the sign of the times.”

“I believe Father Serra would have us working to build an America that promotes the encounter of cultures and seeks to protect the sanctity and dignity of the human person,” the archbishop said.

By canonizing Blessed Serra in Washington, the nation’s capital, Archbishop Gomez said, Pope Francis will be sending a message, “a call for America to return to its deep religious and intercultural roots – as a nation born from the universal mission of the Catholic Church and the

encounter of the Gospel with the first nations, cultures and peoples found in this land.”

The canonization also should be an encouragement for every Catholic to imitate Father Serra in boldly, but respectfully sharing their faith. “Father Serra believed – with all his heart – that the Gospel was true. And out of love, he was willing to give up everything – family and home, security and fortune, even his very life – to bring the truth of this salvation to people living on the other side of the world, people he did not know, people who did not share his language or customs.”

Despite what people may have read in the newspapers recently, the archbishop said, Blessed Serra’s own writings and documents recounting his activities in California in the late 1700s prove his efforts to defend the native peoples, particularly against the cruelty of the Spanish soldiers and governors.

Carl A. Anderson, supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus, also spoke at the symposium. Afterward, he told Catholic News Service, “It’s very important that we set the record straight about Junipero Serra because he is a model of Catholic missionary activity in North America.”

As U.S. Catholics discuss their identity and their future, he said, they need to understand their past, which includes “so many great missionaries – religious men, religious women – who built so many of the Catholic institutions of our country. Junipero Serra is really at the head of that list.”

Anderson’s presentation at the symposium focused on Blessed Serra and Our Lady of Guadalupe and included the fact that the ship that brought

Blessed Serra to the New World was named Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Before Mary appeared to St. Juan Diego in Mexico in 1531, Anderson told CNS, “the missionary activity in the New World just did not get off the ground. But with her apparition, things changed dramatically because there on the tilma (St. Juan Diego’s cloak) is her image as a native person.”

The apparition, he said, “brought a respect for native people and native culture,” and Blessed Serra’s missionary activity reflected that. He understood that “evangelization isn’t domination, it’s not substitution of one culture for another culture, but it is recognizing the dignity and value of every culture and calling it to the Gospel.”

As Catholics take seriously their own missionary obligation, it is important to set the record straight about Blessed Serra and to imitate him, Anderson said.

“Pope Francis understands this better than almost anyone else because coming from Latin America he understands this great tradition, he understands how history has treated it sometimes very unfairly and he’s trying to preserve the record because what is past is prologue in terms of our identity,” he said.

“Our Lady of Guadalupe comes to unify, she comes to promote respect for minorities, she comes to build a new world, bringing people together, not dominating anyone,” he said. “The Holy Father understands that if we are going to evangelize in a time of globalization we must have an inculturated evangelization that respects diversity, different people, different cultures.”

15

CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO | MAY 8, 2015

CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO

HELP WANTED

CLASSIFIEDS PUBLISH A NOVENA New! Personal prayer option added Pre-payment required Mastercard or Visa accepted

Cost $26

If you wish to publish a Novena in the Catholic San Francisco You may use the form below or call (415) 614-5640

Share your heart Share your home Become a Mentor today.

Your prayer will be published in our newspaper

California MENTOR is seeking loving families with a spare bedroom in the counties of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin to support adults with special needs. Receive a competitive monthly stipend and ongoing support. For information on how you can become a Mentor call 650-389-5787 ext. 2

Name Address Phone MC/VISA # Exp.

Family Home Agency

SELECT ONE PRAYER:

❑ St. Jude Novena to SH ❑ Prayer to the Blessed Virgin ❑ Prayer to St. Jude ❑ Prayer to the Holy Spirit ❑ Personal Prayer, 50 words or less Please return form with check or money order for $26 Payable to: Catholic San Francisco Advertising Dept., Catholic San Francisco 1 Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco, CA 94109

DIRECTOR FOR YOUTH MINISTRY AND CONFIRMATION PROGRAM FOR ST. GABRIEL PARISH, SAN FRANCISCO

SPECIAL NOVENA

The Confirmation Program and Youth Ministry Director, a person willing to work as part of a ministry team. This 20 hour per week position involves the recruitment, training, and supervision of volunteer adults and teens who participate in the Confirmation Formation Program – as well as the Youth Ministry Program of the parish

FATIMA PRAYERS

Novena to St. Jude Thaddeus St. Jude, glorious apostle, faithful servant & friend of Jesus, the name of the traitor has caused you to be forgotten by many. But the Church honors & invokes you universally as the patron of difficult and desperate cases.

Pray for me who am so miserable. Make use, I implore you, of that particular privilege accorded to you to bring visible & speedy help where help was almost despaired of.

Come to my assistance in this great need that I may receive the consolation & help of heaven in all my necessities, tribulations & sufferings, particularly (here make your request) & that I may bless God with you & all the elect throughout all eternity. I promise you, O blessed Jude, to be ever mindful of this great favor, & I will never cease to honor you as my special & powerful patron & do all in my power to encourage devotion to you. St. Jude, pray for us & for all who honor & invoke thy aid. (Say the Our Father, Hail Mary, & Glory be to the Father 3 times) Thank you, St. Jude. – M&LP

Lucia dos Santos was one of the three children to whom the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared at Fatima, Portugal in 1917.

Pray as Lucia dos Santos did for “miracles needed”.

Three Hail Marys and one Our Father TPW

PRAYER TO ST. PEREGRINE

O great St. Peregrine, you have been called “The Wonder Worker” because of the numerous miracles which you have obtained from God for those who have had recourse to you. For so many years you bore in your own flesh this cancerous disease that destroys the very fiber of our being, & who had recourse to the source of all grace when the power of man could do no more.

You were favored with the vision of Jesus coming down from His Cross to heal your affliction. Ask of God and Our Lady the cure of the sick whom we entrust to you. (mention names of those you are praying for ) Aided in this way by your powerful intercession, we shall sing to God, now & for all eternity, a song of gratitude for His great goodness & mercy. Amen. (Say the Our Father, Hail Mary, & Glory be to the Father). Thank you, St. Peregrine. – M&LP

JOB DESCRIPTION 1. YOUTH MINISTER St Gabriel’s Pastoral Staff operates in a “team” ministry atmosphere. This position involves being part of the Pastoral Staff which meets regularly for prayer, business, planning, and evaluation. In addition, as a Pastoral Staff member this position also requires attendance at appropriate parish meetings (e.g. Parish Council, Parish Social and Liturgical events).

RETREATS

2. SUPERVISION: Pastor (Secondary administrative supervisor Matt Shea- Pastoral Associate).

(Patron Saint of Cancer Patients)

Contact Person: Matthew Shea, Pastoral Associate Email: mattshea@sgparish.org | Phone: (415) 731-6161

3. PASTORAL MINISTRY: YOUTH MINISTRY A. Work with the Youth Ministry Magi Leadership Team (adults and older teens) to develop appropriate and effective youth ministry efforts in the parish.

Santa Sabina Center

May 12, 7 p.m.-8:30 p.m. ~ Sing the Music of Hildegard of Bingen as contemplative practice, through the Ear to the Heart.

This gentle, contemplative practice of listening and singing the music of Hildegard together is led by Devi Mathieu and requires no previous experience with the music of Hildegard or with medieval music. Suggested offering, $10-20.

May 13, 9:30 a.m.-2:15 p.m.~ Contemplative Day of Prayer led by Fr Joe Nassal, cpps.

The day includes presentation, personal reflection and Eucharist. No reservations required. Suggested offering, $20.

May 13, 7:00 p.m.-8:30 p.m.~ Robert Lax: Poet-Mystic-Sage, evening of reading, reflection and conversation with Steve T. Georgiou.t No reservations required. Suggested offering, $20.

Santa Sabina Center, 25 Magnolia Avenue, San Rafael, 415-457-7727; info@santasabinacenter.org

Santa Sabina Center 25 Magnolia Avenue, San Rafael 415-457-7727 info@santasabinacenter.org

B. With the assistance of the Magi Leadership Team plan, implement, and evaluate all parish youth activities which include the following: 1. Weekly youth meetings with spiritual, service, and social dimensions.

2. Twice monthly Sunday 5:30 pm Youth Mass.

3. Magi Team meetings 4. Liaison with parish and youth 5. Provide one-on-one ministry to the youth 6. Participate in appropriate Archdiocesan events/committee for youth.

C. Coordinate Confirmation Faith Formation Program 1. Recruit, train, and direct adults and teens for participation in the Magi Leadership Team for the parish Confirmation Program.

2. Implement the following: a. Regular Confirmation class and group meetings with candidates. b. Confirmation Overnight Retreat c. Liturgical Services (rite of Enrolment and Reception of the Sacrament). d. Record Keeping.

e. Plan and Coordinate St. Gabriel 8th grade Day of Prayer

16 COMMUNITY

CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO | MAY 8, 2015

Carmelite sisters visit Marin deaneries

(PHOTO BY CHRISTINA GRAY/CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO)

The Carmelite sisters of the Mother of God Monastery in San Rafael were guests of Marin County deaneries 6 and 7 on April 23 for a brief visit to St. Sebastian parish hall in Greenbrae, where they thanked parish priests for supporting the community and their life of prayer. Many Marin parish priests take turns celebrating or concelebrating daily Mass at the suburban monastery’s chapel and many help the self-supporting community in its fundraising efforts, which include desktop publishing and jam making. “Our life is to back you up,” Prioress Mother Anna Marie told the priests.

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