Angelus News | April 19-26, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 15

‘THIS IS WHERE
I BELONG’
Local catechumens entering the Catholic Church this
Easter celebrate their unlikely journeys from curiosity
to the start of ‘a new life.’
BY CAITLIN YOSHIKO KANDIL / ANGELUS
When Cheree Fraser was
young, she would sneak
out of the house to go to
Sunday Mass.
Even though her family was Catholic,
Fraser’s mother wanted her and
her twin sister to have the freedom to
choose their own religion, so Fraser
never received any of the sacraments
and she wasn’t encouraged to go to
Mass. So she decided to go on her
own.
“I was never interested in other
religions,” said Fraser, 24. “If anything,
I felt left out. I knew so much
about Catholicism, but I just couldn’t
receive Communion.”
Fraser always kept it in the back of
her mind that she would be baptized
someday, but it wasn’t until last year,
after her twin sister was baptized and
a friend also expressed interest in the
Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults
(RCIA), that Fraser decided the time
was right. Being baptized, she said,
would allow her to be a full member
of the Church.
“I want to get married in the Church
one day,” she said. “I want to be someone’s
godmother. I want to receive
Communion at Mass. I don’t want to
feel left out anymore.”
So in August, she started the RCIA
program at Holy Family Church
in Glendale, and for the past nine
months has attended about three
hours of classes per week, studying
the Bible and Catholic teachings to
prepare her to become a full member
of the Church.
Fraser is one of the estimated 1,560
catechumens — 786 adults and 774
children — being baptized in their
respective parish’s Easter Vigil liturgy
in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles this
year. Another 913 baptized candidates
will complete their initiation by celebrating
the sacraments of confirmation
and Eucharist sometime during
the Easter season.
“I feel like I’ll be extremely proud
of myself and closer to God,” she said
of her baptism. “I feel like I would
just get more blessings, and just have
more positive things come into my
life because I did this on my own. It
wasn’t handed to me. I had to work
for it.”
Sister Rosanne Belpedio, director of
the Office of Worship for the archdiocese,
said the experiences of catechumens
vary. While some, like Fraser,
grew up in Catholic families, others
are marrying Catholic spouses or have
been married to Catholics for years
and feel like it’s time to join the family
at Mass, she said.
Some young catechumens were
raised in non-Catholic households
but went to Catholic high schools
and decided to convert. There are
also Catholics who fell away from the
Church, got married and had kids,
and later found their way back to the
faith and want their older children to
be baptized.
Another group, Rosanne said, are
children whose families came to the
U.S. after fleeing violence or natural
disasters in Central America. Their
parents left quickly and never had the
opportunity to baptize their children
until years after settling in the U.S.
“There’s all different varieties of experiences
happening,” Rosanne said.
For some catechumens, Catholicism
is an entirely new experience.
Uzma Paquillo was born into a
Pakistani Muslim family, but she
said that growing up, Islam never
felt quite right to her. She asked her
family questions, but never got the
answers she needed, so as a teenager,
she stopped practicing her family’s
religion.
After she married her husband, a
Filipino Catholic, she started learning
about Catholicism by talking to his
family, and something about the faith
made her feel at home.
“It just clicked in me,” said Paquillo,
a 37-year-old who works in finance.
“It’s like finding comfort in that religion.
It all made sense. I felt like this
is where I belong.”
But after proclaiming her desire to
convert, her husband and in-laws
made sure that there wasn’t any family
pressure influencing her desire to
become part of the Church.
“His first question was, ‘Are you
doing it for me? Are you doing it for
my family?’ ” said Paquillo. “I said, ‘It
has nothing to do with you. I’m doing
April 19-26, 2019 • ANGELUS • 17