Angelus News | July 5-12, 2019

UNACCOMPANIED 

July 5-12, 2019 Vol. 4 No. 25

Contents 

Archbishop Gomez 3 

World, Nation and Local News 4-6 

LA Catholic Events 7 

Scott Hahn on Scripture 8 

Father Rolheiser 9 

Why the SB 360 debate is a moment for interfaith unity 18 

John Allen: Does Christianity have a future in a post-ISIS Iraq? 20 

The Luz del Mundo scandal and Catholic ignorance 22 

Robert Brennan on what it means to be truly wealthy 24 

How does ‘Toy Story 4’ hold up to the original masterpiece? 26 

Heather King on the checkered history of Echo Park lotuses 28

ON THE COVER 

Anita Areli Ramirez Mejia, an asylum-seeker from Honduras, hugs her 6-year-old son, 

Jenri, after being reunited with him July 13, 2018, at La Posada Providencia shelter in 

San Benito, Texas. The mother and son were separated near the Mexico-U.S. border. In 

the wake of the “zero tolerance” policy enacted and later ended last year, thousands 

of families have faced separation, leaving children without parents, struggling to make 

their way to safety. On Page 10, Angelus’ R.W. Dellinger tells the story of one young girl 

who crossed the border looking for her mother, and for a future she couldn’t find in her 

home country. On Page 14, Pilar Marrero speaks with reunited families whose troubles 

are far from over. 

IMAGE: Palliums are pictured in front of the tomb of St. Peter 

before Pope Francis’ celebration of Mass marking the feast 

of Sts. Peter and Paul in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican 

June 29. The pallium, made of lamb’s wool, is a white band 

measuring about 5 centimeters (2 inches) in width and is 

worn by metropolitan archbishops as a sign of their unity 

with the pope as they minister to a portion of the Catholic 

“flock.” After the Mass, the pope presented a pallium to 

new archbishops from around the world. 

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/LOREN ELLIOTT, REUTERS 

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/VATICAN MEDIA

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POPE WATCH 

Rome vs. Sacramento? 

As California currently debates 

whether to punish priests for not 

breaking the seal of confession in 

cases when child abuse is revealed, 

Pope Francis approved a statement 

reaffirming the “inviolability” of the 

confidentiality of confession, and 

saying political pressure in this regard 

is a breach of religious liberty. 

“Every political or legislative initiative 

intended to ‘force’ the inviolability 

of the sacramental seal would constitute 

an unacceptable offense against 

the “libertas Ecclesiae” (“freedom of 

the Church”), which does not receive 

its legitimacy from individual states, 

but from God,” read the statement 

issued by Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, 

which was personally ordered and 

approved by Francis June 21 and 

published July 1. 

Such pressure “would also constitute 

a violation of religious freedom, legally 

fundamental to every other type 

of freedom, including the freedom of 

conscience of individual citizens, both 

penitents and confessors.” 

Piacenza, who heads the Vatican 

court dealing with matters of conscience, 

said that if penitents reveal 

that they have been the victim of “the 

evil of others,” the confessor’s job is 

to inform the penitents of their rights 

and the means available to them to report 

the incident to civil and Church 

authorities. 

For cases in which sins are confessed 

that constitute offenses, “it is never 

permissible to place upon the penitent, 

as a condition for absolution, the 

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obligation of constituting himself with 

civil justice.” 

Defense of the sacramental seal “will 

never constitute a form of connivance 

with evil,” he said, calling it “the only 

true antidote to the evil which threatens 

man and the whole world.” 

Piacenza said that “negative prejudice” 

against the Church, due in part 

to tensions among ecclesial hierarchy 

and current abuse scandals, is “oblivious 

to the true nature of the Church,” 

often leading to “the unjustifiable 

claim that the Church herself, in 

certain matters, must conform its own 

legal order to the civil systems of the 

states in which it finds itself living.” 

Because of this, the cardinal said he 

wanted to reaffirm concepts that seem 

increasingly “strange” to public opinion, 

including the seal of confession 

and other points involving conscience 

such as “the inherent confidentiality” 

of the “nonsacramental internal 

forum,” professional secrecy and the 

criteria and limits of every other communication. 

Piacenza stressed that 

“no human power has jurisdiction, 

nor can claim it,” on matters regarding 

the sacramental seal. 

“The inviolable secrecy of confession 

comes directly from revealed divine 

law and is rooted in the very nature 

of the sacrament, to the point of not 

admitting any exception in the ecclesial 

context, nor, even less, in the civil 

sphere.” 

Reporting courtesy of Crux senior 

correspondent Elise Harris. 

Papal Prayer Intentions for July: That those who administer justice may work with 

integrity, and that the injustice which prevails in the world may not have the last word. 

@Angelus 


www.la-archdiocese.org 

@Angelus 


2 • ANGELUS • July 5-12, 2019

NEW WORLD 

OF FAITH 

BY ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ 

‘Everyone realizes we love them’ 

Two hundred and fifty years ago, on 

July 1, 1769, St. Junípero Serra arrived 

at the port of San Diego, having 

journeyed on foot for more than five 

months from Loreto, Mexico. 

He celebrated a Mass of thanksgiving 

the next day, and the first of the 

21 California missions, San Diego 

de Alcalá, was established two weeks 

later, serving the indigenous Kumeyaay 

peoples. 

When he first set eyes on the native 

peoples of California, he literally 

kissed the ground and gave thanks to 

God. In his diaries and letters, he left 

beautiful descriptions of their creativity 

and dignity, their love for the land, 

and their worship of the Creator. 

Late in his life he would write: “The 

trust they have in us is based on the 

fact that … we have given them birth 

in Christ. We have all come here and 

remained here for the sole purpose 

of their well-being and salvation. And 

I believe everyone realizes we love 

them.” 

As I have shared before, I have a 

strong devotion to St. Junípero. So, I 

was saddened to read recently that the 

University of California at Santa Cruz 

has removed the El Camino Real 

mission bell on its campus, calling it a 

symbol of racism and the “dehumanization” 

of native peoples. 

St. Junípero has long been misunderstood 

and wrongly used as a symbol 

for the tragic abuses committed 

against California’s first peoples. 

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles is 

the home of many native peoples, 

including four nations whose sacred 

homelands lie within our borders 

— the Chumash, the Tataviam, the 

Tongva, and the Acjachemen. 

And since coming here, I am continuing 

to learn and discern about the 

deep injustices suffered by California’s 

original peoples, the painful losses 

and destruction of their ancient way 

of life, the spiritual wounds that run 

generations deep. 

I hope that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 

recent apology to California’s original 

peoples will help in the long process 

of healing these historic wounds. I 

hope it will also inspire new reflection 

on our history. 

The governor’s apology is rooted in 

well-documented facts. In the 1850s, 

California’s secular government 

pursued what the state’s first governor 

called “a war of extermination … to 

be waged between the two races until 

the Indian race becomes extinct.” 

This is the truth. But it is important 

to remember that this history has 

nothing to do with St. Junípero or 

the missions. By the time California 

declared its “race war” and the U.S. 

Cavalry was called in to support these 

genocidal policies, St. Junípero was 

long dead and the missions had been 

closed or “secularized” for nearly two 

decades. 

In fact, the loss of an authoritative 

Christian voice in California society 

meant the indigenous peoples in the 

1850s had no one to defend their 

rights in the face of state-sanctioned 

violence and the ruthless appetites 

of ranchers, soldiers, and mining 

interests. 

History is never simple. The facts 

matter, the truth matters, and distinctions 

are necessary. We cannot 

learn the lessons of history or heal 

the wounds of the past, unless we first 

understand what really happened and 

why. 

The missionaries were not perfect 

and the missionary system was not either. 

The missionaries made mistakes 

and caused real harm to people. Their 

motives, however, were evangelical 

and humanitarian. They learned the 

languages and traditions of the people 

they served and had the intention of 

improving their lives. 

These are the conclusions of the best 

scholars of St. Junípero and the missions, 

including the Native American 

archeologist Ruben Mendoza, historians 

Rose Marie Beebe and Robert 

Senkewicz, and Gregory Orfalea, who 

has written both a beautiful biography 

and a fine book for young people 

about the saint. 

The truth that we learn from these 

scholars is that St. Junípero spent his 

entire time in California courageously 

defending the rights of the indigenous 

peoples he loved. 

When the Kumeyaay attacked the 

San Diego mission in 1775, killing 

three people, including one of Padre 

Serra’s close friends, the law was clear 

— the attackers should be hanged. 

It was St. Junípero who appealed for 

mercy. “As to the killer, let him live 

so that he can be saved, for that is the 

purpose of our coming here and its 

sole justification,” he wrote. 

This is the sole reason he came to 

California, to share the greatest gift he 

could imagine to offer — the knowledge 

of Jesus Christ and his salvation. 

Pray for me this week and I will 

pray for you. And let us ask Our Lady 

of Guadalupe, Mother of the New 

World, to help us all to go forward 

together as one family, each of us a 

child of God. 

To read more columns by Archbishop José H. Gomez or to subscribe, visit www.angelusnews.com. 

July 5-12, 2019 • ANGELUS • 3

WORLD 

Cardinal Burke breaks 

up with Steve Bannon 

American Cardinal Raymond Burke announced via 

Twitter on June 25 that he was resigning from the 

Dignitatis Humanae Institute, a right-wing Catholic 

organization with close ties to former Trump adviser 

Steve Bannon. 

Burke cited his reason for leaving as the institute’s 

becoming “more and more identified with the political 

program” of Bannon. 

Burke also denied allegations that supported Bannon’s 

supposed desire to make a film out of a controversial 

new book that purports to reveal a vast network 

of homosexual clerics within the Vatican. 

Bannon has been frequently accused of supporting 

change in Church social teaching, specifically with 

regard to sexuality within the clergy. Though Bannon 

has rebuffed those claims, Burke said that he “find[s] 

objectionable [Bannon’s] statement calling into question 

the Church’s discipline of perpetual continence 

for the clergy.” 

Seminarian Rosario Vitale with his new book. 

The look of a retired pope 

Who says you can’t study for the priesthood and write 

a book at the same time? 

Italian seminarian Rosario Vitale has published 

“Benedict XVI: The First Emeritus Pope in History,” 

a study into what he sees as a legal vacuum regarding 

the status of popes who resign. 

The purpose of the book, which was written in light 

of Pope Benedict XVI’s surprise abdication in 2013, “is 

to push the Church a little — even though the time 

might not be quite mature yet — to create a commission 

… [to] canonically legislate on the legal hole that 

exists concerning the status of an emeritus pope.” 

The book addresses the arguments of critics who believe 

that canonically, the correct title of a bishop who 

retires should be “emeritus bishop of Rome,” rather 

than pope emeritus. 

But Vitale’s analysis, which is co-written by Italian 

law professor Valerio Gigliotti, sides with the choice 

made by the man once known as Joseph Ratzinger. 

“The pope is not just the bishop of Rome,” Vitale 

said. “He is also bishop of Rome, but he has a universal 

jurisdiction over the Church.” 

INÉS SAN MARTÍN, CRUX 

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/OLIVIA ACLAND, REUTERS 

A PLEA FOR ORDER — Congolese victims of ethnic violence 

prepare the burial of a child suspected to have died of measles at 

a camp in Ituri, Congo, June 25. In a June 24 message, Congo’s 

bishops said territory in the east of the country is being ceded to 

violent extremists, who are using the lack of government control to 

massacre civilians and plunder resources. They asked the government 

to install “a genuine state of law and establishing conditions 

for the army to respond effectively to its mission of defending and 

safeguarding national unity.” 

Special priestly sea powers 

Pope Francis has given priests who minister to seafarers 

special permission to forgive sins other priests can’t. 

In a June 27 meeting with Apostleship of the Sea, 

a Catholic ministry operated for seafaring laborers 

worldwide, Francis said that he is “conced[ing] to all 

seafarer chaplains the same permissions that I gave to 

the ‘missionaries of mercy’ so that you can help many 

hearts find interior peace.” 

The “missionaries of mercy” were priests selected 

during the 2015-2016 Church year by Francis to 

preach worldwide with an emphasis on forgiveness, 

and were also given permission to forgive abortions 

and serious violations of canon law. 

The absolution of such sins would usually require the 

intervention of a bishop or the Vatican itself. 


NATION 

ARCHDIOCESE OF SANTA FE 

Jason Paul Marshall 

Seminarian, driver 

killed in bus crash 

Two people, including a seminarian, 

were killed and more 

than a dozen others injured when 

a bus bringing Catholic youth 

home from a conference collided 

with a bridge structure in Southern 

Colorado June 24. 

Jason Paul Marshall was studying 

theology at the Pontifical College 

Josephinum in Columbus, 

Ohio. At the time of the crash, he 

was accompanying youth from 

the University of New Mexico’s 

Aquinas Newman Center back 

from a conference and retreat in 

Denver hosted by the Franciscan 

University of Steubenville. 

Survivors believe Marshall may 

have given his life trying to save 

the bus when the driver, who 

also died in the crash, had what 

appeared to be a medical emergency. 

“He saw the driver in distress, 

grabbed the wheel and prevented 

the bus from flipping,” Marshall’s 

brother Jeff told Staten Island 

Live. 

“A bus that big and so top-heavy 

carrying that kind of momentum, 

it could have been absolutely 

disastrous. It could have been so 

horrible,” Father Rob Yaksich, a 

priest of the Archdiocese of Santa 

Fe told local ABC affiliate KOAT 

Channel 7 News. 

Virginia: Crisis changes building naming policy 

The reawakening clerical sex abuse crisis has prompted a Virginia diocese 

to adopt an unprecedented new policy. 

As of June 27, institutions, schools, and parish buildings belonging to 

the Diocese of Richmond will no longer be named after a bishop, pastor, 

founder, or another individual. 

The policy says the diocese’s structures and institutions are to identify 

themselves only with “the names of saints, the mysteries of the faith, the 

titles of Our Lord or of Our Lady, or the place where the ministry has been 

established.” 

“Overcoming the tragedy of abuse is not just about holding accountable 

those who have committed abuses, it is also about seriously examining the 

role and complex legacies of individuals who should have done more to 

address the crisis in real time,” said Richmond Bishop Barry C. Knestout 

announcing the new policy. 

The policy does not affect previously named rooms or wings in existing 

diocesan buildings, institutions, parishes, or other schools within the 

diocese. 

Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month-old daughter, Valeria. 

Border shock felt ‘round the world’ 

Pope Francis and the U.S. bishops reacted with sorrow and shock over viral 

photos and videos of a drowned Salvadoran man and his daughter floating 

in the Rio Grande River after drowning in an attempt to cross from Mexico 

into Texas. 

The man, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, and his family had been 

waiting two months for the U.S. to respond to his asylum claim. The photo, 

which shows the girl’s limp arm wrapped around her father’s shoulder, was 

taken after the father and daughter were swept away by rough waters near 

the U.S. side while the child’s mother looked on from the Mexican side. 

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops lamented the incident 

in a June 26 statement: “Sadly, this picture shows the daily plight of our 

brothers and sisters. Not only does their cry reach heaven. It reaches us. 

And it must now reach our federal government.” 

Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti shared similar sentiments from the 

pope during a press conference: “The pope is profoundly saddened by their 

death and is praying for them and for all migrants who have lost their lives 

while seeking to flee war and misery.” 

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/REUTERS 


LOCAL 

Hank Gathers 

Hank’s special 

return to LMU 

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS 

SUSANA DUEÑAS 

CELEBRATING WITH THEIR SHEPHERD — Archbishop José H. Gomez poses with clergy and 

parishioners of St. Lucy Church in Long Beach after a Mass Saturday, June 29 celebrating 

the parish’s 75th anniversary. The liturgy was followed by a parish fiesta to mark the 

occasion. 

Thousands leaving Southern California 

Rising home and rent prices, traffic, and the shrinking of the middle class 

are all among the reasons given for why it’s hard to live in Southern California. 

New statistics show that for many, it’s simply too difficult. 

A breakdown of last year’s census numbers by CBS Los Angeles shows that 

nearly 100,000 people have left Los Angeles County, “marking the biggest 

net loss in the U.S.,” according to the TV station. 

Orange County saw 20,104 more people leave than move in, ranking 10th 

among big counties in the U.S. in net out-migration. 

Data from Riverside County, which is known for lower costs of living and 

less congestion, told a different story, however: a net gain of nearly 20,000 

people, the fourth biggest gain in the nation. 

A NEW BEGINNING — After nearly 40 

years in Catholic education, St. Bruno 

School in Whittier bid a fond farewell 

and joyous retirement to principal 

Catherine Dobrenchuk. Dobrenchuk 

has served as principal of the TK-8 

school for the past 10 years. She said 

she plans to spend her retirement 

enjoying time with her family, 

volunteering for Los Angeles Catholic 

schools, attending daily Mass, and 

assisting with EWTN’s Family Rosary 

Across America. 

ST. BRUNO SCHOOL 

Hank Gathers, the late Loyola 

Marymount University basketball 

great recalled for his on-court 

excellence, will be honored with 

a statue commemorating his 

achievements. 

LMU athletic director Craig Pintens 

said the statue is scheduled 

to be unveiled in Spring 2020, in 

front of Gersten Pavilion — a.k.a 

“Hank’s House” — where, three 

decades ago, Gathers and his Lion 

teammates captured the national 

attention with a trip to the 

NCAA’s Elite Eight. 

But Gathers never played in that 

tournament. Shortly after making 

a dunk shot in the finals of the 

1990 West Coast Conference 

Tournament, he collapsed on the 

court, was taken to the hospital 

and died later that evening. He 

had suffered from an abnormal 

heartbeat and a heart muscle 

disorder. 

Gathers remains LMU’s all-time 

leader in points and scoring average 

(28 per game), and the program’s 

second leading rebounder. 

“We are thankful to Loyola Marymount 

University for resurrecting 

Hank and bringing him back 

to campus,” said Derrick Gathers, 

Hank’s brother. “It is very special 

to our family and we are honored 

that the statue will have a permanent 

home at LMU.” 

The $250,000 project will be 

funded entirely with private donations. 

To learn more about the 

statue and Gathers’ legacy, visit 

hank44.lmu.edu. 


LA Catholic Events 

Items for LA Catholic Events are due two weeks prior to the date of the event. They may be mailed to Angelus News (Attn: LA Catholic Events), 3424 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90010-2241; emailed to 

calendar@angelusnews.com; or faxed to 213-637-6360. All items must include the name, date, time, and address of the event, plus a phone number for additional information. 

Sat., July 6 

Mass for the Intention of the Beatification Cause of 

Father Aloysius Ellacuria. Chapel of the Annunciation, 

428 S. Mission Dr., San Gabriel, 8 a.m. 

“Other Than Quakers, Part 2: William Volkmor — 

Catholic Pioneer of Whittier” exhibit. Opens July 6 

at Whittier Museum, 6755 Newlin Ave., Whittier. Runs 

July 1-31 at Whittier Public Library, Central Branch, 

7344 Washington Ave. 

Mon., July 8 

Mass and Healing Service. St. Rose of Lima Church, 

1305 Royal Ave., Simi Valley, 7 p.m. Celebrant: Father 

Michael Barry. Call 805-526-1732. 

Fri., July 12 

Don Bosco Technical Institute 30th Annual Golf 

Classic. Montebello Golf Course, 901 Via San Clemente, 

Montebello, 9 a.m. shotgun start. Registration 

fee is $175 by July 1, $200 after, and includes greens 

fees, range balls, golf cart, goody bags, prizes, lunch 

and refreshments, and an awards buffet, which will 

be hosted immediately after the tournament. All 

tournament proceeds provide tuition assistance and 

scholarship support to students. Visit boscotech.edu 

to register or sponsor the event. 

National Film Retreat. Pauline Center for Media 

Studies, 3908 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City. Retreat 

runs from July 12 to July 14. If you love God and 

movies, this retreat practices cinema divine, entering 

Scriptures and contemporary films. Five films viewed 

together. Cost: $130/person and includes all meals. 

Accommodations not provided. Register at pauline. 

org/filmretreat. 

Practicing Presence: Journeying Inward Through 

the Labyrinth. Mary & Joseph Retreat Center, 5300 

Crest Rd., Rancho Palos Verdes, 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. 

Cost: $50/person and includes lunch. Call Marlene 

Velazquez at 310-377-4867, ext. 234 for reservations 

or information. 


Building Resilience & Finding Joy: Separated, Divorced 

and Widowed Ministry Workshop. Cathedral 

of Our Lady of the Angels, 555 W. Temple St., Los Angeles, 

9:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Presenter: Joe Sikorra, LMFT. 

Learn what God and research say about resilience 

and joy in your life. Day includes a tour of the cathedral, 

Mass celebrated by Father Jim Gehl, and lunch. 

Cost: $30/person by July 8. Register at http://store. 

la-archdiocese.org/building-resilience-and-finding-joy. 

Call Julie Auzenne at 213-637-7249 or email 

jmonell@la-archdiocese.org for more information. 

Ministers of Consolation Training. St. Mel Church, 

20870 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills, 9 a.m.-1 p.m. 

Five consecutive trainings on July 13, 27, Aug. 3, 

10, and 17. Visit store.la-archdiocese.org/iministers-of-consolation-training-st-mel. 

For the Good of the Family Legacy: A Workshop 

for Married Couples. Mary & Joseph Retreat Center, 

5300 Crest Rd., Rancho Palos Verdes, 9 a.m.-3 

p.m. Couples will gain spiritual perspective leading 

to practical action regarding questions and plans for 

legacy. Cost: $50/person and includes lunch. Limited 

to 12 couples. Call Marlene Velazquez at 310-377- 

4867, ext. 234 for reservations or information. 

Foster Care and Adoption Information Meeting. 

Children’s Bureau, 1529 East Palmdale Blvd., Suite 

210, Palmdale, or Children’s Bureau’s Carson office, 

460 East Carson Plaza Dr., Suite 102, Carson, 10 

a.m.-12 p.m. Discover if you have the willingness, 

ability, and resources to take on the challenge of 

helping a child in need. RSVP or learn more by calling 

213-342-0162, toll free at 800-730-3933, or email 

RFrecruitment@all4kids.org. 

Sun., July 14 

Advanced Course in Media Literacy and Faith 

Formation. Pauline Center for Media Studies, 3908 

Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City. Advanced certification 

course assists parents, teachers, ministers, and catechists 

to integrate a critical inquiry of our media 

culture within the educational setting. Topics include: 

Media Mindfulness, Virtues and Social Media, Philosophies 

of the Media, Theology of Popular Culture, and 

more. Full week course: July 14-20. Cost: $250/person. 

Register at pauline.org/certificate. 

What’s on My Plate? A Retreat for Busy People. 

Mary & Joseph Retreat Center, 5300 Crest Rd., Rancho 

Palos Verdes, 2-4 p.m. This workshop, led by Sister 

Mary Mortz, DMJ, Ph.D., is for those of us who are 

seeking to find time for God in our overly busy lives. 

Examine all aspects of your life and decorate a paper 

plate to show your 24-hour day. Decorate another to 

show how God is calling you to live each day. Cost: 

$20. Call Marlene Velazquez at 310-377-4867, ext. 

234 for reservations or information. 

Fri., July 19 

72nd Annual Mary Star of the Sea Parish Fiesta. 

870 W. 8th St., San Pedro. Fiesta runs July 19, 5 p.m.- 

12 a.m., July 20, 12 p.m.-12 a.m., July 21, 12-10 

p.m. Grand prize: $20,000 cash or 2019 Chevy Cruze 

or Malibu. Free parking and free admission. More information 

at marystar.org/fiesta-2019. 


“Let Go, Let God” Annual Summer Retreat. St. Bernadette 

Church, 3825 Don Felipe Dr., Los Angeles, 

8:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Carrying excess baggage? Let 

go at this year’s retreat. Cost: $22/person, includes 

continental breakfast and lunch. RSVP by July 16 to 

Carolyn James at 323-296-1365. 

Foster Care and Adoption Information Meeting. Andrew’s 

Plaza, 11335 West Magnolia Blvd., Suite 2C, 

North Hollywood, 10 a.m.-12 p.m. Discover if you 

have the willingness, ability, and resources to take on 

the challenge of helping a child in need. RSVP or learn 

more by calling 213-342-0162, toll free at 800-730- 

3933, or email RFrecruitment@all4kids.org. 

Experiencing God’s Mercy Retreat. Pauline Books 

& Media, 3908 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City, 1-4:30 

p.m. Led by Sister Patricia Shaules, FSP, the retreat 

considers God’s merciful love and seek to discover 

and accept God’s mercy. Retreatants will also learn 

the power and method of praying the Examen as an 

opportunity to discern and accept God’s loving mercy. 

Donation: $15/person. For more information or to 

RSVP, call 310-397-8676 or email culvercity@paulinemedia.com. 

Sun., July 21 

Dawn Eden Goldstein Book Signing. Cathedral of 

Our Lady of the Angels, 555 W. Temple St., Los Angeles. 

Dawn will be signing her newly released book 

“Sunday Will Never Be the Same: A Rock and Roll 

Journalist Opens Her Ears to God” after the 8 a.m. 

and 10 a.m. Masses. To pre-order a signed copy, visit 

cathedralgiftshop.com or call 213-680-5277. 

Wed., July 24 

Talk by Father Greg Boyle. Church of the Good Shepherd, 

504 N. Roxbury Dr., Beverly Hills, 7-9 p.m. Call 

310-285-5425. 

Thur., July 25 

Mass and Healing Service. Our Lady of Grace 

Church, 5011 White Oak Ave., Encino, 6:30 p.m. Topic: 

Spiritual warfare. Celebrant: Father George Reynolds. 

Call Claudia at 818-342-6626. 

This Week at AngelusNews.com 

Visit AngelusNews.com for these stories 

and more. Your source for complete, 

up-to-the-minute coverage of local news, 

sports and events in Catholic L.A. 

• A lighthearted look at a world without The Beatles in “Yesterday.” 

• LMU plans statue to honor baseball great Hank Gathers. 

• Exploring the Catholic art of Mary Fabilli. 


SUNDAY 

READINGS 

BY SCOTT HAHN 

Is. 66:10–14 / Ps. 66:1–7, 16, 20 / Gal. 6:14–18 / Lk. 10:1–12, 17–20 

Jesus has a vision in 

today’s Gospel — Satan 

falling like lightning from 

the sky, the enemy vanquished 

by the missionary 

preaching of his Church. 

Sent out by Jesus to begin 

gathering the nations into 

the harvest of divine judgment 

(see Isaiah 27:12– 

13; Joel 4:13), the 70 are 

a sign of the continuing 

mission of the Church. 

Carrying out the work 

of the 70, the Church 

proclaims the coming of 

God’s kingdom, offers his 

blessings of peace and 

mercy to every household 

on earth — “every town 

and place he intended to 

visit.” 

Our Lord’s tone is solemn 

today. For in the preaching 

of the Church “the kingdom of God 

is at hand,” the time of decision has 

come for every person. Those who 

do not receive his messengers will be 

doomed like Sodom. 

But those who believe will find peace 

and mercy, protection and nourishment 

in the bosom of the Church, the 

Mother Zion we celebrate in today’s 

beautiful First Reading, the “Israel of 

God” Paul blesses in today’s Epistle. 

The Church is a new family of faith 

(see Galatians 6:10) in which we 

receive a new name that will endure 

forever (see Isaiah 66:22), a name 

written in heaven. 

In today’s Psalm we sing of God’s 

“tremendous deeds among men” 

throughout salvation history. But of 

“Christ with Beard,” mural painting from the catacomb of 

Commodilla, Rome, 4th century, with Alpha and Omega 

signifying “I am the beginning and the end.” 

all the works of God, none has been 

greater than what he has wrought by 

the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Changing the sea into dry land was 

but an anticipation and preparation 

for our passing over, for what Paul 

calls the “new creation.” 

And as the exodus generation was 

protected in a wilderness of serpents 

and scorpions (see Deuteronomy 

8:15), he has given his Church power 

now over “the full force of the Enemy.” 

Nothing will harm us as we make 

our way through the wilderness of 

this world, awaiting the Master of the 

harvest, awaiting the day when all on 

earth will shout joyfully to the Lord, 

sing praise to the glory of his name. 

Scott Hahn is founder of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, stpaulcenter.com. 


IN EXILE 

BY FATHER RONALD ROLHEISER, OMI 

The loss of heaven and the fear of hell 

Growing up as a Roman Catholic, 

like the rest of my generation, I was 

taught a prayer called the act of contrition. 

Every Catholic back then had 

to memorize it and say it during or 

after going to confession. The prayer 

started this way: “Oh, my God, I am 

truly sorry for having offended thee 

and I detest all of my sins because I 

dread the loss of heaven and the pains 

of hell. …” 

To dread the loss of heaven and 

fear the pains of hell can seem like 

one and the same thing. They’re not. 

There’s a huge moral distance between 

dreading the loss of heaven and 

fearing the pains of hell. The prayer 

wisely separates them. 

Fear of hell is based upon a fear 

of punishment; dreading the loss of 

heaven is based upon a fear of not 

being a good, loving person. There’s a 

huge difference between living in fear 

of punishment and living in fear of 

not being a good person. 

We’re more mature, humanly and as 

Christians when we’re more worried 

about not being loving enough than 

when we’re fearful that we will be 

punished for doing something wrong. 

Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, 

I breathed in the spirituality and catechesis 

of the Roman Catholicism of 

the time. In the Catholic ethos then 

(and this was essentially the same for 

Protestants and Evangelicals), the eschatological 

emphasis was a lot more 

about the fear of going to hell than it 

was about being a loving person. 

As a Catholic kid, along with my 

peers, I worried a lot about not committing 

a mortal sin, that is, doing 

something out of selfishness or 

weakness that, if unconfessed before 

I died, would send me to hell for all 

eternity. 

My fear was that I might go to hell 

rather than that I might not be a very 

loving person who would miss out on 

love and community. And so I worried 

about not being bad rather than about 

being good. I worried that I would do 

something that was mortally sinful, 

that would send me to hell; but I 

didn’t worry as much about having a 

heart big enough to love as God loves. 

I didn’t worry as much about forgiving 

others, about letting go of hurts, 

about loving those who are different 

from me, about being judgmental, or 

about being so tribal, racist, sexist, nationalistic, 

or narrow in my religious 

views that I would be uncomfortable 

sitting down with certain others at 

God’s banquet table. 

“The heavenly table is open to all 

who are willing to sit down with 

all.” That’s a line from a John Shea 

poem and it spells out succinctly, I 

believe, a non-negotiable condition 

for going to heaven, namely, the willingness 

and capacity to love everyone 

and to sit down with everyone. 

It’s non-negotiable for this reason: 

How can we be at the heavenly table 

with everyone if for some reason of 

pride, wound, temperament, bitterness, 

bigotry, politics, nationalism, 

color, race, religion, or history, we 

aren’t open to sit down with everyone? 

Jesus teaches this too, just in a different 

way. After giving us the Lord’s 

Prayer, which ends with the words, 

“forgive us our trespasses as we forgive 

those who trespass against us,” he adds 

this: “If you forgive others when they 

sin against you, your heavenly Father 

will also forgive you. But if you do not 

forgive others, your Father will not 

forgive you.” 

Why can’t God forgive us if we don’t 

forgive others? Has God arbitrarily 

singled out this one condition as his 

pet criterion for going to heaven? No. 

We cannot sit at the heavenly banquet 

table if we are still selective as 

to whom we can sit down with. If, in 

the next life, like here in this life, we 

are selective as to whom we love and 

embrace, then heaven would be the 

same as earth, with factions, bitterness, 

grudges, hurt, and every kind 

of racism, sexism, nationalism, and 

religious fundamentalism keeping us 

all in our separate silos. 

We can only sit at the heavenly banquet 

when are hearts are wide enough 

to embrace everyone else at the table. 

Heaven demands a heart open to 

universal embrace. 

And so, as I get older, approach the 

end of my life, and accept that I will 

soon face my Maker, I worry less and 

less about going to hell and worry 

more and more about the bitterness, 

anger, ingratitude, and nonforgiveness 

that still remains in me. 

I worry less about committing a 

mortal sin and more about whether 

I’m gracious, respectful, and forgiving 

toward others. I worry more about the 

loss of heaven than the pains of hell, 

that is, I worry that I could end up like 

the older brother of the prodigal son, 

standing outside the Father’s house, 

excluded by anger rather than by sin. 

Still, I’m grateful for the act of contrition 

of my youth. Fear of hell isn’t a 

bad place from which to start. 

Oblate of Mary Immaculate Father Ronald Rolheiser is a spiritual writer, www.ronrolheiser.com. 


Why she crossed over 

Daniela Luna’s successful journey to reunite with her mother in 

the US and obtain a brighter future from a Catholic education 

BY R.W. DELLINGER • PHOTOGRAPHY BY VICTOR ALEMÁN / ANGELUS 

Sitting at a dark-wood dining 

room table next to her close 

friend and mentor, Daniela 

Luna begins to tell her story. 

“At the border, I presented myself 

first and then my 

brother, José, because 

we wanted to 

live with my mother 

in East Los Angeles. 

She told us that she 

wanted us to live 

with her because 

we were alone in 

Mexico,” recounted 

the 20-year-old 

Mexican immigrant 

in an interview with 

Angelus News. 

It’s a story that 

began four years 

ago when she and 

her brother, a 

year younger, fled 

Mexico for the U.S. 

They left in hopes of 

reconnecting with 

their mother, who 

like them had suffered abuse from 

the children’s father at their home in 

Durango. 

“There was no money. Their mother 

was gone. And the father was not 

really a support when they needed it,” 

said Martha Delira, Daniela’s former 

translator and mentor when she 

successfully crossed the border from 

Mexico, who explained that their 

father left the family to start a new life 

with another woman. 

On top of that, the children faced 

the threat of violence in Durango as 

well. 

Daniela and José’s journey together 

ended at the San Ysidro border 

crossing, where they were separated. 

He would be allowed to pass, she was 

Daniela Luna and Martha Delira, Daniela’s former translator and mentor. 

not. Instead, officials sent her to a 

juvenile detention center just miles 

away, where she was kept for more 

than a week. 

“The immigration returned her to 

Tijuana,” explained DeLira. “But 

instead of calling a family member, 

she was placed in child protection, 

supposedly. But she really was traumatized 

there seeing things, with maybe 

80 girls in small rooms.” 

“It was very cold, and we only had an 

aluminum covering,” recalled Daniela. 

“It was hard because you were 

alone. You didn’t know what time it is. 

And we had to wear a hospital mask 

until we were examined by a doctor.” 

She spent most of her time writing 

to her mother, who left the family 

when Daniela was 

14. When she was 

released after nine 

days, she wanted to 

go back to Durango. 

But then she 

decided to try one 

more time to cross. 

So once again she 

presented herself to 

U.S. authorities. 

This time they sent 

her to a shelter in 

Arizona, where she 

stayed for less than 

a week. And after a 

plane ride back to 

LA, she was finally 

reunited with her 

mother, who paid 

for her airfare. For 

some reason, her 

brother was never 

detained and had already made it to 

their mother in East LA. 

Finding representation 

Linda Dakin-Grimm worked for 30 

years as a corporate attorney at Milbank 

LLP, one of the top legal firms 

in the world. She retired some four 

years ago, and since then has been 

Daniela’s pro bono lawyer. 

She was referred to the unaccompanied 

minor by KIND (Kids in Need 

of Defense), which helps unaccompanied 

immigrant and refugee children 


Daniela Luna graduated from Sacred Heart High School May 22. 


find legal representation. As a member 

of the SoCal Immigration Task 

Force, started by now-Auxiliary Bishop 

David O’Connell, she’s represented 

more than 100 migrant unaccompanied 

children. 

“Daniela is so typical of these kids,” 

she said. “They’re not gang members. 

They’re not losers. They’re kids who 

were just trying to stay alive. They’re 

almost all success stories after they get 

here. And the journey from Central 

America or Mexico, it’s brutally hard. 

Kids don’t leave their homes and families 

and culture and everything they 

know just because living in the U.S. 

would be easy, because ‘When I grow 

up I can take somebody’s job.’ It’s just 

not like that.” 

She pointed out that Daniela wasn’t 

an asylum-seeker. She got “Special 

Immigrant Juvenile” status because 

she was abused by her father. To 

obtain that status, a minor must have 

been either abandoned, neglected, or 

abused. 

The lawyer, who also holds a graduate 

degree in theology, readily admitted 

that among the large numbers of 

unaccompanied minors to arrive in 

the last few years, “you’re going to get 

somebody who isn’t like Daniela.” 

Still, “to see them all painted with 

that brush by the Trump administration 

is frustrating,” Dakin-Grimm 

Daniela Luna shows her academic certificates 

from Sacred Heart High School. 

said. 

Besides representing her case in 

immigration court, Dakin-Grimm also 

lent her help in another way: leading 

a small group that included O’Connell 

and the Catholic Education 

Foundation (CEF) to get Daniela into 

a Catholic high school. 

Their efforts resulted in a CEF 

donor providing a special scholarship 

award for high-risk students to Daniela 

for her three years at Sacred Heart 

High School, an all-girls high school 

in West Covina. 

Daniela admitted that at first she 

wanted to stay put at the public high 

school where she had first enrolled. 

But DeLira and others persuaded 

the teen that a Catholic high school 

education was nothing to turn down. 

So Daniela, although understanding 

little English, relented. 

“It was very different because it’s all 

girls. And you don’t have to worry 

about ‘Oh, what am I going to wear?’ ” 

she said. “Other students in my classes 

translated for me. Teachers gave me 

extra help and CDs of their classes 

in Spanish. So I got more successful. 

But, yes, it was hard the first year. I 

loved Sacred Heart because of the 

community service we did and because 

it made my faith stronger.” 

DeLira gave her a knowing look. 

“After school, she would go to ‘Google 

Translate.’ She would stay up late until 

two in the morning trying to finish 

her homework because she wanted to 

get good grades. So that tells you she’s 

a fighter,” she said. 

Asked how she got through the first 

year and did better her junior and 

senior years, Daniela just answered, 

“Working hard on my assignments.” 

Bishop Dave’s A-team 

Bishop David O’Connell started the SoCal Immigration 

Task Force more than five years ago, when he 

was a pastor in South-Central Los Angeles. So far 

locally, members have helped some 60 unaccompanied 

minors like Daniela Luna, and hope to sponsor many 

more. 

“It’s become a beautiful effort of just very good-hearted 

people from the archdiocese and our schools helping 

these children and young people who have fled horrendous 

circumstances in Central America and Mexico,” he 

told Angelus News. “And Daniela is the first to graduate 

from a local Catholic high school. 

“So I’m so proud of her. Despite all the suffering she’s 

gone through, she knows God loves her. She’s stayed 

positive. She worked hard. And despite everything in her 

background, she’s kept her poise and dignity. I couldn’t 

be more proud of her. She’s wonderful,” O’Connell said. 

He added that local Catholic schools have really taken 

on helping unaccompanied youth as their mission. “It 

gives them great energy to help these youths,” he noted. 

“And these young people, like Daniela, have gotten new 

lives. They feel loved and they feel wanted. Imagine the 

life they had before. And now adults have surrounded 

them, hugging them and loving them like the teachers 

and administrators at Sacred Heart; making sacrifices so 

they can have a good future. 

“For me, it really is a labor of love,” he said, “because 

this is, I think, what our schools and parishes are all 

about. Not just for unaccompanied minors but for all our 

children. There’s an epidemic of hurting children, even 

the ones who have too much. They feel we’ve abandoned 

them. And the migrant youths have become a metaphor 

for our whole society.” 

For more information on the SoCal Immigration Task 

Force, contact Lucy at Bishop O’Connell’s San Gabriel 

regional office in Irwindale at 626-960-9344, or email 

deaconsergio@sgpr.org. 

— R.W. Dellinger 

12 • ANGELUS • July 5-12, 2019

The principal of Sacred Heart remembers 

well when Daniela came to 

his high school in 2016 as a sophomore. 

“She was shy because, number one, 

obviously, she hardly spoke any English,” 

said Raymond Saborio. “Number 

two, it was a new school. Maybe 

in public school, teachers wouldn’t go 

the extra mile for her. But when she 

was on our campus, it must have been 

like, ‘Wow! I feel comfortable. This is 

so welcoming. I’m going to definitely 

do my part.’ She did, and she was 

awesome.” 

To help Daniela adjust, Spanish textbooks 

were ordered for some classes to 

accompany the English ones. A parttime 

resource teacher coached her in 

English, and an iPad allowed Daniela 

to record some of the lectures. 

Assigned “peer buddies,” fluent in 

Spanish, sat with her in class. If she 

didn’t understand something, the peer 

buddy would translate the lesson or 

re-explain it to her. And after school 

and on weekends, the other student 

was accessible by email and phone. 

Daniela’s discipline and determination 

did come with a downside 

for her, however: “I didn’t have time 

for sports or extracurricular activities 

because I was studying all the time. 

Faith kept her going 

On May 22, the unaccompanied 

minor graduated with her classmates 

from Sacred Heart High School. She 

said it was her Catholic faith that kept 

her going since she and her brother 

left Durango. And she believes that 

faith will continue to grow as she 

climbs the higher education ladder 

with a Transfer Pathway Collaboration 

award from Loyola Marymount 

University (LMU). 

Under the partnership, she’ll attend 

East Los Angeles College for two 

semesters, taking approved LMU 

transfer classes. If she keeps a 3.0 or 

better GPA, she’ll be automatically 

admitted to LMU. And if she earns a 

3.75 GPA or higher, she’ll receive a 

$5,000 annual Transfer Merit Scholarship 

for all three years at LMU. 

“Now that I have graduated from 

high school, I want to continue my 

studies, and I’ve already enrolled at 

East LA College,” she said. “I’m going 

An out-of-control humanitarian crisis 

A 

steady increase in the number of families and unaccompanied children 

showing up at the southern border and the policies implemented 

by the Trump administration to handle them, have created a crisis 

that is gathering increased attention and headlines in the United States and 

beyond. 

Thousands of families wait weeks and sometimes months near the border, 

due to a practice called “metering,” implemented by the Trump administration, 

which limits the number of people who can present themselves to 

legally request asylum. 

Lawyers and news reports have described overcrowded, dirty, and dangerous 

conditions inside Border Patrol holding cells and detention centers. 

Many report untreated illnesses, and seven children have died in custody 

over the last year. 

President Donald Trump blamed Democrats and threatened “millions of 

deportations” in mid-June if they didn’t change “asylum loopholes” in the 

laws which, he said, encourage people to come to the United States. He 

later said he would wait to start the “massive deportations” to allow Congress 

to negotiate. 

Democrats, in turn, said the president’s policies of “metering” and “Remain 

in Mexico” policy were making the problem worse and creating a 

human rights crisis on top of a humanitarian one. 

Government agencies in charge of immigration operations asserted that 

they didn’t have the funding to deal with the increased number of asylum-seekers, 

and right before the Independence Day recess, Congress 

passed a $4.6 billion emergency spending bill to provide aid to handle the 

crisis. 

The bill addressed only the money needed for immigration operations, 

but the Republican-controlled Senate was able to pressure Speaker Nancy 

Pelosi and congressional Democrats to pass its version. 

In the meantime, lawyers representing migrant children and the 1997 

Flores Settlement sought emergency orders to get detained children released 

to parents and relatives and provide them with basic necessities. 

to really try to keep a 3.0 average, so I 

can go on to LMU. I’m contemplating 

either going into medicine or engineering.” 

On April 26, she got her permanent 

resident Green Card as a “Special 

Immigrant Juvenile.” 

“I thank God, and Linda and 

Martha, and all the people who have 

helped me,” she said. “I thank God for 

everything that happened to me with 

the adversity of struggles I had. I feel 

blessed. It has made me stronger and 

determined to do good. And being 

resilient.” 

The mother she fled to, of course, 

is very proud, “Because I am the first 

in my family to graduate from high 

school,” Daniela pointed out. “And I’ll 

be the first to go on to college.” 

“I personally want to tell the other 

undocumented teenagers and children 

who are crossing over not to give 

up,” said her mentor-translator. “To 

have faith.” 

“And courage,” added the unaccompanied 

minor. 

“Pray and hope like Daniela did,” 

said Dakin-Grimm. “To have faith 

that there is someone out there who 

will be able to help them, and not 

give up in their studies. Because 

education is the most important thing 

they can obtain so they can have a 

brighter future. Because that’s the reason 

they’re crossing over — to change 

their lives.” 

“’Cause anything can be done with 

faith and hope,” said Daniela. 

R.W. Dellinger is the feaures editor of 

Angelus. 


Quest for transitional help 

A year after the White House pulled back on ‘zero 

tolerance,’ local Catholic aid groups say the crisis 

wrought by family separations is far from over 

BY PILAR MARRERO / ANGELUS 

When the Trump administration 

started to systematically 

separate asylum-seeker 

families as part of a “zero tolerance” 

immigration policy at the border just 

more than a year ago, the objective was 

to deter people from continuing to seek 

protection in the U.S. 

Carlos, 34, and his son Enrique, 13 

(not their real names), had to flee Guatemala 

at the very same time that this 

policy was in full effect between May 

and June of 2018 — and they suffered 

the brunt of it. 

They were separated for more than 

two months, and for most of that time 

Carlos didn’t know where his son was. 

“I had no intention of leaving my 

country, where I lived very well by 

planting and harvesting in season and 

then buying and selling in the market 

in Guatemala City,” explained Carlos, 

a slight man whose soft demeanor turns 

fierce when thinking about losing his 

son. 

“To think that I left Guatemala because 

corrupt police threatened my life 

and my son’s, to come here and have 

officials take my son away, it’s unbelievable. 

“What’s the difference? They were doing 

the same thing here that they were 

threatening in my country,” he added 

during an interview with Angelus News 

earlier this month in Southern California, 

where he awaits another court 

hearing on his asylum application 

while he and his son stay with a family 

friend from Guatemala. 

In this past year, families like Carlos’ 

were helped by an army of activists 

and lawyers who stood up to fight the 

federal government’s policies, and by 

Church volunteers offering legal and 

social assistance to thousands of others 

who have come since. 

The need seems overwhelming. 

‘Cases take a long time’ 

In Los Angeles, 18 attorneys work in 

overdrive at Esperanza Immigrants’ 

Rights Project, a project of Catholic 

Charities, where they are still processing 

and awaiting court dates on the 

cases of 35 of the families separated 

last year at the height of the “zero-tolerance” 

policy. 

“The cases are ongoing, we filed 

asylum applications and are waiting 

for hearings; most of these cases take a 

long time,” said Patricia Ortiz, program 

director for Esperanza. “We have seen 

the importance of having attorneys, because 

some of these cases would never 

make it without one.” 

For example, Esperanza’s attorneys 

took the case of an indigenous woman 

from Guatemala who had initially been 

denied her credible fear interview. She 

had been interviewed in her language, 

but she was too busy worrying about 

where her child was to understand the 

process and what was going on, said 

Ortiz. 

Last year, the Archdiocese of Los 

Angeles and Guadalupe Radio helped 

raise enough money to fund the work 

of one attorney and a little bit extra for 

gift cards for the families, said Ortiz. 

However, money remains tight. 

“We not only have the family separation 

cases, we have hundreds of other 

families seeking asylum that we are 

representing,” said Ortiz. “This crisis 

hasn’t stopped, and any new rules 

aren’t going to fix the bigger issue that 

A group of asylum-seekers before leaving Our Lady of Soledad Church in Coachella by bus for 

New York and Florida. 

FATHER GUY WILSON 


PILAR MARRERO 

Carlos and Enrique 

causes these migrants to leave their 

country.” 

Carlos and his son Enrique illustrate 

one of the typical reasons people leave 

their countries, fleeing for their lives: 

they get targeted by gangs or, in his 

case, corrupt police. 

Carlos had been kidnapped for ransom 

by members of the Guatemalan 

National Police that turned up in his 

small town one evening in May of last 

year. For two days they beat him until 

he gave up his brother’s phone number 

so they could call and request money 

in exchange for his life. 

The money, worth a year’s earnings 

for Carlos, was found among the most 

affluent wholesalers at the market and 

taken as a loan by his brother. He was 

let go, but a couple of weeks later, 

another request came, this time for 

more money. 

“They said that they would go after 

my son, who was then 12,” Carlos 

recalled. “So I told him we were going 

on an adventure, gathered a little money, 

and left. My wife and my two small 

daughters stayed behind. That’s why I 

can’t publicize my name or my face.” 

The trip took a month and at least 12 

risky jumps between trains in Mexico. 

At the border in McAllen, he stepped 

over the line a few times until he saw 

Border Patrol agents coming at him. “I 

wanted to do things legally, and go to 

them with an asylum request,” he said. 

Four hours later, an agent took his 

son away. Nobody told him where he 

was going or why. They took Carlos to 

court in Texas, where he was quickly 

convicted of illegal border crossing and 

sentenced to three days in jail. Then he 

was transferred to Port Isabel Detention 

Center, where he continuously made 

requests for information about his son. 

“They kept telling me they didn’t 

know. I would answer: ‘How come 

you didn’t know? You took him,’ ” 

he remembered. “One time an ICE 

agent told me that it was my fault for 

doing this and that he was going to be 

adopted.” 

One night at the detention center, 

Carlos was watching Telemundo when 

he heard that federal judge Dana Sabraw 

had issued an injunction ordering 

families to be reunited. He figured that 

his son had to be in one of the children’s 

shelters, and told a social worker 

that if his son was not given back to 


him, he would call the TV station. 

“Two days later they released him 

to me,” he recalled. “I thought I was 

never going to see him again, that I 

had come to this country to give my 

son away.” 

They both now live in Riverside, 

California, in the home of a family 

friend from Guatemala, while waiting 

for their court date. 

Long road to reunification 

Federal authorities have yet to offer a 

full account of everyone who was arbitrarily 

separated last year. Further study 

by the Department of Health and Human 

Services (HHS) inspector general 

found that the massive separations did 

not start in May with the “zero-tolerance” 

announcement by then-Attorney 

General Jeff Sessions, but months 

before, in the summer of 2017. 

Many of them are still separated, 

particularly dozens of families where 

the parents were deported and the 

children stayed behind. 

“Did the separated families get relief 

and justice after Judge Sabraw issued 

his order?” is the rhetorical question 

asked by attorney Linda Dakin-Grimm, 

a pro bono advocate who 

is representing Carlos and Enrique as 

part of joint efforts with KIND (Kids in 

Need of Defense) in Los Angeles. 

“My experience is that many families 

were horribly mistreated and got no 

semblance of justice,” she answered. 

“Family separation stopped being the 

default policy because the judge ordered 

the government to stop doing it, 

but it has continued to be the practice 

“This crisis hasn’t stopped and any new rules 

aren’t going to fix the bigger issue that causes 

these migrants to leave their country.” 

they use when they feel like it.” 

Department of Homeland Security 

and Trump administration officials 

maintain that “zero-tolerance” is no 

longer the practice, and they have 

until October to come up with a full 

accounting of how many families 

they separated and what happened to 

them. “Those issues will go back to the 

One of the families served in Our Lady of Soledad Church. 

judge,” said Dakin-Grimm. 

Recently released figures indicate 

that the flow of asylum-seekers reached 

a fever pitch in May of 2019, when 

more than 144,200 migrants were 

arrested and taken into custody along 

the southwestern border, a 32 percent 

increase from April and the highest 

monthly total in seven years. President 

Donald Trump blamed the increase 

on ending family separations, which 

he called a “disaster.” 

Border Patrol facilities are so overwhelmed 

that they no longer have the 

capacity to keep the migrants detained 

or near the border. In California, it has 

resulted in hundreds of families being 

dropped off at bus stops in Coachella, 

a desert city in San Bernardino County 

better known for its annual music 

festival. 

Thanks to a relationship developed 

with the Diocese of San Bernardino, 

Border Patrol has been dropping off 

migrants at Our Lady of Soledad 

Church in Coachella. 

“We are filled to capacity,” explained 

Father Guy Wilson. “Fortunately, we 

have an ideal facility called the Valley 

Missionary Program and we have a 

dormitory with places to sleep, shower, 

a large kitchen, rooms to do intake, 

rooms for children to recreate. This 

is where many of these families have 

found transitional help thanks to our 

many volunteers.” 

More than 6,000 people belonging to 

migrant families in the process of applying 

for asylum have passed through 

the parish in the last six months. 

John Andrews, director of communications 

for the San Bernardino 

Diocese, explained that they get “a 

place to rest, time to be embraced by 

the local community of faith, food 

and clothing, as well as help in getting 

them to public transportation and 

to their final destination all over the 

country.” 

It takes about three days for families 

to transition. But families haven’t 

stopped coming. “Right now we have 

100 to 200 new people arriving every 

day,” said Wilson. “We‘ve been able to 

get money from the state and get many 

volunteers, but we have money only 

through the end of this month. We 

are asking Congressman Raul Ruiz, 

D-Calif., who represents the area, to 

find more resources for us, and we are 

hopeful.” 

Pilar Marrero is a journalist who for 

25 years has extensively covered the areas 

of city government, immigration and 

state and national politics. She works 

for La Opinión as a senior reporter. 

SAN BERNARDINO DIOCESE 



Members of the Office of Life, Justice and Peace have processed tens of thousands of letters from Los Angeles Catholics opposing SB360. 

SARAH YAKLIC 

A moment for unity 

Why standing up for the sacredness of 

confession isn’t only a job for Catholics 

BY KATHLEEN BUCKLEY DOMINGO / ANGELUS 

“The Religion then of every man must 

be left to the conviction and conscience 

of every man: and it is the right of 

every man to exercise it as these may 

dictate.” — James Madison, 1785 

In the lead-up to the Fourth of July 

holiday, Catholics in the U.S. celebrate 

Religious Freedom Week. 

We give thanks for our great country, 

whose founding fathers established 

in law our ability to practice our faith 

according to our consciences, not subject 

to governmental decree. Today, 

this freedom we celebrate is under 

attack in California. 

On Trinity Sunday, Archbishop José 

H. Gomez asked all parishioners in 

the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to join 

efforts to oppose Senate Bill 360, a 

bill that would require clergy to report 

allegations of child abuse to the police 

even if the information is received 

through the sacrament of confession. 

The California legislation seeks to 

undermine our First Amendment 

rights and fundamentally change the 

way we live our Catholic faith. 

The call to action stirred the hearts 

of tens of thousands of parishioners 

who that day signed letters of opposition 

for their Assembly members. 

Signed letters are now headed to the 

Assembly Public Safety Committee, 

which will vote on the bill July 9. 

We are asking for a “No” vote on SB 

360, unless it is amended to secure 

religious freedom for all people. 

SB 360 seeks to provide greater 

protection against child abuse, a goal 

we adamantly share. Throughout the 

legislative process, Catholic leaders 

have worked with the bill’s author 

and other legislators to strengthen and 

clarify language around mandatory 

reporting requirements. 

All priests, Catholic educators, and 

many other lay staff members in 

our parishes and schools are already 

mandated reporters for cases of child 

abuse. 

For priests, there is only one instance 

in which everything told to them is 

kept private: the sacrament of confession. 

In this sacrament, we confess our 

sins to the mercy of God, through the 

person of the priest, who stands in the 

place of Jesus. The communication 

between the priest and the penitent 

is no one’s business but God’s. No 


person has claim to those words. 

SB 360 would, through legislative 

decree, tell Catholics how they are 

able to practice their faith. The bill 

calls for an exception — that the right 

to a private confession between the 

penitent and the priest is only reserved 

for some Catholics but not for others. 

The language of the bill, particular 

in scope, has ramifications for all 

people of faith across our country. 

Until this time, our First Amendment 

right to practice our Catholic faith 

free from government interference has 

been inviolable. And it should remain 

so. SB 360 is an aggressive overstep of 

political power. 

This government intrusion may also 

immediately affect our brothers and 

sisters in the Orthodox and Episcopalian 

churches and members of the 

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day 

Saints, all of whom have private penitential 

communications. 

Further, if SB 360 is allowed to 

stand, it sets a dangerous precedent 

for further violations of religious 

liberty. 

Earlier in June, Archbishop Gomez 

celebrated the Mass of Cultures at the 

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels 

in Los Angeles. This annual tradition 

brings together people from every culture 

and the more than 40 languages 

we serve in the archdiocese. Many 

of those celebrating arrived in the 

U.S. from countries suffering terrible 

religious persecution. 

Archbishop Gomez shared these 

words: 

“We have all come to this city from 

every part of the earth to live and 

worship as one people. And in this 

moment, I think we all have a new 

responsibility to work for the unity of 

the Church. 

“One of my dreams for the Church 

in Los Angeles is that we can keep 

going deeper in our communion, 

our unity, our sense that we are one 

people with a common identity and a 

common mission.” 

Our world is becoming increasingly 

hostile to people of faith, whose 

consciences often prompt them to be 

countercultural on both the left and 

the right sides of issues. SB 360 goes 

one step further and is a direct attack 

on the practice of religion itself. 

Bishop Robert E. Barron poses with a stack of 

signed petitions, which towers over his head, 

from Los Angeles Catholics opposing SB360. 

This stack represents only a fraction of the letters 

that will be mailed to the Assembly Public 

Safety Committee. 

This is the moment for unity. 

We ask our brothers and sisters of 

every faith to lend your voices to this 

effort to protect religious liberty for 

all people. An attack on religious freedom 

for one is an attack on religious 

freedom for all. 

We ask all Catholics to invite friends 

and family members of different faiths 

and religious traditions to unite in 

defense of the freedoms upon which 

our great country was founded. 

We ask our elected officials to reconsider 

SB 360 and amend it to respect 

the religious freedom our founding 

fathers guaranteed for all. 

SB 360 is set for hearing in the 

Assembly Public Safety Committee 

on July 9. Assembly members will 

have the benefit of phone calls, emails 

and tens of thousands of signed letters 

from concerned Californians when 

deliberating on the bill. If you have 

not yet voiced your opposition to SB 

360, and your call for religious freedom 

for all, please visit KeepTheSeal. 

com. 

Kathleen Buckley Domingo is the 

senior director of the Archdiocese of 

Los Angeles’ Office of Life, Justice and 

Peace. 

ARCHDIOCESE OF LOS ANGELES 


A damaged church in the old city of Mosul, Iraq, in 2018, is marked as unsafe because of the danger of unexploded ordnance and improvised explosive 

devices. 

PAUL JEFFREY/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE 

A rough return from exile 

How long can Iraqi Christians last in a country 

with such little promise for the future? 

BY JOHN L. ALLEN JR. / ANGELUS 

ROME — One year ago, Inés 

San Martín of Crux and I 

took a reporting trip to the 

Nineveh Plains of northern 

Iraq, where local Christians are struggling 

to rebuild their homes in the 

wake of destruction caused by a brutal 

ISIS occupation. 

A couple of months later, Elise 

Harris of Crux also visited northern 

Iraq, getting to some of the places 

San Martín and I weren’t able to go, 

including the city of Mosul, where, at 

the time, there was hope of a Christian 

return from exile, too. 

What all of us came away with 

was a deep sense of hope. We were 

astounded by the resilience and the 

determination of the Christians we 

met, stirred by the sense that perhaps 

Christianity has a future in the region 

after all. 

One year later we find ourselves 

wondering if we were naïve, watching 

conditions deteriorate and Christians 

once again in peril. 

Recently Archbishop Najib Mikhael 

Moussa of Mosul, appointed by Pope 

Francis in 2018, conceded that very 

few Christians are actually returning 

to the battered city. 

Moussa told EuroNews that only 

about 30 Christian families, just 10 

percent of the pre-ISIS Christian population 

of the city, have come back, 

due both to security fears and to the 


lack of economic opportunities. 

Recently, a contact in Iraq who facilitated 

our travel a year ago said Harris 

was lucky to have seen Mosul when 

she did, because he wouldn’t recommend 

such a trip today. 

“The power of the militias is growing 

all the time,” he said, referring to 

Kurdish and Iranian-backed armed 

groups who often serve as the de facto 

governments in some parts of northern 

Iraq. 

The May 13 election of Mansour 

Mareid al-Jubouri as the new provincial 

governor further alarmed many 

religious minorities in the area, since 

he’s seen as backed 

by those militias 

politically and financially. 

He’s an active 

member of the Ataa 

movement, led by 

Popular Mobilization 

Forces leader 

Faleh al-Fayyad, 

which includes militias 

loyal to Iran. 

Many Iraqi Christians 

are convinced 

they’re witnessing an 

Iranian-sponsored 

push for “demographic 

change,” 

meaning Shiite 

colonization of historically 

Christian 

towns in the area. 

This effort, combined 

with the militias’ 

hostile behavior, 

threatens both 

government and private investment in 

northern Iraq, threatening the viability 

of Christian and Yazidi communities 

returning home. 

In several traditionally Christian 

villages of the Nineveh Plains — such 

as Telesqof, where rebuilding has 

been financed by the government 

of Hungary, and Karemlesh, where 

support has come from the Knights of 

Columbus — things look better, as a 

significant share of Christian homes 

have already been restored and a 

higher percentage of the pre-ISIS population 

has returned. 

Even in those relatively secure enclaves, 

however, things still feel fragile 

and tenuous and fear is a daily reality. 

Syriac Catholic Archbishop Yohanna Moshe of Mosul, Iraq, center, concelebrates the liturgy at 

St. Thomas Syriac Catholic Church in the old city of Mosul Feb. 28. Announcing his desire to 

visit Iraq in 2020, Pope Francis called for a peaceful resolution to crises in the Middle East. 

When we asked a year ago if people 

were confident they’d still be in those 

villages 10 years from now, or if a new 

wave of violence could still drive them 

out, virtually no one was willing to say 

they felt sure. 

Further, the international support 

for rebuilding hasn’t been quite as 

massive as some appear to think. 

This spring, Archbishop Bashar 

Warda in the Kurish capital of Erbil, 

whose archdiocese became ground 

zero for refugees fleeing ISIS in 2014, 

was forced to try to quash rumors that 

he was suddenly swimming in American 

money after the Trump administration 

announced it would provide 

grants directly to religious entities in 

the region with the best chance of 

putting the funds to work for the people 

for whom they were intended. 

“People think that the Church, or 

our archdiocese, has directly received 

hundreds of millions of dollars in 

American aid, and they are demanding 

that we explain how we spent it,” 

Warda said at the time, insisting this 

just isn’t the case. At the time, the 

only U.S. aid he’d actually received 

was $350,000 for rubble-clearing 

equipment. 

Recently I spoke to a longtime activist 

on behalf of Iraqi Christians, who 

said that although media outlets conventionally 

report that Iraq’s Christian 

population has dropped to around 

250,000 from a high of 1.5 million 

before the 2003 U.S. invasion, the real 

numbers are likely lower. 

His prediction is that the Christian 

community will drop all the way to 

around 30,000 people, clustered in 

a mere handful of the wider set of 

villages that were in Christian hands 

prior to ISIS. Already, he said, the 

village of Batnaya is lost to the militias, 

and he believes more will follow 

either because of attrition, outright 

compulsion, or both. 

Before ISIS, Batnaya was a bustling 

town with some 800 

Christian families, 

but today only 350 

of its previous families 

even remain in 

the country. Though 

technically free from 

ISIS, it’s located in 

a “no man’s land,” 

KHALID AL-MOUSILY/REUTERS VIA CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE 

trapped on the 

wrong side of a border 

between Kurdish 

“peshmerga” (“fighting 

group”) forces 

and Shiite militias 

backed by Iran. 

In his late May 

interview with 

EuroNews, Moussa 

confidently asserted 

that Christianity in 

Iraq “will not and 

will never die.” 

Taken literally, he’s 

probably right. There always will be 

some sort of Christian toehold in Iraq, 

one of the most ancient Christian 

communities in the world, where the 

roots of the Catholic faith reach all 

the way back to the era of the apostles. 

Yet there’s an important difference 

between survival and thriving. One 

year ago, hope for the latter at least 

seemed to have a fighting chance in 

terms of Iraqi Christians; right now, 

the former seems the more plausible 

scenario, unless, of course, the 

international community steps up its 

involvement considerably, and soon. 

John L. Allen Jr. is the editor of Crux. 


This photo, taken on Aug. 9, 2017, shows the leader of Luz Del Mundo, Naasón Joaquín Garcia, walking among his parishioners in Guadalajara, 

Mexico. Naasón was arrested in California on charges of human trafficking, child rape and other felonies, authorities said on June 4. 

Learning from Luz del Mundo 

While a sect deals with scandal, Catholics 

face a more dangerous threat: ignorance 

ULISES RUIZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES 

BY MSGR. RICHARD ANTALL / ANGELUS 

The church called “La Iglesia 

del Dios Vivo, Columna y 

Apoyo de la Verdad, La Luz 

del Mundo” (“The Church 

of the Living God, Pillar and Ground 

of Truth, the Light of the World”), has 

been in the news lately. 

Their leading “Apostle,” Naasón 

Joaquín Garcia, was arrested at LAX 

June 3 and charged with human trafficking, 

rape, and child pornography. 

The allegations have upset the faithful 

in more than 40 Luz Del Mundo 

(LDM) congregations in Southern 

California. 

Naasón is considered a living 

“Apostle” of Jesus Christ, just as were 

his father, Samuel Joaquín Flores, 

and grandfather, Eusebio Joaquín 

Gonzalez, who founded the sect in 

Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1926. I was 

familiar with LDM and its churches 

in El Salvador, but did not know any 

of its theology until I read an item in 

a Mexican digital periodical called 

YoInfluyo. 

Wikipedia describes LDM as a 

“non-Trinitarian” Christian church, 

a contradiction in terms, but one that 

illustrates that its adherents are much 

like the Arian heresy I just read about 

in Mike Aquilina’s book, “Villains of 

the Early Church.” The old heresies 

don’t die, they just change their 

names. 

The movement Eusebio founded 

in the midst of the Cristero crisis in 

Mexico sees itself as a “restoration” of 

the primitive Church of Jesus Christ. 

The believers in LDM think that 

God called Eusebio to refound the 

church, which had ceased to exist 

from the time of the apostles until 

1926. They refuse to call themselves 

Protestants, although much of their 

style is like the Pentecostal churches. 

Eusebio was a soldier in the Mexican 

army when his wife converted to 

Pentecostalism. They belonged to a 

congregation that was visited by two 

prophets, both with multiple wives, 

who dressed in tunics, had long hair 

and beards and wore sandals. One of 

the prophets, Silas, baptized Eusebio 

and gave him and his wife asylum 

when he deserted from the military. 

One night, Eusebio had a vision and 


heard a call to be “Aaron.” He left 

the service of the polygamous prophets 

and eventually made his way to 

Guadalajara. (His entrance there on 

December 12 is an LDM holy day.) 

Guadalajara was a focal point of the 

religious civil war called La Cristiada 

in Mexican history, a Catholic uprising 

against the revolutionary regime 

that was also anticlerical and atheistic. 

Within that context of government 

persecution of the Catholic Church, 

Eusebio maneuvered to identify his 

sect with the ideals of the revolution 

of 1910. 

The sect had internal problems that 

resulted in Eusebio being rebaptized 

in 1938 and in 1943. 

The first rebaptism (not counting 

his Catholic baptism as a child) was 

because he realized 

that the prophet Silas 

had incorrectly invoked 

the Trinity instead of 

baptizing only “in the 

name of Jesus.” 

When Eusebio broke 

with the minister who 

had rebaptized him, Lino Figueroa, 

he did the honors for himself and 

then required the rebaptism of all the 

members of the sect. 

Those schisms led to what the 

sociologist Jason H. Dormady (“Primitive 

Revolution,” University of New 

Mexico Press, 2011) has called the 

“consolidation” of his power. His 

“Apostleship” was exclusive, a divine 

vocation based on the corruption of 

the Catholic Church. 

When Eusebio died in 1964, his 

authority and power was then passed 

on to his son, Samuel Joaquín Flores, 

who died in 2014, and then to his son, 

Naasón, currently held on bail for $50 

million. 

Although he struggled in the fractious 

first decades of his movement’s 

foundation, Eusebio achieved an alliance 

with the local leadership of the 

Partido Revolucionario Institucional 

(PRI), which ruled Mexico as a single 

party state for decades. 

In the words of Dormady’s academic 

study of the movement, “They were 

able to parlay their vocal adherence to 

PRI policy into favors and protection 

in a system absent the rule of law for 

religious rights and freedoms.” 

Even today, LDM has significant 

support among elected officials. Naasón 

was feted in the Palacio de Bellas 

Artes (the Mexican national ballet’s 

theater home) just weeks before his 

arrest, and President Andrés López 

Obrador pleaded ignorance when 

asked about the accusations against 

Naason — while making sure to 

mention that he believes in “respect 

and tolerance.” 

Independent of the legal case against 

Naason, the attention to his sect 

should be a call to action for Catholics. 

How many Catholics realize the size 

and strength of LDM, which claims 

5 million members worldwide and 

a presence in 50 different nations? 

How many Catholics understand the 

crucial differences between LDM 

People who have lost their traditional way of life 

tend to lose some of the values associated with 

that life. Among them are religious values. 

and proper Christian groups, which, 

although not in union with the Catholic 

Church, are at least Trinitarian in 

belief? 

The case of LDM is not unique. 

There are great gaps in our knowledge 

of Mexico and its religious history. 

One could not imagine two European 

nations with shared borders with an 

ignorance of history like America’s 

lack of knowledge of the history of 

Mexico. 

Amid a reality in which no country 

in the world is guaranteed a Catholic 

future, ignorance is part of the problem. 

How many priests — let alone 

average Catholics — even know what 

the congregants of the church down 

the street profess to believe? 

I am not just talking about apologetics, 

which would obviously be helpful. 

What is necessary is to understand 

the social and psychological underpinnings 

behind the loss of loyalty to 

Catholicism and Catholic beliefs. 

Some sociologists argue that the success 

of LDM as a religious movement 

has much to do with the history of 

persecution and institutional instability 

in Mexican society. The violence 

of the civil war and the economic 

hardship that accompanied it and 

the worldwide Depression caused an 

internal immigration from the countryside 

to the city. 

People who have lost their traditional 

way of life tend to lose some of the 

values associated with that life. 

Among them are religious values. 

Chaos brought by abrupt and wholesale 

changes in revolutionary societies 

(or societies like our own, which have 

lost their traditional value systems, 

such as Ireland) engenders movements 

that appear to be reactionary 

(e.g., the way the women of LDM 

dress, their hierarchical structure, 

indoctrination in literalist interpretations 

of the world and Scripture) but 

are actually extraordinary breaks with 

traditional religious culture. 

Look no further than 

the substitution of the 

apostle’s entrance in 

Guadalajara for the 

feast of Our Lady of 

Guadalupe. 

Understanding is not 

the same as faith, and 

the “crisis du jour” (“crisis of the day”) of 

our Church is about something Bl. John 

Henry Newman called the great “apostasia” 

(“apostasy”) of the modern age. 

However, faith without understanding, 

which does not do its homework, 

is irresponsible. Ignorance of the 

varieties of religious experience on 

the menu of our culture, especially 

the varieties that seem to be attracting 

Catholics and the famous “nones,” is 

culpable. 

God will always be with his Church, 

which as Newman said, “has been too 

often in what seemed deadly peril, that 

we should fear for it any new trial now.” 

But there is clearly work to be done. 

The dramatic arrest of a religious 

leader and the charges brought against 

him should make us see beyond the 

present situation to the historical 

and social context that produced his 

leadership in the first place, and make 

us think of how ignorance of the 

other religions is making the Church 

increasingly vulnerable. 

Msgr. Richard Antall is pastor of 

Holy Name Church in Cleveland, 

Ohio, and author of the new book “The 

Wedding” (Lambing Press, $16.95). 


AD REM 

BY ROBERT BRENNAN 

Baby you’re a rich man 

Scripture informs us that the 

poor we will have with us 

always. Therefore, I think the 

logical flip side of that coin is 

that we must come to grips with the 

notion we will always have the rich 

with us as well. That fact was abundantly 

clear at the fundraising gala I 

recently attended. 

The event took place in a Beverly 

Hills hotel ballroom, and as I waited 

for festivities to begin I was mesmerized 

by the parade of luxury cars 

pulling up to the valet. 

It was as close to a Hollywood version 

of extravagant wealth you were 

ever going to see, with a cavalcade 

of people getting out of cars holding 

Rodeo Drive shopping bags, wearing 

shoes that cost more than a monthly 

payment on a Honda Civic, with 

many accompanied by little dogs with 

sparkly collars. 

I felt like an imposter, and it was 

a strange dichotomy of seeing one 

person holding a Maltese Poodle with 

a diamond dog collar enter the hotel 

and another woman of probably greater 

wealth walking into the fundraising 

gala and donating money in a reserved 

and almost anonymous manner. 

At the gala I felt humbled, seeing so 

many wealthy men and women eagerly 

parting with substantial amounts 

of their own treasure for the sake of 

others. 

This is not a diatribe against the rich. 

It is a diatribe of sorts though, about 

a culture that idolizes the pursuit of 

wealth and its flaunting. There was 

a lot of flaunting going on in that 

hotel valet line, but like just about 

Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles, California. 

everything else under the sun, this is 

not new. 

People pursued ostentatious wealth 

in the court of Nebuchadnezzar and 

they do the same on reality television 

shows. The thing that is new is 

that during the time of Babylonian 

potentates all the way up through the 

Industrial Revolution, wealth was a 

very restricted commodity. 

Granted, we have all heard about 

the 1 percent, the kind of people I 

saw the other night at a Beverly Hills 

hotel getting out of their Rolls Royces, 

Aston Martins, and Bentleys, but due 

to technology and economic and political 

innovations, wealth has become 

a much more relative term, especially 

in LA, where the entertainment industry 

holds so much sway and has the 

ability to create instant millionaires 

out of people with little or no discernible 

talent. 

How relative a term wealth has 

become was made even more clear to 

me several years ago when I accompanied 

some flying doctors down to 

Mexico. This was a group of medical 

SHUTTERSTOCK 


professionals who also loved to fly, so 

they combined those twin passions 

and in turn provided much-needed 

medical care to very poor people in 

a remote Mexican town called El 

Fuerte. 

Disclaimer: I was just a passenger 

working on a magazine article about 

this group of flying doctors, so I can 

claim no personal philanthropic 

currency. 

Nevertheless, it was a trip that was 

good for my soul. These doctors 

(all rich enough to have their own 

airplanes) did not have to do what 

they were doing. These doctors were 

not showing off their wealth for others 

to see. 

Instead, they used substantial parts 

of it to take care of others. And trust 

me, the people in El Fuerte were poor 

in a way no one in Los Angeles or 

America in general can come close to 

duplicating. 

It was by seeing how really poor people 

live, I came to know how materially 

well off I am, even if I can’t buy 

an Aston Martin, and wealthy not just 

in some ethereal way with blessings I 

need to be thankful to God that don’t 

have a monetary value. 

I am certainly blessed in abundances 

with undeserved graces I could 

never, ever repay, but I also know I am 

wealthy in material things and I need 

to do more with them. 

It’s our natural state that our culture 

is obsessed with wealth. Every culture 

known to man has had the same affliction. 

If there had been cable TV in 

598 B.C., I’m sure we would have had 

a show called “Keeping Up with the 

Babylonians.” And as a more modern, 

but long ago for us, movie actress of 

the last century quipped, “I’ve been 

rich, and I’ve been poor … rich is 

better.” 

Rich is better — if we use it to 

hold up others more than ourselves. 

Since God is so good at providing for 

us everything we need rather than 

everything we want, the question 

is probably figuring out how much 

wealth we really need. 

Robert Brennan is director of communications 

at The Salvation Army 

California South Division in Van 

Nuys, California. 

July 5-12, 2019 • ANGELUS • 25

Animated characters Buzz Lightyear, voiced by Tim Allen, Woody, voiced by Tom Hanks, and Bo, voiced by Annie Potts, in the movie “Toy Story 4.” 

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/DISNEY 

Keeping a millennial 

classic alive 

24 years after the original, ‘Toy Story 4’ unites classic and new 

BY SOPHIA BUONO / ANGELUS 

Ever since the announcement 

of Disney/Pixar’s “Toy Story 

4,” the question naturally 

arose, “What is there left to 

say?” After all, the bittersweet image 

of Woody bidding “so long, partner” to 

his owner Andy, driving away to college, 

made for a perfect curtain call. 

And so the latest film in the series, 

released June 21, sets out to convince 

audiences that what seemed like an 

ending was just a transition to a new 

stage in the lives of some of Pixar’s 

oldest and most beloved characters. 

Now the eager playmates of the 

adorable Bonnie, Woody, and the 

gang find themselves encountering 

new challenges and adventures, from 

the troubles of kindergarten to the 

creation of strange new toys out of 

utensils, all while still carrying memories 

and lessons from their past life 

with Andy. 

Bonnie’s family road trip, which 

includes stops at an antique shop and 

a carnival, is a smart narrative setup 

to bring those old and new elements 

together into one coherent story. 

Coming so late in the game to the 

quarter-century-old franchise, “Toy 

Story 4” had to walk a tightrope 

between maintaining the spirit of an 

elegantly crafted trio and avoiding a 

rehash of the familiar storylines. 

At the same time, director Josh 

Cooley and his team had plenty of 

room to mark their own territory (keep 

in mind that many children who 

went to see it in theaters this weekend 

weren’t even around for the 2010 

unveiling of “Toy Story 3,” and for 

all of them, the original 1995 masterpiece 

might as well be categorized as 

an oldie). 

For those who have soaked in the 

series from start to finish, “Toy Story 

4” might not have been the stunning 

encore that “Toy Story 3” surprised us 

with back in 2010, but it walked the 

tightrope fairly well. 

Like “Toy Story 3,” this sequel 

brought in a new director, although 

thankfully it kept John Lasseter, the 

mastermind behind the original story, 

on the writing team. And while older 

audiences will recognize and love 

their old talking toy friends throughout 

the film, from the outset “Toy 

Story 4” has a unique flavor. 

In contrast to the first three movies, 

each of which opened with an 

imaginative and humorous playtime 

scene, this one launches into a very 

real, very stormy night in which a 

toy is at risk of being whisked down a 

flooded gutter. The hugely advanced 


animation presents an Andy who looks 

almost nothing like his 1995 self, and 

his place in the story is now only as a 

memory. 

As the story unfolds, it continues 

to stand apart when we see which 

characters step into the spotlight — 

and which do not. Most of the older 

characters (Slinky, the Potato Heads, 

Ham, and Rex) have faded to the 

backdrop, and even Buzz Lightyear is 

on screen only for limited (and somewhat 

doltish) comic relief. 

The exception to these shifts, of 

course, is the noble sheriff Woody, the 

central hero throughout the series and 

the strongest tie between this movie 

and the others. 

The new characters who now take 

primacy do not fail to provide a 

compelling storyline and spark several 

laughs. 

The script doesn’t reach the level of 

hilarious lines that Pixar is known for, 

but it is hard to resist the dynamic duo 

Ducky and Bunny (essentially Key 

and Peele in animation form), and 

the initial cringe that comes with the 

plain weirdness of Forky soon gives 

way to amusement. 

Still, the film does not lend quite 

enough time or development to 

these characters to make them more 

memorable (unlike “Toy Story 2” did 

with Jessie and “Toy Story 3” did with 

Barbie and Ken, who were also sorely 

missed). 

And then, of course, there is the most 

anticipated character in the film, Bo 

Peep, who returns after a mysterious 

absence in the previous film. Now a 

free-spirited lost toy, Bo has shed her 

bonnet and wears pants rather than a 

petticoat, making her more like a new 

character than her former self. 

Bo always had some sass, so her 

tough-girl persona now isn’t entirely 

off-putting, but the fact that her original 

sweetness is largely gone makes 

her less endearing and her romantic 

connection with Woody less satisfying. 

The two exchange some lessons and 

strengthen each other’s characters, 

but Bo’s scorn for the mission that has 

always defined Woody — to be a loyal 

toy for a child — can’t help but raise 

the notion that the sheriff could have 

done better. 

To be fair, “Toy Story 4” brings 

unexpected twists that prevent it from 

being redundant. In the end, it cannot 

avoid being a film that stands just a 

few feet apart from the others, but 

that could just be the natural result of 

coming along so many years later. 

And with such stellar characters and 

storylines to work with, any production 

team would find themselves well 

set up for a fun yet touching movie, 

which this one was. Woody’s loyalty is 

still inspiring, playtime is still treasured 

as a magical moment, and Randy 

Newman’s music still rings true. 

“Toy Story 4” might be a movie for 

a new generation, but it is still a “Toy 

Story” film, and that still makes it 

worth watching this summer. 

Sophia Buono is a writer living in 

Arlington, Virginia. 

Forky, voiced by Tony Hale, and Bonnie, voiced by Madeleine McGraw, in “Toy Story 4.” 

IMDB 


THE CRUX 

BY HEATHER KING 

Echo Park Lake in Los Angeles. 

SHUTTERSTOCK 

LA’s lotus thief 

A history of mystery, intrigue, and crime in Echo Park 

Echo Park, the LA neighborhood 

hard by downtown, 

boasts the largest lotus stand 

in the western United States. 

The lake where the lotuses live 

began as a man-made reservoir back 

in 1868. A surrounding park and 

boathouse were completed by 1895. 

By 1907, more green space had been 

added by extending the park south to 

Temple and north to Bellevue. 

The lotuses bloom each summer, 

usually peaking in early July. 

And they’re surrounded by mystery, 

intrigue, and crime. 

For starters, nobody really knows 

where the original flowers came from. 

One legend, never proven, holds that 

Angelus Temple missionaries, followers 

of Aimee Semple McPherson, 

brought the seeds back from China. 

An 1889 LA Times article mentions 

that a J.C. Harvey planned to donate 

some Egyptian lotuses from the Nile 

to area parks, but the Echo Park flowers 

are not Egyptian lotuses, nor are 

they water lilies. 

Instead, says landscape architect and 

certified arborist Michael O’Brien, 

“Nelumbo nucifera is native to South 


Asia to Australia and is grown in 

tropical climates around the world. As 

to where these plants came from, the 

source is lost in the mists of time.” 

Though the exact date is unknown, 

the lotuses by all accounts first 

appeared in the lake during the 

1920s. At the time, water gardens 

had become au courant citywide. So 

had Egyptology, exotic locales, and a 

vague Eastern-philosophy aesthetic. 

A 1929 LA Times photo caption 

reads, “Right now the beds of lotus 

lilies in Echo Park, Los Angeles, are 

coming into perfection. These are 

the sacred lilies of India, symbols of 

immortality, and to the Hindu mind 

the most perfect of all flowers.” 

As for the intrigue, a 2013 LA Times 

piece by Marisa Gerber entitled “The 

salvation of Echo Park’s lotus bed is 

rooted in a bit of thievery” tells the story. 

The annual Lotus Festival began in 

the 1970s. So popular was the lake 

and its annual display that the Echo 

Park neighborhood council adopted 

the lotus as its logo. 

All went along nicely for many years. 

But in the early 2000s, the lotuses 

started dying — no one knew why. 

Predators? Pollution? By 2008, they 

were gone. Angelenos, heartbreakingly, 

still showed up for the festival. 

Then, in 2007, the Los Angeles City 

Council approved a $45 million expenditure 

to drain the lake and restore 

the site to its former glory. 

Meanwhile in 2005, an LA horticulturist 

named Randy McDonald attended 

the festival, illegally hacksawed 

and stole a single lotus shoot and, 

back at his Reseda nursery, obsessively 

tended it. News traveled through the 

underground plant grapevine and 

eventually made its way to landscape 

architect Josh Segal. 

The upshot? The next year, McDonald 

ended up selling 376 lotus plants 

back to the city for 30 grand. 

Only in LA. 

Today, approaching the lake, you can 

find a nod to history in the form of an 

earth mother-lotus goddess mural by 

Ricardo Mendoza (2012) at the corner 

of Echo Park Avenue and Sunset 

Boulevard. 

The lake is surrounded by shade 

trees and features marshy areas, shallows, 

and inlets. A fountain, installed 

as part of public improvements during 

the 1984 Olympics, thrillingly spouts 

three jets of water high into the sky. 

Mallard ducks float regally across the 

mirrored surface. Canada geese nest. 

Clumps of water reeds sport spikes of 

purple flowers. 

A child’s imagination could run wild 

here. Captain Hook might be lurking 

in a lagoon. Tinkerbell could be 

curled up on one of those cup-shaped 

green leaves. You could run away 

from your mean parents and live here 

with the lotuses alongside Thumbelina, 

the Little Mermaid, and the Water 

Babies. 

A leisurely half-hour stroll around 

the perimeter is just the activity to 

soothe jangled urban nerves. My 

fellow walkers comprised a typical LA 

mix of fitness buffs, street photographers, 

tourists, dreamers, pre-gentrification 

locals, and unidentifiable 

riff-raff such as myself. Elderly couples 

slowly circle, homeless folks are 

spread out on the grass, a few hardy 

souls fish. 

The lotuses themselves are exquisite, 

ranging in color from mother-of-pearl 

to creamy pale gold to lipstick pink. 

In some parts of the lake, the flowers 

reach their necks several feet above 

the water. In others, they waft charmingly 

on the surface. It’s impossible to 

resist snapping photo after photo. But 

to capture the full delicacy, elegance, 

and subtle range of color you have to 

visit the lotuses in person. 

The 39th Lotus Festival takes place 

on the weekend of July 13-14, noon 

to 9 p.m. Celebrating Asian Pacific 

cultures (in particular, this year, Thailand), 

the revelry kicks off with live 

music, a film screening, and cultural 

performances. 

Among other offerings will be a food 

court, a silent auction, a children’s 

area, handcrafted artwork, origami 

workshops, and dragon boat races. 

The Lord works in mysterious ways. 

“My specialty is reproduction,” says 

Randy McDonald, the lotus thief 

who, in a certain light, we have to 

thank for all this bounty. 

“If you ever read the Bible, the fish 

and the bread growing like crazy, I’m 

that kind of guy when it comes to 

plants.” 

Heather King is a blogger, speaker and the author of several books. 

A single Lotus flower 

blooms in Echo Park. 

SHUTTERSTOCK

Angelus News | July 5-12, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 25

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Angelus News | July 5-12, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 25

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