Angelus News | October 18, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 35

ANGELUS 

STILL KEEPING 

THE FAITH 

An exclusive 

interview with 

Vin Scully 

October 18, 2019 Vol. 4 No. 35

Contents 

Archbishop Gomez 3 

World, Nation and Local News 4-6 

LA Catholic Events 7 

Scott Hahn on Scripture 8 

Father Rolheiser 9 

Meet the ‘nun with the gun’ honored at White Mass 14 

John Allen dishes on the synod outside the synod 18 

Kris McGregor and Kathryn Lopez talk ‘demystifying mysticism’ 20 

Greg Erlandson stands up for millennials 24 

What the film ‘Joker’ misses about evil 26 

Heather King: Poverty and fame meet at Getty photo exhibit 28 

ON THE COVER 

Cheer up, Dodger fans. The Boys in Blue may have exited the postseason earlier 

than anyone expected, but legendary announcer Vin Scully is still keeping 

the faith. Tom Hoffarth spoke to the retired broadcaster in an exclusive 

interview for Angelus, and the faithful Catholic doesn’t disappoint, opening 

up about his family, career, and finding the true source of hope throughout a 

lifetime that’s had its fair share of ups and downs on and off the field. 

JON SOOHOO/© LOS ANGELES DODGERS, LLC 

IMAGE: Nearly 6,000 junior and high school students from 

around the Archdiocese of Los Angeles participated in 

the Christian Service 4Life prayer rally and award event 

Tuesday, Oct. 8, at Microsoft Theater in downtown LA. 

Students sang, danced, listened to Catholic speakers, and 

were led by Archbishop José H. Gomez in Benediction. 

VICTOR ALEMÁN 

October 18, 2019 • ANGELUS • 1

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October 18, 2019 | Vol. 4 • No. 35 

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POPE WATCH 

‘Lead, kindly light’ 

The following is adapted from the 

Holy Father’s homily at the Mass 

of canonization of St. John Henry 

Newman and four other new saints in 

St. Peter’s Square in Rome on Sunday, 

Oct. 13. 

“Your faith has saved you” (Luke 

17:19). This is the climax of today’s 

Gospel, which reflects the journey 

of faith. There are three steps in this 

journey of faith. We see them in the 

actions of the lepers whom Jesus heals. 

First, they cry out. Even though their 

condition kept them apart, the Gospel 

tells us that they “called out” (v. 13) 

and pleaded with Jesus. 

Like those lepers, we, too, need 

healing, each one of us. We need to 

be healed of our lack of confidence 

in ourselves, in life, in the future; we 

need to be healed of our fears and the 

vices that enslave us, of our introversion, 

our addictions, and our attachment 

to games, money, television, 

mobile phones, to what other people 

think. 

Faith grows, through confident, trusting 

prayer, prayer in which we bring 

to Jesus who we really are, with open 

hearts, without attempting to mask our 

sufferings. 

The second stage of faith is to walk. 

The text tells us that, “As they went, 

they were made clean” (v. 14). Faith 

calls for journey, a “going out” from 

ourselves, and it can work wonders 

if we abandon our comforting certainties, 

if we leave our safe harbors 

and our cozy nests. Faith increases by 

giving, and grows by taking risks. 

The final step is to give thanks. Only 

to the one who thanked him did Jesus 

say, “Your faith has saved you” (v. 19). 

It made you both safe, and sound. 

We see from this that the ultimate 

goal is not health or wellness, but the 

encounter with Jesus. Salvation is not 

drinking a glass of water to keep fit; it 

is going to the source, which is Jesus. 

He alone frees us from evil and heals 

our hearts. 

When we express our gratitude, the 

Father’s heart is moved and he pours 

out the Holy Spirit upon us. To say, 

“Thank you, Lord” when we wake up, 

throughout the day and before going 

to bed: That is the best way to keep 

our hearts young. 

Today we give thanks to the Lord for 

our new saints. … Three of them were 

religious women; they show us that the 

consecrated life is a journey of love at 

the existential peripheries of the world. 

St. Marguerite Bays, on the other 

hand, was a seamstress; she speaks 

to us of the power of simple prayer, 

enduring patience and silent self-giving. 

That is how the Lord made the 

splendor of Easter radiate in her life. 

Such is the holiness of daily life, 

which St. John Henry Newman described 

in these words: 

“The Christian has a deep, silent, 

hidden peace, which the world sees 

not. … The Christian is cheerful, easy, 

kind, gentle, courteous, candid, unassuming; 

has no pretence … with so 

little that is unusual or striking in his 

bearing, that he may easily be taken at 

first sight for an ordinary man” (Newman, 

“Parochial and Plain Sermons,” 

V, 5). 

Let us ask to be like that, “kindly 

lights” amid the encircling gloom. 

Jesus, “stay with me, and then I shall 

begin to shine as Thou shinest: so to 

shine as to be a light to others” (“Meditations 

on Christian Doctrine,” VII, 

3). Amen. 

Papal Prayer Intention for October: That the breath of the Holy Spirit 

engender a new missionary “spring” in the Church. 

2 • ANGELUS • October 18, 2019

NEW WORLD 

OF FAITH 

BY ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ 

Everyday kindness is real 

There are times when we can wonder 

about the state of our humanity. 

The news of the day is filled with 

reports of violence and cruelty. In our 

political and media culture, people are 

often angry and rude, especially with 

those they disagree with. In daily life, it 

seems sometimes that our technology 

makes it easier for us to be indifferent 

to those around us. 

When we think about these things, we 

can be tempted to wonder if something 

in us is changing, if, as a people, we are 

becoming cruder, more uncaring. 

I don’t think so. Decency may be in 

decline, but it is not dead. Two recent 

events make me hopeful. 

The first is the story of the young 

Dallas man, Brandt Jean. In an open 

courtroom, he embraced Amber Guyger, 

the woman who killed his brother, 

and said he forgave her. 

It was a moment of grace and a beautiful 

Christian witness to the power of 

mercy and love. Even in his suffering 

and grief, this young man was seeking 

to bring this woman to Jesus, by his 

words and by his example. 

He said to her: “I forgive you. I know 

if you go to God and ask him, he will 

forgive you. … I don’t even want you 

to go to jail. … I want the best for you 

… and the best would be to give your 

life to Christ. … Again, I love you as a 

person.” 

The second story is closer to home, 

taking place in the subway station not 

far from our archdiocesan offices here 

in Koreatown. 

Emily Zamourka is a refugee who 

came to America from Moldova when 

the Soviet Union fell in 1992. A singer 

and musician, she gave music lessons 

here in Los Angeles until her violin 

was stolen and her health began to fail 

several years ago. 

She fell behind on her bills and, like 

so many in our city, she ended up 

homeless, living on the streets, singing 

for money in the subway. 

She was on the subway platform, singing 

an opera aria, when a Los Angeles 

Police Department officer was moved 

by her voice and asked permission to 

record her. 

The video he posted on the LAPD 

Twitter account went viral, and has 

been watched more than 1 million 

times. 

Now this 52-year-old woman’s life 

has been changed by the kindness of 

strangers. 

Individuals touched by the video, set 

up GoFundMe campaigns, and nearly 

2,000 people have pledged money to 

help Zamourka find a place to live and 

buy a new violin. A Los Angeles City 

Council member arranged for her to 

find shelter and play her first concert. 

After the concert, she was offered a 

recording contract. 

It is a beautiful story of compassion 

and kindness — and also faith. Zamourka 

told a reporter that in all her 

years on the streets, she never lost her 

sense that God was with her. 

“It has to end at some point, somehow, 

someday,” she would tell herself. 

“If it’s God’s will for my life to change, 

then I will praise him and be so 

grateful.” 

We need to lift up stories like this that 

celebrate our human capacity for goodness, 

for kindness and empathy. 

From the stories we tell, we learn how 

to live. I worry that the stories we tell 

in our culture — in our news, movies, 

social media — present a picture that 

is distorted. 

We are not what we appear to be on 

our “screens.” Human beings are not 

all appetites and desires, ruthless competitors 

pursuing their own self-interests, 

everyone out for themselves. 

There is no denying that people can 

do ugly things. But people are doing 

beautiful things all the time — we just 

need to know where to look and train 

ourselves to see. 

Everyday kindness is real. Hidden 

from view, little works of redemption, 

little acts of tender mercy, are happening 

all the time. Most of us are trying 

to live the Golden Rule, showing to 

others the compassion and love that we 

want for ourselves. 

We need to remember this, and we 

need to tell these stories, to lift up our 

world, to help our neighbors find hope 

and love. 

What makes us human? It is the 

question for our times. But there is a 

question that comes before that. Who 

makes us human? That question makes 

all the difference. 

We are made from out of God’s love 

and we are made to live in his love. 

And, we have available to us in every 

moment the gifts of God’s grace to live 

as we know we ought to live. 

Pray for me this week and know that I 

am praying for you. 

And let us ask our Blessed Mother 

Mary to help us to continue to live 

what we believe and to become the 

people we are made to be. 

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


WORLD 

Russian icon bleeding chrism oil 

A Marian icon is miraculously leaking chrism oil, 

Orthodox Church officials say. 

The icon of Our Lady of Kazan, found in Moscow’s 

Church of St. John, has miraculously released myron 

(the Orthodox term for sacred chrism) four times, according 

to AsiaNews. 

“We are faced with a miraculous icon in this church,” 

explained Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Ilarion during 

the opening ceremony of the Patriarchal Theological 

Institute of higher learning attached to the Church 

of St. John, who said that the appearance of myron was 

first reported in 2016. 

The miraculous myron appeared again in May 2017 

and November 2018. It has appeared again, prompting 

continuous prayer groups to establish and pray in front 

of the icon. 

Faithful venerate the icon of Our Lady of Kazan in Moscow. 

ASIANEWS.IT 

French take to streets 

to protest IVF 

Efforts by the French government to 

expand in vitro fertilization (IVF) has 

sparked large protests in Paris. 

A proposed bill has passed the 

French National Assembly and is soon 

to be considered by the Senate. It 

would expand IVF coverage to women 

under 43, allowing for artificial 

insemination and four rounds of IVF 

treatment covered by French health 

care. 

Protesters took to the streets of Paris 

Oct. 6 to decry the bill. According to 

police reports, 42,000 were present at 

the protests, but a media-funded survey 

estimated 74,000 and the organizers 

estimated 600,000. 

Former legislator Marion Maréchal 

described the bill during the protest 

as seeking “to voluntarily deprive a 

child of a father or to transform him 

and the mother who carries him into 

a consumer product.” 

“I’m afraid we are going down a very 

dangerous path,” Archbishop Eric 

de Moulins d’Amieu de Beaufort of 

Reims, president of the French bishops’ 

conference, told Catholic News 

Agency. 

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/PAUL HARING 

Turks invade as US leaves 

Local Catholics are concerned as 

U.S. forces pull out of Syria, leaving a 

power vacuum that swiftly turned into 

a humanitarian crisis. 

U.S. forces began pulling out from 

Syria’s northern border Oct. 7, despite 

criticism that the move would leave 

Kurdish forces, longtime U.S. allies, 

defenseless against Turkish troops or an 

ISIS resurgence. 

By Oct. 9, Turkey had begun airstrikes 

as part of “Operation Peace Spring,” 

a military attack designed to create a 

“buffer zone” in Kurdish Syria and displace 

the native Kurds, many of whom 

are Christian. 

“It is terrible,” Greek-Melkite 

Archbishop Jean-Clement Jeanbart of 

Aleppo told SIR news agency, stating 

fears that the Turkish offensive will 

lead to “a slaughter and many innocent 

deaths.” 

“I hope that dialogue can be resumed 

in order to find a peaceful solution, a 

compromise that guarantees safety for all 

parties involved,” Jeanbart told SIR. 

RAISED TO THE 

ALTARS — Pope 

Francis accepts 

offertory gifts from 

Melissa Villalobos 

of Chicago and her 

family during the 

canonization Mass for 

five new saints in St. 

Peter’s Square at the 

Vatican Oct. 13. Villalobos’ 

healing through 

the intercession of St. 

John Henry Newman 

was accepted as the 

miracle needed for 

the British cardinal’s 

canonization. 


NATION 

Saint snubbed, New Yorkers protest 

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini will not get a statue, a commission 

said, but New Yorkers aren’t taking the decision 

lying down. 

More than 1,000 protesters joined an Oct. 6 march led 

by Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn to protest the 

She Built NYC committee’s decision to overlook the 

sainted woman in their campaign to add more public 

statues of women in New York. 

She Build NYC, headed by New York City first lady 

Chirlane McCray, selected seven women to have their 

statues built. The selection followed a nomination 

period, during which Cabrini received the most number 

of nominations. Despite receiving the most nominations, 

She Built NYC did not include her to be one of the first 

seven statues. 

Sister Maria Loretta Caeti holds a relic of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini 

during the Oct. 6 procession in Brooklyn. 

ED WILKINSON/THE TABLET 

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/WILLIAM THORN 

May I see your parish ID? 

Interfaith leaders in South Texas are 

pioneering a parish-based ID program 

for parishioners regardless of legal 

status. 

“They [Catholic officials] noticed 

that very few people were going to 

Mass,” Joe Hinojosa, parishioner at 

Holy Spirit Church in McAllen, told 

Catholic News Service, explaining the 

origins of the program. “They asked 

the people why, and they said they 

were afraid to leave their homes.” 

The Diocese of Brownsville worked 

with the group Valley Interfaith and 

the local police department to create 

a parish ID that could be recognized 

as a form of identification. 

“The ID is not a get-out-of-jail-free 

card; it does not give you permission 

to drive; it is not a government ID 

in any way,” Father Kevin Collins 

of St. Eugene de Mazenod Church 

in Brownsville told Catholic News 

Service. “It is simply an ID that says 

you are a member of the parish that’s 

on there.” 

A PROJECT OF LOVE 

— Vicki Thorn, founder 

of the post-abortion 

healing ministry Project 

Rachel, is the recipient 

of the 2020 Notre Dame 

Evangelium Vitae Medal 

from the University of 

Notre Dame’s de Nicola 

Center for Ethics and 

Culture. Thorn, who also 

is executive director of the 

National Office of Post- 

Abortion Reconciliation 

and Healing, will receive 

the honor at a Mass and 

banquet April 25, 2020. 

Don’t redefine sex, 

bishops say 

The frontline in the battle over efforts 

to redefine the meaning of the word 

“sex” has moved to the Supreme 

Court, which has taken up three important 

cases on the issue. 

The cases largely center on whether 

the prohibition of employment 

discrimination based on sex found in 

the Civil Rights Act of 1964 includes 

sexual orientation and gender discrimination. 

The U.S. Conference of Catholic 

Bishops (USCCB) filed an amicus 

brief Aug. 23 arguing against the expansion 

of the definition. 

“Words matter; and ‘sex’ should not 

be redefined to include sexual inclinations 

or conduct, nor to promulgate 

the view that sexual identity is solely a 

social construct rather than a natural 

or biological fact,” read an Oct. 8 

joint statement from several USCCB 

committees. 

“Redefining ‘sex’ in law would not 

only be an interpretive leap away from 

the language and intent of Title VII, 

it would attempt to redefine a fundamental 

element of humanity that is the 

basis of the family, and would threaten 

religious liberty,” the bishops added. 


LOCAL 

Relief for October fire victims 

A special fund created to provide support during the 

2018 Thomas Fire has been expanded to help victims 

of the recent fires in Southern California, including the 

Saddleridge Fire that burned more than 7,000 acres in 

the San Fernando Valley earlier this month. 

Archbishop José H. Gomez asked faithful to join him 

in praying to the Virgin Mary for “families who have lost 

their homes and those who have been evacuated, and 

all those who are still in danger,” and for first responders 

involved. 

One of several fires burning in the state this month, the 

Saddleridge Fire claimed at least one life and burned at 

least 30 structures. 

Those in need of immediate temporary shelter, food, or 

assistance are urged to contact the pastor of their nearest 

parish for help. 

A wind-driven fire burns near Sylmar Oct. 10. 

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/GENE BLEVINS, REUTERS 

New laws to affect abuse victims and unborn 

SARAH YAKLIC 

A FOSTER FIRST — Father and child enjoy the warm weather and 

a cold raspado at the Catholics Love Foster picnic and festival at Los 

Angeles State Historic Park Oct. 13. The first such event was celebrated 

immediately following a special 10 a.m. Mass at the Cathedral of Our 

Lady of the Angels in honor of Catholic Foster Family Appreciation Day. 

The day’s festivities were sponsored by the Archdiocesan Office of Life, 

Justice and Peace and Foster All, an agency that acts as a bridge for 

prospective foster families. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed into law a pair of bills 

drawing concern from California Catholics. 

The first, State Bill 24, will make California the first state 

to require access to abortion pills on public college campuses 

in the country. The law goes into effect in 2023. 

In 2018, then-Gov. Jerry Brown — like Newsom, a Democrat 

— vetoed similar legislation, saying the bill was unnecessary 

due to the wide availability of abortion services to 

students at off-campus clinics. 

In a statement, California’s Catholic bishops lamented 

Newsom’s Oct. 11 signing of the bill, saying it put “the 

state’s prestigious academic institutions in a position of 

actually promoting, facilitating, and potentially funding 

only abortions.” 

Two days later, Newsom signed Assembly Bill 218, which 

opens a window for three years to allow decades-old lawsuits 

to be brought against public and private institutions, 

including the Catholic Church. 

In an Oct. 14 statement, Andy Rivas, executive director of 

the California Catholic Conference of Bishops, lamented 

that the window did not apply to abuse victims in state 

institutions. 

“Unfortunately, the governor did not insist with the author 

and legislative leadership that all sexual abuse victims 

deserve to be heard and healed,” Rivas wrote. 

“Ultimately, our hope is that all victim-survivors of childhood 

sexual abuse in all institutional settings will be able 

to have their pain and suffering addressed and resolved, 

and so our prayers are that AB 218 will be a step forward in 

that direction.” 


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., Oct. 19 

Hospitality Ministry Training. Mary Star of the Sea 

Church, 463 W. Pleasant Valley, Oxnard, 1-5 p.m. 

Cost: $15/person. Register at store.la-archdiocese. 

org/hospitality-ministry-training-1019. 

Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center’s 16th 

Annual Harvest on the Hill Auction & Dinner. 700 

N. Sunnyside Ave., Sierra Madre, 5 p.m. Cost: $125/ 

person, includes hosted social, dinner, dancing, silent 

and live auction, and a very fun evening. Overnight on 

Oct. 19 available. Reservations required at materdolorosa.org/harvest-on-the-hill/. 

Call Jeanne Warlick 

at 626-355-7188, ext. 103, or email jwarlick@materdolorosa.org. 

Holy Angels Annual Fiesta. Holy Angels Church, 370 

Campus Dr., Arcadia, Fri., 6-10 p.m., Sat., 2-10 p.m., 

Sun., 12-7 p.m. Enjoy carnival rides, live music, delicious 

food, games, poker tournaments, a raffle with a 

grand prize of $5,000, and more. 

Retreat: Being a Sign of Hope in Challenging 

Times. Pauline Books & Media, 3908 Sepulveda 

Blvd., Culver City, 1-5 p.m. Led by Charlie Johnston. 

God calls us to be signs of hope. This retreat helps 

navigate today’s storms and how to be those signs 

of hope. The retreat is free of charge, but RSVP by 

calling 310-397-8676 or emailing culvercity@paulinemedia.com. 

“Unplanned” screening. St. John Eudes Church, 

9901 Mason Ave., Chatsworth, 7 p.m. Light refreshments 

served for those attending 5:30 vigil Mass. All 

freewill offerings go to Pregnancy Counseling Center. 

Call Mary-Mark Haggard at 818-341-2984 or John 

Chady at 818-341-0761 for more information. 

2nd Annual Catholic Comedy Night Fundraiser 

for St. Monica’s Habitat for Humanity. St. Monica 

Catholic Community, 725 California Ave., Santa Monica, 

pre-show reception at 7 p.m. Comedy star Brian 

Kiley headlines, with Catholic Laughs comics Scott 

Vinci and Carl Kozlowski also performing. Tickets: 

$40/person. Visit stmonica.net/comedy or call 310- 

566-1500 for more details. 

Sun., Oct. 20 

OneLife LA: Catholic Foster Family Appreciation 

Filipino Priests at “Pista Sa Nayon.” Glendale Civic 

Auditorium, 1401 N. Verdugo Rd., Glendale, 5 p.m. 

Fundraising event sponsored by the Filipino Priests 

Association of Los Angeles. Bishop Alex Aclan will 

be honored, along with Filipino priests who have 

dedicated many years of service. Priests will serve 

food and entertain guests with song and dance. 

Cost: $50/person, sponsorships available. Proceeds 

benefit priests attending 4th Assembly of National 

Association of Priests USA. Contact Ging Mangaliman 

at 213-453-2595, Patty Santiago at 818-472-4288, 

or Rhomie Ramirez at 818-618-6515. 

Mon., Oct.21 

St. Padre Pio Healing Mass. St. Anne Church, 340 

10th St., Seal Beach, 1 p.m. Call 562-537-4526. 

Healing Mass. St. Linus Church, 13915 Shoemaker 

Ave., Norwalk, 7 p.m. Celebrant: Father Stephen 

Viblanc. 

Fri., Oct. 25 

Rutter Requiem Concert. Holy Trinity Church, 209 N. 

Hanford Ave., San Pedro, 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $10/person 

in advance, $15/person at door. Children 13 and 

under free, 14-18: $5/person. Proceeds benefit Holy 

Trinity’s Music Ministry. For more information on buying 

tickets, call 310-548-6535 or email dbarnes@ 

holytrinitysp.org. 

Schoenstein Pipe Organ Concert by Jelil Romano. 

Our Mother of Good Counsel Church, 2060 N. Vermont 

Ave., Los Angeles, 7:30 p.m. Music by Brahms, 

Mulet, Vierne, Dupont, and local composers John 

Biggs and Gary Bachlund. The concert will be preceded 

by wine and cheese in the church courtyard at 6 

p.m. Freewill offering. Call 323-664-2111, ext. 148, 

for more details. 

Sat., Oct. 26 

Salt and Light: Church, Disability and the Blessing 

of Welcome for All. Holy Family Church, Connolly 

parish hall, 1527 Fremont Ave., S. Pasadena. Continental 

breakfast and registration at 9 a.m. Workshop 

10 a.m.-2 p.m. and includes lunch. Workshop will offer 

ways to liturgically affect full welcome and reflect 

that disability is a necessary part of the whole. Free 

event, freewill offerings accepted. RSVP to Deacon- 

Jay@holyfamily.org. 

Annual Marian Procession and Rosary in honor of 

Our Lady of Good Health. Church of the Transfiguration, 

2515 W. Martin Luther King Blvd., Los Angeles, 

4 p.m. Mass at 5:15 p.m. For more information, call 

David Thomas at 323-308-8999 or Kathleen Charles 

at 323-829-8170. 

5th Regional Apostolic Congress on Mercy. St. 

John Chrysostom Church, 546 E. Florence Ave., Inglewood. 

Theme is “Find Hope in God’s Mercy.” 5 

p.m. vigil Mass. Celebrant: Bishop Marc Trudeau. 

Pre-registration is requested. Cost is $20/person. 

Find details on stjohnchrysostomparish.org. 

Retreat: “Love Everyone — Even My Enemies”? 

Pauline Books & Media, 3908 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver 

City, 1-4:30 p.m. Led by Sister Patricia Shaules, 

FSP. Jesus asks us to love everyone. Does he really 

mean it? How can we love our enemies? Donation: 

$15/person. Please RSVP by calling 310-397-8676 

or emailing culvercity@paulinemedia.com. 

Día de Los Muertos celebration. Santa Clara Cemetery, 

2370 N. H St., Oxnard. Doors open at 11 a.m. 

Festivities begin at noon with Mass presided by Bishop 

Alex Aclan. Event will feature the pilgrim image 

of Our Lady of Gaudalupe and a presentation about 

the meaning and significance of the celebration. For 

more information, visit archla.org/diadelosmuertos. 

3rd Annual Alexandria House SpeakEasy and 

Casino Night. St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral, 

1324 Normandie Ave., Los Angeles, 7-10 p.m. For 

more information, email Pam Hope at pam@alexandriahouse.org 

or call 213-381-2649. 

Halloween Masquerade Dinner Dance. Our Lady 

of Perpetual Help Church parish hall, 23233 Lyons 

Ave., Newhall, 6 p.m. The Italian Catholic Club of SCV 

provides traditional Italian cuisine, live music by Duo 

Domino, dancing, and a costume contest. Cost: $35/ 

adult, $15/Children 7-16, 7 and younger free. Call 

Anna Riggs at 661-645-7877 to reserve your place. 

The John Paul II and The New Evangelization Dinner 

Conference. St. Charles Borromeo Church, Gallagher 

Hall, 10830 Moorpark St., North Hollywood, 

6 p.m. A special evening with Bishop Alex Aclan. 

Attire is cocktail casual. Tickets are $75/person and 

can be purchased online at JP2DinnerConference. 

eventbrite.com. Email events@parishevangelizationleaders.org. 

St. Augustine Harvest Festival. St. Augustine 

Church, 3850 Jasmine St., Culver City. Sat., 11:30 

a.m.-10 p.m.; Sun., 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Come celebrate 

100 years of St. Augustine Church. Enjoy 

games, delicious international food, prizes for the 

kids, costume contest, live entertainment, pumpkin 

carving and more with the family. Go to st-augustine-church.org. 

“Religion, Race, and Scandal: How Do We Sustain 

Faith?” Loyola Marymount University, 9 a.m.- 

12:30 p.m. Theologian LaReine-Marie Mosely, SND, 

and LMU’s Dr. Kim Harris will lead an interactive 

discussion on how the Church is challenged in 

dealing with intense social changes that we are 

living with now. RSVP online at cal.lmu.edu/event/ 

lmux191026. 

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. 

This Week at AngelusNews.com 

• Catholic school in Burbank to compete in international robotic competition. 

• Cardinal Roger Mahony recounts his trip to Ethiopia. 

• Archdiocese celebrates a day at the park for foster families. 


SUNDAY 

READINGS 

BY SCOTT HAHN 

Ex. 17:8–13 / Ps. 121:1–8 / 2 Tim. 3:14–4:2 / Lk. 18:1–8 

The Lord is 

our guardian, 

beside us at 

our right hand, 

interceding for 

us in all our 

spiritual battles. 

In today’s 

Psalm, we’re 

told to lift our 

eyes to the 

mountains, 

that our help 

will come 

from Mount 

Zion and the 

Temple, the 

dwelling of 

the Lord who 

made heaven 

and earth. 

“The Victory of Joshua over the Amalekites,” by Nicolas Poussin, 

1594-1665, English. 

Joshua and the Israelites, in today’s 

First Reading, are also told to look 

to the hilltops. They are to find their 

help there, through the intercession 

of Moses, as they defend themselves 

against their mortal foes, the Amalekites. 

Notice the image: Aaron and Hur 

standing on each side of Moses, 

holding his weary arms so that he can 

raise the staff of God above his head. 

Moses is being shown here as a figure 

of Jesus, who also climbed a hilltop, 

and on Mount Calvary stretched out 

his hands between heaven and earth 

to intercede for us against the final 

enemy — sin and death (see 1 Corinthians 

15:26). 

By the staff of God, Moses bested 

Israel’s enemies (see Exodus 7:8–12; 

8:1–2), parted the Red Sea (see 

Exodus 14:16), and brought water 

from the rock (see Exodus 17:6). The 

cross of Jesus is the new staff of God, 

bringing about a new liberation from 

sin, bringing forth living waters from 

the body of Christ, the new Temple 

of God (see John 2:19–21; 7:37–39; 

19:34; 1 Corinthians 10:4). 

Like the Israelites and the widow in 

today’s Gospel, we face opposition 

and injustice, at times from godless 

and pitiless adversaries. We, too, must 

lift our eyes to the mountains, to 

Calvary and the God who will guard 

us from all evil. 

We must pray always and not be wearied 

by our trials, Jesus tells us today. 

As Paul exhorts in today’s Epistle, we 

need to remain faithful, to turn to the 

inspired Scriptures, given by God to 

train us in righteousness. 

We must persist, so that when the 

Son of Man comes again in kingly 

power, he will indeed find faith on 

Earth. 

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS 

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


IN EXILE 

BY FATHER RONALD ROLHEISER, OMI 

The arrival of refugees, old and new 

The religious congregation to which 

I belong, the Missionary Oblates of 

Mary Immaculate, has had a long 

relationship with the indigenous peoples 

of North America. 

Admittedly it hasn’t always been 

without its shortcomings on our side, 

but it has been a sustained one, constant 

through more than 150 years. I 

write this out of the archives of that 

history. 

In the mid-1800s, a group of young 

Oblates left France to work with the 

native peoples of Oregon and Washington. 

Given the means of travel at the 

time, particularly the challenge of 

crossing the entire United States, 

much of it on horseback, it took them 

almost a year to get from Marseilles 

to the Oregon coast. Among that 

group was a young missionary, Father 

Charles Pandosy. 

In the summer of 1854, Washington 

Gov. Isaac Stevens had called for a 

meeting of Native American chiefs to 

be held at Walla Walla to discuss the 

tension between the U.S. government 

and the Natives. 

One of the tribes was stubbornly 

rebelling, the Yakima, a tribe led by 

its chief, Kamiakin, with whom the 

Oblates and Pandosy had been working. 

At one point, Kamiakin turned to 

Pandosy for advice. 

In a letter written to our founder 

in France, St. Eugene de Mazenod, 

dated June 5, 1854, Pandosy summed 

up his conversation with the Yakima 

chief. 

Not knowing what Europe looked 

like and not knowing how many 

people lived there or what forces 

were driving people to come to North 

America, the chief had asked Pandosy 

how many white men there were and 

when they would stop coming, naively 

believing that there couldn’t be that 

many of them left to come. 

In his letter, Pandosy shares, verbatim, 

part of his conversation with 

Kamiakin: “It is as I feared. The 

whites will take your country as they 

have taken other countries from the 

Indians. I came from the land of the 

white man far to the east where the 

people are thicker than the grass on 

the hills. 

“Where there are only a few here 

now, others will come with each year 

until your country will be overrun 

with them … you and your lands will 

be taken and your people driven from 

their homes. It has been so with other 

tribes; it will be so with you. 

“You may fight and delay for a time 

this invasion, but you cannot avert it. 

I have lived many summers with you 

and baptized a great number of your 

people into the faith. I have learned to 

love you. I cannot advise you or help 

you. I wish I could.” 

Sound familiar? One doesn’t have to 

strain any logic to see a parallel to the 

situation today as millions of refugees 

are crowding the borders the United 

States, Canada, and much of Europe, 

seeking to enter these countries. 

Like Kamiakin, we who are living in 

those countries and passionately consider 

them our “own” are very much 

in the dark as to how many people are 

looking to come here, what pressures 

are driving them here, and when the 

seeming endless flow of people will 

stop. 

As well, like those indigenous tribes 

who back then had their lives irrevocably 

altered by us entering their 

country, we, too, tend to feel this is an 

unlawful and unfair invasion and are 

resistant to allowing these people to 

share our land and our cities with us. 

When people initially came to North 

and South America from Europe, they 

came for various reasons. Some were 

fleeing religious persecution, some 

were seeking a way out of poverty and 

starvation, some were coming to work 

to send money back to support their 

families, some were doctors or clergy 

coming to minister to others, and yes, 

some, too, were criminals bent on 

crime. 

It would seem not much has 

changed, except the shoe is now on 

the other foot. We, original invaders, 

are now the indigenous tribes, 

solicitous and protective of what we 

consider as rightfully ours, fearful of 

the outsiders, mostly naïve as to why 

they’re coming. 

This isn’t just the case in North 

America, as most of Europe is experiencing 

the exact same pressures, except 

in their case they’ve had a longer 

time to forget how their ancestors 

once came from elsewhere and mostly 

displaced the indigenous peoples who 

were already there. 

Admittedly, this isn’t easy to resolve, 

politically or morally. No country can 

simply open its borders indiscriminately 

to everyone who wants to enter; 

and yet our Scriptures, Jewish and 

Christian, are unequivocal in affirming 

that Earth belongs to everyone 

and that all people have the same 

right to God’s good creation. 

That moral imperative can seem 

unfair and impractical, but how do we 

justify the fact that we displaced others 

to build our lives here but now find it 

unfair that others are doing the same 

thing to us? 

Looking at the refugee crisis in the 

world today, one sees that what goes 

around does eventually come around. 

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


‘The one 

thing that 

makes 

it work’ 

Sports broadcasting legend Vin Scully opens up 

about his Catholic faith in an exclusive interview 

BY TOM HOFFARTH / ANGELUS 

Vin Scully throws out the first pitch 

at the Dodger Stadium April 13, 2009. 




If you want to make God smile, tell 

him your plans. 

That’s what Vin Scully is apt to 

say if asked whether his retirement is 

all that he anticipated it might be. 

“That quote has been so much a part 

of me, I don’t know when it began,” 

said the emeritus Dodgers broadcaster, 

who left the booth 

after 67 seasons in 

2016. 

“Maybe as a child I 

heard a priest say it and 

it just stuck. It makes 

good sense. You know, 

we try to write our own 

script and it’s a mistake. 

There’s a script already 

written for us.” 

Today’s script calls for 

Scully, who will turn 92 

the day after Thanksgiving, 

to make fewer and 

fewer visits to Dodger 

Stadium from his home 

in Hidden Hills. 

While he says he 

misses those stadium 

workers, broadcasters, 

players, and fans he 

often saw on a regular 

basis, he keeps his 

focus on what he calls 

his “unsinkable” wife, 

Sandi — “a true saint 

if there ever was one” 

— as well as his three 

daughters, two sons, 

16 grandchildren and 

three great-granchildren. 

A 2009 recipient of 

the Cardinal’s Award 

from the Archdiocese 

of Los Angeles for 

his dedication to his 

Catholic devotion, and still proud of 

a CD recording of “The Most Holy 

Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary” he 

recorded for the Catholic Athletes for 

Christ, Scully gave Angelus News his 

time to reflect on a variety of topics 

during several recent conversations as 

the MLB playoffs got into full swing: 

Tom Hoffarth: How might you 

spend this month paying attention to 

the baseball postseason? 

Vin Scully: To tell you the truth, 

Sandi is one of the world’s greatest 

watchers. Even when the Dodgers 

had the playoffs clinched [at the end 

of September], she would stay with 

those 9-0 games on TV right down to 

the last out. I’d say, “Honey, how can 

you do that?” And she’d say, “I want 

to see how it comes out.” Either way, 

Vin Scully laughs with his wife Sandra before a game in September 2015. 

you can bet we’ll watch every pitch 

for sure. 

Hoffarth: You’ve touched on this 

many times over the years, but at this 

point in your life, how does your faith 

keep you focused on what comes your 

way? 

Scully: Thank God, my faith has 

always kept things in perspective. 

Completely. It has not wavered. 

As many who have known me know, 

I’ve had some pain in my life [at age 

5 with the death of his father, the 

deaths of his first wife, Joan, and his 

son, Michael]. Faith is the one thing 

that makes it work, makes me keep 

going. You appreciate what you’ve 

been given. 

You know, this isn’t the only stop on 

the train. There’s one big one we’re 

still waiting for. I used 

my faith to guide me 

straight and narrow and 

strong, for sure. I think 

about that every week 

when I’m in line going 

up to the rail to receive 

Communion. That’s a 

pretty important moment. 

It always was and 

always will be. 

Hoffarth: You frequently 

attended 

Sunday Mass at Dodger 

Stadium on game days 

for many years. You 

have your own family 

parish you are able to 

attend regularly now. 

What brings you joy 

about attending Mass? 

Scully: I have such 

a lovely parish, a very 

extra-warm congregation. 

It only took 

about a week to meet 

all the ushers and the 

two priests who preside 

there. I think about 

the first priest I met 

there; he had been long 

retired and he has since 

passed away, but I said 

to him one morning: 

“Hi, Father, how are 

you?” And he said, 

“Well, I could be taller.” 

That just broke me up completely. 

KEITH BIRMINGHAM/PASADENA STAR-NEWS/ZUMA/ALAMY 

Hoffarth: You had a very Catholic 

upbringing in New York, from 

Fordham Prep to Fordham University. 

But there was a story you once told us 

about how your career — your life — 

could have changed dramatically back 

when you were in school at a very 

young age. 

You are a natural left-hander. You 

played baseball throwing left-handed. 

You wrote in your scorebook 


SUBMITTED PHOTO 

left-handed. But there were perceptions 

about those who were left-handed 

in your formative years that could 

have altered the course of Dodgers 

history, right? 

Scully: (laughing) So way back when 

I was in my first year of grammar 

school in New York — I guess I was 

6 years old — one of the good Sisters 

of Charity would whack me across 

the knuckles with a ruler every time I 

used my left hand. 

Once in a while, out of frustration, 

they would turn the ruler so I would 

get hit on the edge, which would 

break the skin. It’s prehistoric to think 

of this now, isn’t it? 

So one night at dinner, I’m home 

and passing the bread, and my mother 

saw my beaten-up left hand. She 

immediately thought I did something 

wrong and was being punished. Well, 

99% of the time she’d be right. This 

time, she was wrong. I explained how 

the nuns didn’t want me to use my left 

hand. 

What made it interesting to me when 

I heard her tell the story years later 

was that we had a Jewish family doctor 

named Dr. Rose. He wrote this wonderful 

letter to the nuns, saying, “If 

you force this boy to write right-handed, 

against his natural bent, it could 

very well cause him to stutter.” And 

not only that, he finished by writing, 

“Dear sisters, why would you wish to 

First Communion (left), circa 1934, and Fordham yearbook picture, circa 1949. 

IMAGE VIA FACEBOOK 

change God’s work?” 

Boom! A grand slam! From that 

moment on, they allowed me to be 

left-handed or else that would have 

changed my life dramatically. 

You may remember the movie that 

came out called “The King’s Speech” 

[in 2010, starring Colin Firth as England’s 

Prince Albert]. I only mention 

this because Prince Albert had a 

speech impediment and a man working 

for the BBC had this job of having 

to clean up his speeches on the radio. 

He got to wondering: If stuttering is 

a sign of frustration, what would the 

king of the British Empire have to be 

frustrated about? It happened that he 

was a natural left-hander forced to be 

right-handed. 

It’s interesting to see how the world is 

so fixated on right-handed. There’s the 

term of being someone’s “right-hand 

man.” When you look at religious 

pictures, it’s the “right hand of God.” 

We say in our prayer of the faithful 

that Christ is seated “at the right hand 

of the Father.” There is the story of the 

crucifixion where there was a thief on 

either side of Christ on the cross, and 

the “good one” was on his right. 

The little bit I know about the 

religions around the world, there is 

the Middle Eastern tradition that 

the left hand is considered unclean. 

So I guess it goes all the way back to 

the beginning of time. But God only 

The 

contract 

Vin Scully 

signed with 

the team 70 

years ago. 

knows what I would have done if I 

had developed a stutter. 

Hoffarth: We recently saw an 

auction that included a letter from 

December 1949 that you signed, as 

well as Dodgers owner Branch Rickey, 

to start your career with the Brooklyn 

Dodgers. This is just two seasons after 

the Dodgers added Jackie Robinson 

to the roster. That contract ended up 

selling for more than $70,000. How 

did you feel about seeing that out 

there? Did it bring back any memories? 

Scully: I did get to see a copy of it, 

and although it looks like something 

I could have typed 70 years ago — “I 

agree to do this” and “I agree to do 

that” — I actually didn’t write it. In 

those days, they called it a letter of 

agreement. It was likely something 

one of the secretaries drew up. 

It reads as if I was applying for the 

job, but I had already met [Hall of 

Fame booth mate] Red Barber a few 

weeks prior, and he had sent me to 

Mr. Rickey, and they drew up this 

letter. So I really had no personal 

attachment to it. I think I was on the 

job at least four years before someone 

actually drew up a formal contract. 

SUBMITTED PHOTO 


SUBMITTED P 

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Vin Scully with his grandchildren in the booth at Dodger Stadium in 2016. 

JON SOOHOO/© LOS ANGELES DODGERS, LLC 

I do remember meeting with Mr. 

Rickey. I’m just out of school, sitting 

there with this famous man with a 

stub of a cigar as he kept gesturing 

with it as if he was going to eventually 

light it. It was almost hypnotic. 

I thought I’d be asked all kinds of 

questions about infield fly rules and 

all that, but it wasn’t that at all. He 

had kind of a gruff voice and he said 

to me, “Are you married?” I said, “No, 

sir.” “Are you engaged?” I said, “No, 

sir.” He said, “Are you going steady?” I 

said, “No, sir.” 

He paused a second and then he 

actually hit the table with his fist and 

said: “Get a girl, get engaged, and get 

married.” Boom, boom boom. 

Later I understood, from those who 

were doing far better than I, that in 

his mind, here was this 21-year-old kid 

going to be on the road with a lot of 

time on his hands, surrounded by a lot 

of famous ballplayers, and the temptations 

would be tremendous. I never 

gave it a thought that was the reason. 

He really wanted his employees to be 

married. 

Hoffarth: Biographies about Rickey 

indicate that he was a very religious 

man, from a pious Methodist upbringing 

who quoted the Bible frequently. 

Did you get a glimpse of any of that? 

Scully: I didn’t know anything about 

him, except he was such a baseball 

man, and I got to see a bit about how 

he was a very devout man by what he 

was asking me about having a wife or 

girlfriend. 

It was very intimidating for me, a kid 

born and raised in New York, playing 

stickball in the streets, going to a 

grammar school just 20 blocks from 

the Polo Grounds, getting into games 

free as a member of the CYO. 

I had read about him in the newspapers. 

And just to complicate matters, I 

recall having just had a wisdom tooth 

extracted, so I had a swollen jaw and I 

was totally anesthetized with the idea 

of seeing this baseball hero. 

Maybe he had just signed Jackie 

Robinson not long before that to a 

contract, but I’m sure I was totally 

insignificant to him in the grand 

scheme of things. Maybe he was interested 

in my well-being as a single kid 

on the road, but really, my contract 

with him was just a dot at the end of a 

sentence. 

Tom Hoffarth is an award-winning 

journalist based in Los Angeles. 

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October 18, 2019 • ANGELUS • 13 

ANGELUS

Sister Dede Byrne at Catholic 

Charities’ Medical Clinic in 

Washington, D.C., where she 

volunteers as a surgeon. 

The clinic provides free or 

low-cost medical care to 

uninsured and underinsured 

low-income families. 

CATHOLIC STANDARD/JACLYN LIPPELMANN 


The best medicine 

The unlikely journey of this year’s White Mass honoree 

BY R.W. DELLINGER / ANGELUS 

CATHOLIC STANDARD/JACLYN LIPPELMANN 

From left: White Mass committee members Tom Liautaud, Pharm.D., and Dr. Pat Ryan, with Sister 

Dede and Archbishop José H. Gomez on Oct. 13. 

Sister Deirdre “Dede” Mary 

Byrne plays down the three-part 

description she’s often tagged 

with: soldier, surgeon, and sister. It’s 

true that she retired as a colonel in 

the U.S. Army after 29 years of service 

in 2009. But the 63-year-old woman 

religious points out that for many 

of those years of service, she was 

comfortably at home in Washington, 

D.C., as part of the Army Reserve. 

The sister of the Little Workers of 

the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary 

was honored by the Mission Doctors 

Association Oct. 13 at the annual 

Mass for Healthcare Professionals — 

better known as the “White Mass” — 

at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the 

Angels. 

Byrne joined the Army, in fact, to 

go to medical school. She wanted to 

take some financial burden off her 

parents, who were already supporting 

half of their eight children in college, 

with one finishing up at Georgetown 

Medical School. 

The Army, she found out, just 

happened to have a great scholarship 

program for anybody accepted to 

medical school. Becoming a physician 

was one of her career goals, besides 

a lifelong calling to be a woman 

religious. And, like her brother and 

father, she was accepted to Georgetown 

Medical School by what she 

calls a “miraculous event.” 

“I had no clue what I was doing, 

you know, because I had never been 

exposed to the military growing up,” 

Byrne told Angelus News. “So in the 

beginning, it was not very altruistic of 

me. I joined because it paid for my 

education. But I fell in love with the 

Army after I joined. You really fall in 

love with the soldiers. You become 

patriotic.” 


COMPLICATED JOURNEY 

When it comes to being a sister, 

that’s a much longer, complicated 

journey. 

“My mom said I had a ‘vocation in 

utero,’ ” Byrne recalled with a chuckle. 

“My parents had these Maryknoll 

mission magazines, and I used to just 

sit there and just look through them. 

And then later I’d heard about Mother 

Teresa of Calcutta, now St. Teresa, 

and it really inspired me in my younger 

years to do that. I felt that that was 

the direction God was calling. 

“But I did also date and things like 

that, just to make sure,” she added. 

She was sure. But her vocation kept 

being put off after joining the Army 

and becoming a doctor and then 

a surgeon. She was clear that she 

wanted to serve the poor with the best 

medical training she could get first. 

Still, that inner desire to enter religious 

life also never went away. She 

just wanted to make sure she chose 

the right community, being a “very 

traditionally minded, old-fashion girl.” 

She started working with the Missionaries 

of Charity, even going to 

India to meet the future St. Teresa of 

Calcutta. In June 1997, she spent a 

week with her in Washington, D.C., 

when Mother Teresa received a congressional 

gold medal. 

During an hour of adoration before 

the Blessed Sacrament one day, she 

asked, “Well, Lord, do you want me 

to forget about this religious thing or 

give up being a doctor?” 

She eventually decided on the latter, 

because she knew being a surgeon 

didn’t really fit with the religious 

community. 

One day, she sat down with an elderly 

Jesuit friend, Father John Hardon, 

who told her point blank: “You will 


not join the Missionaries of Charity! 

God gave you this gift to do medicine. 

You have to use it.” 

By then she was in the Army Reserves, 

but Byrne kept looking for a 

better fit. In the year 2000, she crossed 

paths with the Little Workers of the 

Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in 

Washington, D.C. 

The religious community, whose 

members wear habits and — when 

necessary — hospital garb, ran a 

physical therapy and eye clinic in 

the capital. She also learned about 

intense prayer life and how the community 

was founded in Italy in 1894, 

with missions spreading to the United 

States, Albania, Argentina, and India. 

And, most importantly, she found 

out that while about 80% of its members 

were educators running schools, 

20% provided health care to the most 

needy. 

Byrne had found her fit. 

FIRST VOWS 

She decided to give up what she calls 

the “perpetual discerning community” 

and entered the Little Workers’ 

Sister Dede Byrne helps a patient at Catholic Charities’ Medical Clinic in Washington, D.C., in 2012. 

formation in 2002. She took first vows 

in 2004, a step she refers to as “throwing 

on a habit.” In 2009, when her 

mother general asked, “Do you think 

you can retire from the Army?” she 

finally did. 

Byrne had served both in the Army 

and as a member of the Little Workers 

of the Sacred Hearts for some seven 

years. And during that time, she was 

deployed to Walter Reed Hospital in 

Washington, D.C., Colorado, and 

Afghanistan. In between, there were 

several mission trips to numerous 

third-world countries. 

Wasn’t there conflict between the 

two? 

“No, none whatsoever,” she replied. 

St. Mary’s Academy (Inglewood) students enrolled in the Health Careers Program, a partnership 

with Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center in Torrance, attend this year’s White Mass. 

ARCHDIOCESE OF WASHINGTON/PAUL FETTERS VICTOR ALEMÁN 


“If you spend any time in the military, 

you become very patriotic. And as a 

physician, you’re on the healing end 

of any conflict. So a lot of times, even 

before I was a sister, we spent our time 

helping the local people. 

“And I always volunteered for overseas 

assignments. I was in Korea, the 

Sinai peninsula, places like that where 

we got really involved with the local 

people and could really help them 

out.” 

And there’s another thing, according 

to Byrne. Many people in the military 

are very devout Catholics. She describes 

the priest chaplains she met as 

“awesome,” going above and beyond 

their official duties and putting themselves 

in harm’s way. And she points 

out that the military is a “fantastic 

mission field,” where many vocations 

are born. 

She said the joke was “I was the nun 

with the gun.” But, in fact, she only 

carried a side arm in Afghanistan, and 

that was to protect patients. 

In short, there was no problem being 

both a soldier and a sister. 

Today, Byrne flies to Haiti twice 

a year to provide medical aid as a 

member of “Archangel Airborne.” 

She also goes to Iraq as a civilian to 

help an archbishop build a hospital in 

the Kurdish area. And at the Catholic 

Charities’ medical clinic in Washington 

D.C., she continues doing general 

surgeries mostly on refugee outpatients 

at a local hospital. 

About being honored by the Mission 

Doctors Association, she said, “Well, 

you know, it’s like anything. It’s really 

all God’s glory. I always shun the 

award thing. Except that I always just 

say, ‘Lord, if this maybe brings more 

information about the Little Workers 

of the Sacred Hearts,’ or ‘If it brings 

more light to the work that he does 

through all of us, regardless of how 

much we may fail him, that’s good.’ 

But we just do the best we can. 

“I tell the young people: If you just 

totally open yourself up to God’s will, 

you’ve just got to put your seat belt on 

and you’re going to be up for a wild 

ride.” 

R.W. Dellinger is the features editor 

of Angelus. 

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Pope Francis leads a session of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon region at the Vatican Oct. 8. 

VATICAN MEDIA/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE 

Catholicism’s graduate seminar 

When in Rome, coffee breaks 

and long lunches are important 

parts of any Synod of Bishops 

BY JOHN L. ALLEN JR. / ANGELUS 

ROME — Synods of Bishops have been held periodically 

at the Vatican since 1965, and, to be honest, for 

most of that span they haven’t been many people’s 

idea of a good time. Privately, they’ve been described as an 

expensive talk shop, full of weeks of speeches and lacking 

the power to do anything beyond fairly predictable recommendations 

to the pope. 

How tedious can a synod get? 

Well, consider that in 2012 Pope Benedict XVI convened 

a Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization. It took 

place while violence was escalating in Syria, and at one 

point it was decided the synod should dispatch a special 

delegation to the country to express its concern. 

18 • ANGELUS • October 18, 2019

. 

VATICAN MEDIA/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE 

VATICAN MEDIA/CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY 

The roster was put together at the last minute, with 

then-Secretary of State Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, 

running around immediately before the announcement 

was to be made to ask prelates if they’d agree to go. 

One such invitee was Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New 

York. When Bertone asked if he’d pack his bags to take 

a hardship trip to a war zone, Dolan didn’t miss a beat: 

“Your Eminence,” he said with his trademark grin, “I’d do 

anything to get out of coming to the synod!” 

(The idea, honestly, was a bit half-baked, and due to logistical 

and security concerns the delegation never got off the 

ground, so Dolan was stuck sitting in the hall anyway.) 

In the Pope Francis era, synods have become somewhat 

more dramatic affairs, since the pontiff tends to use them 

to road-test big ideas. In the 2014 and 2015 synods on the 

family, it was his cautious opening to Communion for 

Catholics who divorce and remarry outside the Church; 

this time around, with the Oct. 6-27 Synod of Bishops for 

the Pan-Amazon region, it could be married priests to serve 

isolated rural communities. 

Still, most people will tell you that sitting in a stuffy synod 

hall all morning and afternoon, listening (or not, as the 

case may be) to a seemingly endless series of “interventions” 

— which sounds like a medical procedure, but is 

actually Vatican-speak for a talk — isn’t exactly dancing 

in the moonlight, no matter how monumental the subject 

matter. 

That said, there’s a glass-half-full case for the value of a 

synod, which has precious little to do with anything that 

goes on during its formal sessions. 

In effect, a Synod of Bishops is like a graduate seminar 

in the global realities of Catholicism, bringing together 

people from all over the Catholic world in close quarters 

for three weeks and giving them a chance to swap stories, 

share experiences, and get a sense of what it’s like to walk 

in the other guy’s shoes. 

If you were to poll all of the roughly 300 participants in 

the current synod, including bishops, clergy, religious, lay 

Pope Francis checks out books for sale outside the Vatican’s synod hall 

during a break at an international gathering of bishops last February. 

experts, and observers, asking them what their favorite part 

is, it’s a good bet that at least 70 percent would say “coffee 

breaks.” 

Each morning and afternoon, the schedule includes a 

half-hour for coffee, which is the motor fuel of any Italian 

gathering. People exit the hall and gather around large 

tables in the atrium of the Vatican’s synod hall, grabbing a 

coffee and something to nibble on, and then pass the time 

chatting with one another. 

It’s not at all unusual to see a cardinal from Peru, for instance, 

talking with a lay scientist from France, or a bishop 

from the U.S. chatting with an indigenous activist from 

Bolivia. 

One novel feature of the Francis years is that more often 

than not, one of the people out in the hall slapping backs 

and yucking it up is the pontiff himself. When Cardinal 

Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston took part in the 

first synod on the family, I once asked him how a particular 

morning session had gone. 

He couldn’t remember much from the floor debate, but 

he described going out for coffee and accidentally bumping 

into someone as he turned to leave. “My God,” he said, 

still astonished, “I looked up and it was the pope!” 

Such exchanges aren’t confined to coffee breaks, either. 

Synod participants also network during their down time, 

sometimes grabbing a quick lunch with one another at an 

eatery near the Vatican. 

If you were to walk down a nearby avenue called the Borgo 

Pio around 2:30 p.m., which is smack dab in the middle 

of the Roman lunch hour, you could probably put together 

a quorum from the synod simply by rounding up all the 

members sitting outside at one or another of the cafes that 

line the street. 

When the day’s work is done, people can venture a bit farther 

afield. Vatican cardinals will sometimes host dinners 

in their apartments, while other times synod participants 

will be invited to dinners at Roman restaurants. 

It’s likely that at least once this month, members of the 

synod who’ve never done it before will dine at L’eau Vive, a 

restaurant near the Pantheon run by the “Missionary Workers 

of the Immaculate,” a group of consecrated laywomen, 

where the service is interrupted every night at 10 p.m. to 

sing the “Salve Regina.” 

Do Synods of Bishops produce drastic change in the hereand-now? 

Probably not, even under a pope who takes them 

seriously, like Francis. 

However, you can always tell the difference between an 

American bishop who’s taken part in a synod at least once 

in his life and one who hasn’t. The former generally thinks 

in a more global key about the Church, and he’s more sensitive 

to how solutions that seem no-brainers to Americans 

may not play so well in Delhi or Dubai. 

One could ponder, perhaps, whether that’s enough to 

justify the exercise. Yet in a 21st-century Church in which 

two-thirds of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics live outside 

the West, and where Americans account for just 6% of the 

total Catholic population, it’s certainly not nothing. 

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


INSIDE 

THE PAGES 

By KRIS MCGREGOR 

Thoughts 

and prayers, 

squared 

A conversation on what it takes 

to demystify one of the most 

fascinating areas of the Catholic 

experience: mysticism 

Are you called to be a mystic? 

A Catholic knows they are called to union with God, 

no exceptions. We crave it, we desire it. As St. Augustine 

would describe, our hearts are restless for it. 

We recognize persons who have touched such a loving union 

as a “mystic,” and many of them have a gift to be able to 

witness to us the transcendent beauty and wisdom that flows 

from such an encounter. 

Angelus contributing editor Kathryn Jean Lopez’ “A Year 

with the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living” (Saint 

Benedict Press, $28.99), offers a much-needed road map 

drawn up by ordinary Christians to assist us on our spiritual 

journey. Here, Lopez talks about her new book with Kris 

McGregor. 

Kris McGregor: “A Year with the Mystics” is the work that 

I’ve been waiting for, for a long time. 

Kathryn Jean Lopez: And I’ve been waiting for it for a long 

time, too. It took me forever to write it while I was doing 

my other work. When I suggested that Saint Benedict Press 

publish it, I wasn’t volunteering myself. 

At the time, I was reading a lot of mystics. I was always 

St. Teresa of Ávila 

ripping a quote from Magnificat to save for later. In my 

huge purse I was lugging around books from the Classics of 

Western Spirituality Series by Paulist Press. Now I have one 

convenient volume with all of my favorite saints and other 

holy people, and I can give my back a rest. 

McGregor: All the mystics in your book communicate 

God’s love, don’t they? 

Lopez: Yes. And the reason I included Father Donald 

Haggerty and another person alive today is because I want 

people to know that this love is not something in the past. 

We are still called, each one of us, to union with God. 

But we need to pray more. So much is going on in the 

SHUTTERSTOCK 


Church and in the world. Every time there’s a mass shooting 

or a tragedy, everyone does the “thoughts and prayers” thing. 

And now there’s pushback. People are saying that God’s not 

listening or that prayers aren’t working. 

I think this calls for an examination of conscience. We 

should be asking ourselves, “What more could I be doing to 

live in an intimate relationship with God?” 

McGregor: Wouldn’t you say that because we’re not praying, 

we’re in this period of chaos? And all the saints you have 

in this book lived through a period of chaos, didn’t they? 

Lopez: Yes. And what you see in so many of the people I selected, 

if not all of them, is that the passion of Christ became 

real to them because they saw that was what they were living, 

and that was what was making them more like Christ. 

I do hope the book demystifies mysticism a little bit. When 

people hear the word “mysticism” they think of stigmata 

and all these strange things. But in reality, these writings are 

about getting to know God from people who really spent 

time with him, who really, truly prayed. 

McGregor: You’re talking about demystifying mysticism, 

but we all, when we said yes to God like Our Lady, walked 

through the door into mystery, “mysterium” in Greek. The 

Latin term for it is sacrament, essentially. So as you say, we 

all are called to union with God. 

It drives me nuts when people make it sound as though the 

mystics are on some mountaintop. Take Caryll Houselander. 

She suffered from depression and had all kinds of struggles. 

She lived through both world wars. She was trying to figure 

out what was going on, and so she tapped into the mystery 

that had been given to her because of her yes. Is that what 

you found when you were reading the mystics? 

St. Catherine of Siena and St. Francis of Assisi in the painting “Risen Christ 

Appears to His Mother,” by Daniele Monteleone, 1600. 

Lopez: Yes, absolutely. These were people who knew the 

realities of life, like Caryll Houselander. This book gives a 

little taste of her love for God and his love for her. And once 

you start having that experience of God’s love, you see that it 

isn’t a nice thought; it’s real, and it really transforms your life. 


SHUTTERSTOCK 

St. Francis de Sales (San Filippo Neri Church in Catania, Italy). 

McGregor: The mystics are very practical people. What 

do you see them doing, when you really look at their lives? 

They’re feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, helping the 

poor. Even in the cloister or the monastery they are taking 

care of others. They’re always responding because they’re 

always seeing a need. 

Lopez: That’s why I thought it was important to include 

people who, like Mother Teresa, were very practical in the 

world. But everything that she did, she did because she loved 

Jesus, you know? 

That was who she went back to, and stayed with, and had 

just the deepest relationship you could ever imagine, right? 

But you don’t have to imagine it. You’re being invited to go 

deeper into it. 

I’m forever seeing people on the street — some who are 

asking for money or food, some who are just passed out — 

and God is constantly inviting me to show them his love. 

Showing God’s love is not just about throwing a dollar at a 

person. It’s about looking him in the eye, shaking his hand, 

or asking his name. 

It’s hard, but I think it’s part of our ongoing conversion. 


Obviously, we have to be safe and prudent, but the more I 

pray and ask the Holy Spirit’s guidance, the more I experience 

what Mother Teresa and so many other saints have said 

about seeing God in the poor. 

McGregor: Even in the Catholic Church right now, many 

are homeless. You mention this in the introduction of your 

book, where you quote Pope Benedict XVI asking Catholics, 

“Do you even know Jesus Christ?” 

Jesus is the person who, when you meet him, brings you 

home. He’s the person who tells us, “You are not alone.” 

People are isolated. Whether they’re on the street or in a 

Wall Street banking office, people are crying out for a home, 

aren’t they? 

Lopez: Yes, frequently the person in need of God’s love is 

the person next to you or even the person you’re married to. 

Pope Benedict said that after a meeting on the Americas that 

I attended. 

I was shocked by his question because I didn’t expect to 

be rebuked by the pope. At the time, a lot of people were 

talking about New Evangelization projects, and so was I. 

And the pope said that all that stuff is worthless if you’re not 

praying constantly and having that encounter with Christ. 

Christ is real, yet there is a real danger, especially if you 

work in the Church, or do something Catholic, to become 

someone who talks about the Church and the faith without 

really keeping your eyes on the cross. That was striking to 

me, when I really started to read the mystics in a more serious 

way, how many of them literally gaze on the cross. 

I try to make sure I always have a cross somewhere near me, 

because it keeps me focused. You don’t need to physically 

have a cross. You can meditate on the cross in your mind, 

but it doesn’t hurt. 

McGregor: No, that is the thing we need. We have senses 

and one of them is touch. Sometimes we have to grasp 

something, we have to hold on to something. That’s partly 

why your book is so nice, because it’s such a beautiful book 

to hold. It’s a leather-bound journal, but not of empty pages. 

It’s a journal of the heart, isn’t it? 

Lopez: Oh, absolutely. 

Sometimes we think of 

saints as legends, as too 

good to be true. But when 

you actually read them, 

you discover that they’re 

journaling their heart, the 

fruit of their prayers, and 

you realize, “Oh, they’re 

not that different from me. 

I can do this, too.” 

Kris McGregor is the 

founder of Discerninghearts.com, 

an online 

resource for the best in 

contemporary Catholic 

spirituality. 

C 

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INTERSECTIONS 

BY GREG ERLANDSON 

Talking ’bout their generation 

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/PAUL HARING 

Pilgrims cheer before Pope Francis’ celebration of Mass for World Youth Day pilgrims at St. John Paul II Field in Panama City Jan. 27. 

Sex and drugs and rock and roll 

Is all my brain and body need 

Sex and drugs and rock and roll 

Are very good indeed... 

— Ian Drury and the Blockheads 

We baby boomers are catching 

a lot of grief these days … 

from our kids. These betterthan-thou 

millennials blame us for 

rampant materialism, Christmas advertising 

in September, enormous floating 

ocean blobs of plastic, rising sea levels, 

endless wars, soaring national debt, 

and the refusal to give up our AOL 

email addresses. 

OK, they may have a valid point or 

two. 

But haven’t they ever seen “Woodstock”? 

Don’t they realize that while 

other generations were making the 

world safe for democracy, and blah 

blah blah, we had three days of love 

and music. Hey, even a baby was born 

there, man! 

So speaking on behalf of baby boomers 

everywhere, I think it only fair to 

remind the youngsters that we actually 

delivered on our generation’s three 

stated goals: 1. Sex. 2. Drugs. 3. Rock 

’n’ roll. 

These are not just the refrain of a pretty 

forgettable Ian Drury song. These 

have been our strategic priorities. We 

have not let ourselves be distracted by 

disappearing bird populations, or teeming 

underpasses of homeless veterans. 

We haven’t let superficial concerns 

about the desolation of the family, the 

demise of the bumblebees or the abandonment 

of our Kurdish allies get in 

the way. We kept our priorities straight: 

Mission accomplished. 

Indeed, our handiwork in all three 

areas is unmistakable. Take sex. Our 

generation has fostered a culture 

that sees sex as an inalienable right, 

as constitutionally guaranteed as an 

AR-15. We’ve turned pornography 

into a gazillion-dollar business. Even 

better, we’ve got sex, in all flavors and 

genders, embedded into just about all 

of our entertainment. 

We lard every story line with sex, 

suffuse our advertising with it, cram it 

into our novels. We make its addiction 

an excuse, and talk about legalizing 

“sex workers” even as we create a 

hashtag for its abuse. No one can be 

denied the right to gratification, and 

thanks to medical technology, making 

babies doesn’t have anything to do with 

it anymore. 

Or drugs. Well, here we really shine. 

We are well on our way to getting 

marijuana legalized nationwide. We’ve 

gone from presidents who didn’t inhale 

to medicinal use for anyone with a rash 

to budmasters selling gourmet weed for 

$160 an ounce and an endless array of 

edibles. 

“Better living through chemistry” was 

our slogan, and we’ve expanded the 

franchise to everything from opioids to 

Ritalin and Xanax. 

And rock ’n’ roll? It is the soundtrack 

for our other priorities. It keeps metastasizing 

and shape-shifting, but it 

remains our great contribution to the 

arts. From sea to plastic-ladened sea 

and around the globe, geriatric rock 

’n’ rollers continue to entertain us at 

ridiculous prices until they shuffle off 

their much-abused mortal coils. 

It seems hard to believe these days, 


as we grumble about idealistic millennials, 

that we once resembled that 

remark. We were the idealists who 

marched against war and thought we 

had a dream. 

Watching “Woodstock” now, the 

naivete of those muddy, naked masses 

seems almost too much to bear. Yet 

we search those crowd shots on Max 

Yasgur’s farm, those idealistic (albeit 

stoned) faces, as if looking for someone 

we know, maybe looking for someone 

we once were. 

There is a long rap sheet of complaints 

about the millennials compiled 

by baby boomers and their little Generation 

X brothers and sisters. And the 

odds are great that in our self-centered 

and hollowed out culture, millennials 

may be as doomed as we became. 

My hope, however, is that they can 

get us back on track. My hope is that 

their idealism doesn’t just turn into 

another marketing gimmick. 

We need a generation that doesn’t 

stop thinking about the generations 

to come once they get full-time jobs. 

We need a generation that lives for 

the common good, that is willing to 

sacrifice for something greater than 

themselves. 

Pope Francis has written a whole letter 

to our young people called “Christ 

is Alive!” (“Christus Vivit”). It is a 

bold letter, a direct appeal. The pope 

urges young people to dream big, not 

to settle for “an armchair, or live your 

life behind a screen.” He urges them 

to “fight for the common good, serve 

the poor” and resist the “pathologies of 

consumerism.” 

“Dream freely and make good 

decisions,” the pope tells them. “Take 

risks, even if it means making mistakes. 

Don’t go through life anaesthetized or 

approach the world like tourists. Make 

a ruckus!” 

It sounds like a message for the 

students of Parkland, for the legions 

following Greta Thunberg, for the 

youthful idealists who don’t want to 

settle, who want to volunteer. 

So leave the sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ 

roll to your elders. Listen to the pope 

instead. That would really blow some 

minds. 

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Greg Erlandson is the president and 

editor-in-chief of Catholic News Service. 


Understanding 

the bad guy 

‘Joker’s’ portrayal of evil 

isn’t just distorted — it 

makes the film boring 

BY SOPHIA BUONO / ANGELUS 

Joaquin Phoenix in “Joker,” at left and opposite. 

IMDB 

In a scene in Christopher Nolan’s 

“The Dark Knight” (2008), Commissioner 

Gordon stares into a jail 

cell at a man with a painted face and 

dead expression. 

“No matches on prints, DNA, [or] 

dental,” he mutters to his colleague. 

“Clothing is custom, no labels … no 

name.” For all the characters in the 

world of Batman, and for the audience 

as well, the origin of the Joker 

has always had an air of mystery. Until 

now. 

Ever since he first appeared in the 

debut issue of the “Batman” comic 

book, the Joker’s psychopathic villainy 

has usually been attributed to his 

having once fallen into a vat of toxic 

waste. 

But in the latest film based on DC 

Comics, “Joker,” released last Friday, 

writer and director Todd Phillips 

attempts to give the dark knight’s 

archnemesis a backstory that is more 

realistic and resonant for audiences 

today. Set up to be an incisive psychological 

thriller, the film unfortunately 

amounts to an incoherent, sickening, 

and ultimately unsatisfying two hours. 

The film opens on Arthur Fleck 

(Joaquin Phoenix), a man struggling 

to make ends meet for himself and his 

mother, whom he cares for in a broken-down 

apartment in Gotham City. 

A clown by day and aspiring comedian 

by night, Fleck is socially awkward 

and suffers from a nervous condition 

that causes him to laugh uncontrollably 

at improper moments. 

This premise holds some promise, 

but what follows is a predictable line 

downhill for Fleck. It quickly becomes 

clear that Fleck is a mentally afflicted 

but good person, but after being 

repeatedly neglected and rejected by 


those around him, he eventually falls 

into madness and unleashes violence. 

This story is tragically all too true 

for many people in our world, and 

perhaps that is precisely why Phillips 

constructed the film this way. But for 

a villain as fantastic and larger-thanlife 

as the Joker, the story comes off as 

unexciting, depressing, and basic. 

Perhaps even more frustrating than 

this flat plotline is its underlying 

message, which is that the most evil 

of villains is nothing more than a 

product of society. 

It is indeed true that structural evils 

have intensely corruptive power, but 

“Joker” pushes this reality to a distorted 

extreme that almost completely 

victimizes Batman’s worst enemy. In 

fact, the only reason the audience is 

given to believe that he is in fact a 

villain is simply that they’ve been told 

so before. 

No matter how sinister his actions 

become, at no point does the film 

suggest that Fleck is ever responsible 

for what he does or what he becomes. 

In fact, it suggests the exact opposite. 

However gruesome the scenes might 

get (and there are some pretty sickening 

ones), this theme actually sends a 

weak message about the meaning of 

evil: It’s something thrust upon people, 

never really chosen, and therefore 

never really a villain to be defeated. 

And by presenting one of the biggest 

bad guys ever as, well, not really so 

bad, the film makes a story that’s 

supposed to be about a mastermind 

supervillain rather boring. 

Within the framework that makes 

society the sole source of evil, there 

arises another simplistic notion: The 

poor and neglected are victims and 

therefore morally immune, while the 

privileged are tyrants and corrupt. 

Therefore, Thomas Wayne (Brett 

Cullen) is far removed from the 

benevolent, honest man depicted in 

Nolan’s “Batman” franchise. Instead, 

he’s cold and aggressive, hated not 

only by Fleck but by nearly everyone 

in Gotham City. This further sucks 

nuance out of “Joker” and makes it all 

the more unconvincing. 

IMDB 

What “Joker” misses is the understanding 

that evil can only really be 

explained in the context of good. 

The film lacks the one thing that 

would make it a compelling story: a 

representation of genuine virtue for 

the villain-in-the-making to turn and 

stand against. 

Heath Ledger’s Joker quipped to 

Christian Bale’s Batman, “What 

would I do without you?” That frenzied 

statement contains an important 

insight: Without Batman, the Joker 

is simply not the Joker. A villain so 

malevolent and powerful can only really 

exist when it sees something truly 

good to hate, fight, and try to corrupt. 

Fleck’s transformation into the Joker 

could have been the antithesis of 

Bruce Wayne’s transformation into 

Batman. Just as Batman’s goodness 

is amplified because he walked right 

through the midst of evil but resisted 

it, the Joker’s evil might have felt a 

little more real had he been portrayed 

more consciously rejecting good. 

But take away “The Knight,” and 

you’re left with simply “The Dark,” a 

formless, vapid mass of gruesomeness 

that is not even that horrifying, just 

pathetic. 

Finally, the biggest remaining question 

is how Phoenix pulled off the title 

role. It might not be fair to compare 

him to the irreplaceable Ledger, and 

to his credit, Phoenix does not try to 

imitate him. He brings his own style 

to the character: a disturbed but likeable 

man who is constantly mocked, 

on the run, and told to put on a forced 

smile, until he snaps into a rage. 

Phoenix’s Fleck-turned-Joker reinforces 

the message of the film, but one 

can’t help but miss the diabolically 

brilliant, darkly humorous Joker who 

stuns and stumps everyone — even 

Batman — before his downfall. The 

performance isn’t a bad one, but it is 

of an entirely new character, and that 

character is not a supervillain. 

In the world of “Joker,” Gotham 

City really is the place Bruce Wayne 

refused to believe it was: an utterly 

corrupt society that breaks people 

down and is beyond redemption, fit 

only to be burned and laughed at. 

And maybe that was the whole point: 

Maybe the backstory of the Joker 

could only be as cruel and confusing 

as the character himself. Be that as 

it may, it can never measure up to a 

Batman versus Joker film, since it only 

gives us half of the truth, and therefore 

half as good of a story. 

Editor’s note: “The Joker” is rated R 

for graphic violence, strong language, 

and brief sexual images. Readers 

should take caution of the disturbing 

behavior and themes. This film is not 

for children. 

Sophia Buono is a writer living in 

Arlington, Virginia. 


THE CRUX 

BY HEATHER KING 

Frames from the favela 

Through Nov. 10 at the 

Getty is a compelling 

exhibit based on the work 

of Gordon Parks, a Renaissance-man 

film director, writer, 

and photojournalist perhaps best 

known for his work for LIFE 

magazine. 

President John F. Kennedy’s 

“Alliance for Progress,” 

launched in 1961, was an 

initiative designed to promote 

democracy and economic cooperation 

across Latin America 

and to forestall the spread of 

communism. 

In March of that year, LIFE 

sent Parks to Rio de Janeiro with 

the assignment to document the 

country’s poverty. 

At the time, the city’s more 

than 200 garbage-strewn favelas 

— hillside slum towns — were 

home to an estimated 700,000 

people. The average per capita 

income was $289. Parks, a Kentucky 

native, had grown up poor 

himself, but had never seen 

destitution of such a degree and 

kind. 

He spent several weeks in a 

favela called Catacumba. The 

resulting photo essay, “Freedom’s 

Fearful Foe: Poverty,” appeared 

in LIFE’s June 22, 1961, issue. 

The piece featured the da Silva 

family: father José, an injured construction 

worker forced to sell kerosene 

and bleach from a tiny stall; mother 

A stunning photo exhibit at the Getty captures 

the meeting of poverty and fame 

“Flávio da Silva,” Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1961, by Gordon Parks. 

Nair, who earned money by scrubbing 

laundry beneath one of the favela’s few 

spigots; and their eight — soon to be 

nine — children. 

Flávio, the oldest at 12, functioned 

as a de facto surrogate parent, hauling 

water, cooking, cleaning, 

disciplining, and babysitting. 

He also suffered from a 

wracking case of asthma. 

You’ll recognize some of 

these photos. The tiers of 

shanties, spilling off the 

hillside, with a cross looming 

above. Flávio spot-lit on 

a bed, torso bare, lying 

beneath a filthy blanket with 

arms outstretched as if being 

crucified. Mario, a younger 

brother, howling in pain 

after being bitten by a stray 

dog. 

The text described the da 

Silvas’ struggles, Brazil’s 

economy, and the tensions 

between communism and 

capitalism. 

The piece was a sensation. 

Within days of its publication, 

money started pouring 

in from concerned readers, 

and Flávio was invited to 

receive treatment at the 

Children’s Asthma Research 

Institute and Hospital (CAR- 

IH) in Denver. 

The July 21, 1961, issue of 

LIFE was entitled “Flávio’s 

Rescue: Americans Bring 

Him from Rio Slum to Be 

Cured” and pictured a grinning boy 

in fresh pajamas clutching a stuffed 

Snoopy. 

Some of the donations also went to 

improve the infrastructure of the favela 

© THE GORDON PARKS FOUNDATION/J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM 


and to relocate the da Silva family to 

the nearby suburb of Guadalupe. 

Progress, of a kind, but with an undercurrent 

of sorrow running through. 

In “Flávio” (1978), for example, Parks 

later described the scene the day the da 

Silvas left the slum. 

“One woman came forward and 

kissed Zacharias [one of the younger 

children], then Nair, then turned back 

up the hill in tears. Another woman 

standing by with 

a small child in 

her arms grabbed 

my shoulder. 

“ ‘What about 

us? All the rest of 

us stay here and 

die!’ she demanded.” 

The Brazilian 

media bitterly 

resented Parks’ 

depiction of the 

country’s endemic 

poverty. 

In retaliation, 

the magazine O 

Cruziero sent 

photographer 

Henri Ballot to 

Manhattan to 

document a Puerto 

Rican family 

“Gordon Parks and Flávio da Silva at Airport, 

Soon to Fly to United States,” Rio de Janeiro, 

Brazil, negative July 5, 1961. 

living in squalor 

on the Lower 

East Side. 

Meanwhile, 

Parks agreed to 

accompany Flávio to Denver. The boy 

received treatment (doctors reported 

that he had the weight and height of a 

six-year-old), largely recovered from his 

asthma, and learned English. He lived 

at CARIH until the summer of 1963 

and was greatly assisted by his weekend 

host family, the Gonçalveses. 

Flávio was charismatic and a quick 

learner. But eventually Parks realized 

that all the love and medical care in 

the world couldn’t undo 12 years of 

poverty and hardship. “The truth was 

inescapable. We had dreams for Flávio 

da Silva that were hopelessly beyond 

his reach. It was as if we expected 

abundant fruit from a sapling already 

gone barren.” 

And when the inevitable time came 

to return to Brazil, Flávio was devastated. 

He went on to marry and the couple 

had two sons. But in photos of him 

as an adult, he retains the haunted, 

thousand-yard stare of a shell-shocked 

war veteran. 

By 1970, Catacumba had been 

razed to make way for more profitable 

construction, and 13,000 residents had 

been forcibly relocated to makeshift 

housing outside the city. 

Parks and 

Flávio reunited 

twice, 

once in 1967, 

and again in 

the late 1990s. 

Parks died in 

2006. 

Today, Flávio 

has retired 

from his job 

as a security 

guard and 

still lives in 

Guadalupe. 

“[My story] is 

not a movie,” 

he observed 

recently, “but 

it was shot on 

film. [Gordon 

Parks] chose 

me. Now 

people know 

more about 

my life than 

I do. I’m glad 

that I’m alive 

as a result … this story never made me 

feel either better or worse than anyone 

else.” 

Maybe not, but the telling of it 

opened eyes and hearts the world over. 

In our time, we have Pulitzer 

Prize-winner Katherine Boo’s “Behind 

the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, 

and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity” 

(2012). Her Flávio was Abdul, a boy 

who supported his family of 11 by 

working as a garbage picker. 

“When I settle into a place, listening 

and watching,” Boo wrote of her time 

in the slums, “I don’t try to fool myself 

that the stories of the individuals are 

themselves arguments. I just believe 

that better arguments, maybe even 

better policies, get formulated when we 

know more about ordinary lives.” 

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

© THE GORDON PARKS FOUNDATION/J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM 

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ANNOUNCING 

SANTA CLARA UNIVERSITY’S 

TWENTY-NINTH PRESIDENT 

KEVIN O’BRIEN, S.J. 

“This place has roots. It has a center. Amid the contagious spirit of the Valley and fast-paced change around us, 

we learn in innovative ways and strive for the next answer, but the Mission Church at the heart of our campus 

reminds us we have a tradition that grounds our striving.” 

Silicon Valley’s leader in ideas and ideals announces its 29 th President. A respected theologian, 

educator, and former practicing lawyer, President Kevin O’Brien, S.J., guides Santa Clara University in 

its effort to help build a more just, gentle, and sustainable world. Leading the $1 billion Innovating with 

a Mission campaign, Fr. O’Brien will further advance our mission as a Jesuit, Catholic university 

to educate the next generation of ethical leaders. 

scu.edu/president

Angelus News | October 18, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 35

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