Angelus News | October 2-9, 2020 | Vol. 5 No. 25

RAFAEL ALVAREZ
complicated childbirth. Eight years
later, hard times struck the family again
when his father, Carlos, succumbed to
lung cancer.
As Siongco remembers it, her little
brother showed signs of a vocation
even before starting elementary school.
He was fascinated by religious processions
and was already singing in
church by age 3.
“He loved the saints, he loved
praying, he loved singing, he loved
everything about the Church,” said
Siongco.
By the time he had finished high
school in 1994, he had broken up
with his girlfriend at the time with the
intention of entering the seminary.
Those closest to Father San Juan say
his life was marked above all else by a
life-and-death experience during that
time: a testicular cancer diagnosis in
2002 a few months before his ordination
to the diaconate.
Chemotherapy left him hairless,
pale, and thin, but he vowed to follow
through with his ordination to the
diaconate. Family, friends, fellow seminarians,
and even professors rallied
behind him in prayer, and the cancer
went into remission in 2003. He was
ordained to the priesthood the following
year.
“This is my second life, no doubt,”
Father San Juan told Manilla’s Phillipine
Sunday Inquirer Magazine in an
interview after his ordination in 2004.
“I see myself in the hands of a loving
Father. A second life is his revelation to
me that I have a mission to do in His
Name.”
In the same interview, the new priest
shared that the cancer battle had given
him more joy and a stronger faith.
“Life will not always be a journey of
certainty, of controlling it the way we
plan it,” he continued. “Doubts and socalled
trials will come. But if we seek
God in all things, then we learn that
God’s love is everywhere.”
The priest credited his “second life”
in particular to Divine Mercy, the
Virgin Mary, and the miraculous
intercession of St. Thérèse of Lisieux,
to whom he had a fervent devotion for
the rest of his life.
After spending six years ministering
in parishes and schools in Manilla,
Father San Juan transferred to the
Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2010
to be closer to his family. He served in
several parishes, including St. John the
Baptist Church in Baldwin Park, St.
Madeleine Church in Pomona, and
St. Peter Claver Church in Simi Valley
before coming to St. Linus in 2019. He
was officially incardinated as a priest of
the archdiocese in 2015.
Among his brother priests, Father
San Juan was known as a “holy priest
Father Adrian San Juan with parishioner “Aubrey” at her first Communion this summer.
FAITH CHERISSE PHOTOGRAPHY
Rafael Alvarez (second from right) with Father
San Juan and the St. Linus “livestream team”
during the COVID-19 shutdown earlier this year.
who had a wonderful sense of humor,
and always had a smile on his face,”
according to Vicar for Clergy for the
Archdiocese of Los Angeles Msgr. Jim
Halley.
Auxiliary Bishop Alex Aclan remembered
how shortly after arriving in the
archdiocese, then-Msgr. Aclan relied
on Father San Juan twice to write the
music for two fundraiser musical plays
benefitting the Filipino Priests Association
of Los Angeles.
And during the annual Christmastime
Simbang Gabi Mass at the Cathedral
of Our Lady of the Angels, it was
Father San Juan who was charged with
leading his brother Filipino priests in
singing in Tagalog after Communion.
“That’s how he endeared himself to
the Filipino priests here,” recounted
Bishop Aclan. “He was an excellent
composer, pianist, and vocalist.”
One of those priests, Father Rizalino
“Riz” Carranza, spent four years with
him at St. Peter Claver Church in Simi
Valley, where Father Carranza is pastor
and Father San Juan served as associate
pastor from 2015 to 2019. He said Father
San Juan was the ultimate “people
priest,” a gifted preacher whose enthusiasm
while celebrating the Eucharist
was infectious.
“He really appealed to a lot of people
of different ages, from the older to the
younger,” recalled Father Carranza.
In private, his former pastor says
Father San Juan was a man of deep
prayer. Walking past the door to his
FAITH CHERISSE PHOTOGRAPHY
October 2-9, 2020 • ANGELUS • 15