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

LOCAL
People in San Francisco march during a “Free the Mass” demonstration Sept. 20.
Feds call San Francisco Mass restrictions ‘draconian’
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has warned that San Francisco’s current restrictions
on public worship may be unconstitutional and called on the city to
treat churches as it has other venues, like gyms, tattoo parlors, and hair salons.
In a Sept. 25 letter to Mayor London Breed, the DOJ warned that the city’s
rule allowing only “one worshipper” in churches regardless of their size, while
allowing multiple patrons in other indoor buildings, is “draconian” and “contrary
to the Constitution and the nation’s best tradition of religious freedom.”
San Francisco’s restrictions are among the strictest in the country.
San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone praised the letter.
“Catholics in San Francisco have been patiently suffering injustice for
months. At last, a competent legal authority is challenging the city’s absurd
rules, which have no basis in science, but are grounded in hostility to religion
and especially the Catholic Church,” Archbishop Cordileone said.
The letter came days after Catholics in San Francisco marched in eucharistic
processions across the city Sept. 20 to protest the city’s continued restrictions
on public worship.
San Diego: Chaldean cathedral defaced
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/DENNIS CALLAHAN
COVID-19 numbers
stay down in LA County
The steady drop in the number of
new coronavirus (COVID-19) cases,
deaths, and hospitalizations in Los
Angeles County means that churches
could be allowed to reopen soon,
statistics suggest.
As of press time, LA County was
averaging around 1,000 new cases
a day, while hospitalizations and
deaths were at levels seen before this
summer’s surge of cases and deaths.
Ventura and Santa Barbara counties,
which also form part of the Archdiocese
of Los Angeles, reported similar
trends.
The decline in numbers means that
the county could be on the verge of
moving from the state’s “purple tier”
to the less-restrictive “red” tier, which
would allow more businesses to reopen,
as well as churches, albeit with a
100-person limit.
Because of Orange County’s move
into that tier, churches there were
allowed to reopen in early September,
although some parishes have
continued holding outdoor Masses
to accommodate the 100-plus crowds
coming to weekend Masses.
A Catholic cathedral in San Diego County was defaced overnight with swastikas,
an upside-down cross, and “BLM” and “white power” messages spray-painted on
doors and entryways.
“Pray for the criminals who did this,” St. Peter’s Chaldean Catholic Cathedral in
El Cajon posted on Facebook Sept. 26, the morning after the attack.
Some symbols were indecipherable, while others were seemingly opposing
slogans, raising questions about a possible motive.
The Chaldean Catholic Church is an Eastern Catholic Church of more than
600,000 people. The cathedral is the seat of the Eparchy of St. Peter the Apostle of
San Diego, an Eastern Catholic diocese of roughly 70,000 Catholics.
The vandalism came amid a wave of similar attacks on Catholic churches that
have been ongoing for months. Most recently, a man burned pews in a Florida
Catholic church, and a man with a baseball bat damaged a crucifix and doors at a
seminary in Texas.
EXTRA FINAL BLESSING — Archbishop
José H. Gomez blesses parishioners
in their cars with holy water on their
way out of an outdoor drive-in Sunday
Mass at St. Vincent de Paul Church
near downtown on Sept. 27. Archbishop
Gomez visited the parish on the occasion
of its patron saint’s feast day.
DAVID AMADOR RIVERA
October 2-9, 2020 • ANGELUS • 7