Angelus News | January 15, 2021 | Vol. 6 No. 1

ANGELUS 

OUR LADY’S 

IN THE 

HOUSE 

The story behind the 

cathedral’s newest — 

and final — tapestry 

January 15, 2021 Vol. 6 No. 1

2021 

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1/7/21 9:52 PM

ON THE COVER 

A stunning new tapestry of the Virgin Mary by artist John Nava was 

unveiled at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on New Year’s 

Day. On Page 10, Steve Lowery reports on how the new creation completes 

a mission that was left unfinished for more than two decades. 

VICTOR ALEMÁN 

IMAGE: 

Police officers stand guard Jan. 6 as supporters of 

President Donald Trump gather in front of the U.S. Capitol. 

Angelus will have more complete coverage of the events 

on Capitol Hill and their consequences in the next issue. 

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/LEAH MILLIS, REUTERS 

Contents 

Pope Watch 2 

Archbishop Gomez 3 

World, Nation, and Local News 4-6 

Scott Hahn on Scripture 8 

Father Rolheiser 9 

Mentorship program unites LA cops and Catholic school kids 16 

How a kidnapped Nigerian bishop’s local fan club came to his rescue 20 

COVID-19 vaccine illustrates how Vatican made peace with science 24 

Why our changing world needs ‘feminine genius’ 26 

Greg Erlandson: 2020’s essential lessons for the new year 28 

Separating good intentions from bad theology in Pixar’s ‘Soul’ 30 

Heather King on a writer who could paint landscapes with words 32 

/21 9:52 PM

POPE WATCH 

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January 15, 2021 

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2 • ANGELUS • January 15, 2021 

A time to calm spirits 

Pope Francis asked Immaculate Virgin 

Mary to help foster a “culture of encounter” 

in the United States after the 

recent violence in Washington, D.C. 

“I extend an affectionate greeting 

to the people of the United States of 

America, shaken by the recent siege 

of Congress. I pray for those who lost 

their lives, five lost in those dramatic 

moments,” Pope Francis said after his 

Sunday Angelus address Jan. 10. 

“I reaffirm that violence is always 

self-destructive. Nothing is gained with 

violence and so much is lost. I urge 

the authority of the state and the entire 

population to maintain a high sense 

of responsibility in order to calm the 

spirits, promote national reconciliation, 

and protect the democratic values rooted 

in American society,” the pope said. 

In the midday Marian prayer broadcast 

live from the Vatican, Pope Francis 

invoked the intercession of the Immaculate 

Conception, who was proclaimed 

patroness of the United States in 

1846. 

Pope Francis’ comments came four 

days after pro-Donald Trump protesters 

stormed the U.S. Capitol Building Jan. 

6 as Congress was in the process of certifying 

the presidential election results, 

leading to the evacuation of lawmakers. 

At least five people died as a result of 

the violence, including a U.S. Capitol 

police officer. 

In a video clip published Jan. 9, Pope 

Francis said that he was “astonished” by 

this incident that occurred in the U.S. 

Capitol. 

“I was astonished, because they are 

a people so disciplined in democracy, 

right? But it’s a reality,” the pope said in 

the clip published to the website of the 

Italian news program TgCom24. 

“Something isn’t working,” Pope 

Francis continued. With “people taking 

a path against the community, against 

democracy, against the common good. 

Thanks be to God that this has broken 

out and there was a chance to see it 

well so that now you can try and heal 

it. Yes, this must be condemned, this 

movement. …” 

The pope’s remarks came after U.S. 

bishops condemned the violence, 

which was described as a “coup” and 

an “insurrection” by some in the 

media. 

“I join people of goodwill in condemning 

the violence today at the United 

States Capitol,” said Archbishop José H. 

Gomez in a statement released the day 

of the attack by the U.S. Conference of 

Catholic Bishops, of which Archbishop 

Gomez currently serves as president. 

“This is not who we are as Americans. 

I am praying for members of Congress 

and Capitol staff and for the police and 

all those working to restore order and 

public safety,” he said. 

Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the 

archbishop of Washington, D.C., 

described the events as an attack on 

“sacred ground.” 

“We Americans should honor the 

place where our nation’s laws and 

policies are debated and decided,” he 

said in his statement. “We should feel 

violated when the legacy of freedom 

enshrined in that building is disrespected 

and desecrated.” 

Reporting courtesy of Catholic News 

Agency Rome correspondent Courtney 

Mares. 

Editor’s note: Due to deadline 

constraints and the changing nature of 

developments from Washington, D.C., 

Angelus will have more complete coverage 

of the Jan. 6 events on Capitol Hill 

and their aftermath in the next issue. 

Papal Prayer Intention for January: May the Lord give us the grace to live in full fellowship 

with our brothers and sisters of other religions, praying for one another, open to all.

Our urgent duty 

NEW WORLD 

OF FAITH 

BY ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ 

On Jan. 12, Archbishop Gomez delivered 

the keynote address for the annual 

conference of the University of Notre 

Dame’s De Nicola Center for Ethics 

and Culture on the theme, “We Belong 

to One Another.” His full address can 

be found on AngelusNews.com. 

One day, St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta 

found an old and very sick woman 

lying on the streets of Calcutta. 

The woman was covered in open 

sores; she was in a lot of pain, and 

many of her wounds were infected. 

Mother Teresa took her in and started 

cleaning her up. 

The whole time, this woman was 

yelling at her, cursing at her. At one 

point the woman cried out, “Why are 

you doing this? People don’t do things 

like this. Who taught you?” 

Mother Teresa replied simply, “My 

God taught me.” 

Now, that made the woman calm 

down a little. So, she asked, “Who is 

this God?” 

And Mother Teresa replied, again 

very simply, “You know my God. My 

God is called Love.” 

This little story gets to the heart of 

our responsibilities as Christians because 

it tells us two important truths: 

who God is and who we are as human 

beings. 

As Christians, we worship a God who 

has revealed himself as Love. And 

as Christians, we know that human 

beings are made in the image of this 

God, in the image of Love. We are 

created out of love. And we are made 

to love — as Jesus loved and as Mother 

Teresa and the saints love. 

Unless we know these truths, we 

can never understand our Christian 

commitments — for immigrants and 

refugees, for the poor, the unborn, the 

imprisoned, the sick, the environment. 

Unless we know these truths, we can’t 

know how to create a society that will 

be good for human beings. 

Right now in the West, nations 

and corporations and international 

agencies are trying to build a global 

economic and political order that 

does not need to rely on beliefs about 

God or traditional religious values and 

principles. 

But what we are finding is that when 

we lose this Judeo-Christian idea 

— of a God who creates the human 

person in his image — then we lose 

the basis for all the noble principles 

and goals that we have in our society. 

We find that unless we believe in a 

Creator who establishes values, there 

is no foundation for human dignity, 

freedom, equality, and fraternity. 

To put our challenge in its simplest 

terms: unless we believe that we have a 

Father in heaven, there is no necessary 

reason for us to treat one another as 

brothers and sisters on earth. 

That is one of the underlying concerns 

in Pope Francis’ latest encyclical, 

“Fratelli Tutti.” 

At the heart of the Holy Father’s 

appeal is that simple, beautiful truth: 

that God is Love, that he is our Father 

and we are his children, and he calls 

us to form one human family and to 

live together in love as brothers and 

sisters. 

The Holy Father understands that 

many of the troubles in the world 

are more than a failure of politics or 

diplomacy. They represent a failure 

of human fraternity and solidarity. A 

failure of love. 

And that is our challenge and our 

mission as Christians, as the Church. 

We have an urgent duty in this 

moment, especially in light of the 

violence last week at our nation’s 

Capitol, and the deep polarization and 

divisions in our country. 

Our society has lost its bearings. We 

are living in an aggressively secular society 

that has forgotten the truth about 

God and the truth about the human 

person. This crisis of truth is the root 

cause of pain and hardship in so many 

of our neighbors’ lives. It is the cause 

of many of the injustices in our society. 

But you and I, as Christians, we know 

the truth. 

In this moment, we need to bear 

witness to the truth that we are all children 

of God, that there is a greatness 

to human life, that every one of us is 

created in God’s image, endowed with 

God-given rights and responsibilities, 

and called to a transcendent destiny. 

As Christians, we need to be models 

for a new way of life — a life of love 

and compassion and concern for others. 

We need to work for dignity and 

equality. We need to build a society 

where it is easier for people to love and 

to be loved. 

As Mother Teresa taught us, our God 

is called Love. And he calls each one 

of us to love. 

By our love — by the way we serve 

our neighbors, by the way we care 

for one another, especially the weak 

and vulnerable — we can change the 

world. We can help our neighbors to 

find and encounter this God who is 

called Love. 

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

January 15, 2021 • ANGELUS • 3

WORLD 

Farewell to the Vatican’s 

‘Latin Lover’ 

A Catholic priest known as the 

Church’s top authority on Latin died 

Christmas Day in Milwaukee of 

complications from COVID-19 at the 

age of 81. 

Discalced Carmelite Father Reginald 

Foster spent four decades at the Latin 

Language Department of the Vatican 

Secretariat of State after arriving there 

in 1969. 

Voters wait to cast their ballots at a polling station in Bangui, Central African Republic, Dec. 27, 2020. 

Africa: Post-election strife could get worse in C.A.R. 

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/ANTONIE ROLLAND, REUTERS 

Father Reginald Foster wearing his trademark 

plumber’s uniform near the Vatican post office 

in 2007. 

Despite wearing a plumber’s uniform 

to work every day and a penchant for 

making irreverent remarks, Father Foster’s 

expertise made him indispensable 

in the Vatican under three popes. He 

also taught Latin at Rome’s Pontifical 

Gregorian University, until he was 

fired for accepting nonpaying students 

into his classes. 

He retired to his hometown of Milwaukee 

in 2009 and continued writing 

and teaching Latin, even remotely in 

recent months. 

Father Foster’s death was recognized 

by the Vatican in a special message 

on behalf of Pope Francis thanking 

Father Foster for his contributions to 

the Church. It was, of course, written 

in Latin. 

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/CHRIS WARDE-JONES 

Catholics in the Central African Republic are worried that a post-election insurrection 

by rebels will result in food shortages and a refugee exodus. 

Two-thirds of the country is currently controlled by rebels challenging incumbent 

president Faustin-Archange Touadéra, who won the Dec. 27, 2020 elections 

with 53% of the vote. However, opposition groups cited irregularities in the elections, 

for which half of voters were unable to register because of militia violence. 

People are “living in fear and anxiety,” said Bishop Nestor-Désiré Nongo-Aziagbia, 

who added that the conflict risked “turning into a nationwide hunt for innocent 

people, based solely on their ethnicity or political affiliation.” 

The bishop told the French Catholic daily La Croix Jan. 6 that the country’s 

main supply route from Cameroon was occupied, causing shortages and surging 

prices. 

Maria Lozano, a Spanish laywoman who works for the papal charity Aid to the 

Church in Need, told Crux that Islamic “jihadists want to ransack the country to 

have resources they need to deploy elsewhere. Many of the rebels are foreign from 

Niger, Chad, or Sudan, who’re fighting in a war that is not theirs for money.” 

The violence is a setback for a country praised for slowly returning to peace and 

stability in recent years. 

Archbishop resigns following return from exile 

An archbishop in Belarus resigned less than two weeks after his government 

allowed his return from exile. 

Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz of Minsk submitted his resignation on 

Jan. 3, his 75th birthday, in accordance with canon law. The same day, the 

Vatican announced that the pope had accepted the resignation. 

Archbishop Kondrusiewicz had been exiled from Belarus since August 2020, 

only finally being allowed to return on Dec. 24. The archbishop was barred 

from the country due to his public defense of protests against the reelection of 

President Alexander Lukashenko, who has been accused of electoral fraud. 

The sudden resignation led Vatican-watchers to speculate the resignation was 

part of a compromise between the Vatican and Lukashenko to allow for Archbishop 

Kondrusiewicz to return to Belarus but without the official authority of 

a bishop. 

The Vatican has not yet named a permanent successor to Archbishop Kondrusiewicz. 

 

4 • ANGELUS • January 15, 2021

NATION 

Catholics well-represented 

in new Congress 

Following last year’s election, not only is a Catholic 

president for the second time in American history, but 

Catholics are the largest religious group represented in 

Congress. 

Thirty percent of the members of the 117th Congress 

claim Catholic affiliation, including the Speaker of the 

House, Nancy Pelosi. In the House, that breaks down to 

77 Democrats and 57 Republicans; in the Senate, there 

are 14 Catholic Democrats and 11 Catholic Republicans. 

Regardless of shared religion, the two groups seem 

diametrically opposed on policy. The Catholic League 

reports that 95% of Catholic Democrats in the House 

and 79% in the Senate have a pro-abortion voting record, 

compared to the pro-life voting recording of Catholic 

Republicans in the House and 91% in the Senate. 

For many Catholics, these numbers demonstrate the 

continued stratification of religious values, with Democrats 

focusing on social justice, and Republicans more 

concerned with right to life issues. 

Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann at last year’s opening Mass of the National 

Prayer Vigil for Life. 

March for Life prayer vigil 

to be held online 

Though the March for Life will still be held in person 

this year, the annual vigil prayer service that precedes it is 

moving online due to the pandemic. 

The National Prayer Vigil for Life usually attracts 10,000 

people at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate 

Conception in Washington, D.C. 

This year, the service will be broadcast live starting at 

5 p.m. Pacific Standard Time on Thursday, Jan. 28, on 

EWTN as well as the USCCB and the basilica’s internet 

platforms. 

Kansas City Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann, chairman of 

the USCCB’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities, said that 

“now, more than ever, our nation is in need of prayer for 

the protection of the unborn and the dignity of all human 

life.” 

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/GREGORY A. SHEMITZ 

New York cardinal condemns 

cathedral vandalism 

FATHER PHILIP BOCHANSKI 

SNOW ABSOLUTION — Warmed by a fire, Father Philip Bochanski 

offers confession just inside the garage at the rectory of St. 

Catherine of Siena Church in Trumbull, Connecticut, Dec. 20, 2020. 

The parish’s priests normally hear “drive-through” confessions every 

Sunday afternoon in the church parking lot, but a snowstorm that 

week forced the priest to retreat “inside.” 

New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan took to his city’s famous 

tabloid paper to denounce another act of vandalism to 

the exterior of St. Patrick’s Cathedral as “ugly and unlawful.” 

The cathedral was graffitied on Jan. 1 by protesters 

connected by Black Lives Matter Brooklyn and Justice for 

George, according to the New York Post. This act of vandalism 

follows similar acts made during protests last summer. 

“As a woman from the Bronx e-mailed me to say,” wrote 

Cardinal Dolan in his Jan. 5 New York Post op-ed, “ ‘Cardinal 

Dolan, it’s time we learn from our Jewish and Islamic 

neighbors. A synagogue or mosque is defaced, and they are 

quick to condemn it. The governor and the mayor would 

join in. They’re right.’ ” 

“So is she,” Cardinal Dolan continued. “This attack on St. 

Patrick’s was ugly and unlawful.” 

Cardinal Dolan also pointed out the city’s various Catholic-affiliated 

ministries that seek to bring about the kinds of 

racial equality called for by the protests. 


LOCAL 

LA says farewell to two larger-than-life Catholics 

They were two Los Angeles legends 

who shared the same first name, the 

beginning of a last name (appropriate 

for the city they loved), and, most 

importantly, the Catholic faith. 

And so it seemed too much of a 

coincidence that longtime LA city 

politician Tom Labonge and legendary 

Hall of Fame Dodgers manager 

Tommy Lasorda passed away within 

hours of each other on Jan. 7 and 8, 

respectively. 

Labonge, 67, was one of eight sons 

born to his devout Catholic mother, 

Mary Louise, and his father, Robert, 

who once worked as an editor for The 

Tidings, the predecessor of Angelus. 

He could often be found at Mass at his 

home parish, St. Brendan’s in Hancock 

Park, or at the Cathedral of Our Lady 

of the Angels handing out pumpkin 

bread from the nearby Monastery of 

the Angels. 

Lasorda, 93, came from an Italian 

Catholic immigrant family who liked 

to preach that “if you don’t love the 

Dodgers, there’s a good chance you 

may not get into heaven.” He was 

known for his generosity toward priests 

and women religious, and credited his 

faith for helping him navigate success 

and failure during his career. 

You can find more coverage of the 

two mens’ faith in the next issue of 

Angelus and on AngelusNews.com. 

Tom Labonge 

Tommy Lasorda. 


CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/RICK SCUTERI, REUTERS 

A passing of the torch 

in San Bernardino 

Coadjutor Bishop Alberto Rojas has 

officially taken the reins in San Bernardino, 

after Pope Francis accepted 

the resignation of Bishop Gerald R. 

Barnes on Dec. 28. 

“There is no doubt, when looking at 

the events of this past year, that I am 

coming to lead the diocese at a very 

challenging time,” Bishop Rojas said in 

a statement the day of the announcement. 

But, he said, he has “always 

trusted in God’s plan … and that he 

will give me all that I need to do his 

work.” 

Since becoming coadjutor for the 

Diocese of San Bernardino last February, 

Bishop Rojas had worked alongside 

Bishop Barnes in overseeing the 

diocese in a transitional period. Before 

that, Bishop Rojas had been an auxiliary 

bishop in Chicago for eight years. 

Bishop Barnes has headed the San 

Bernardino Diocese since 1996. He 

turned 75 last June, and, as canon law 

requires, submitted his resignation to 

the pope. 

OneLife LA goes virtual 

OneLife LA returns for its sixth year 

this month, but with a virtual twist 

thanks to the ongoing COVID-19 

pandemic. 

The annual walk and celebration of 

life will be held on Jan. 23, kicking 

off with a virtual celebration at noon. 

The day’s events still include a lineup 

of speakers, singers, and dancing, but 

performances will be aired in a onehour 

online event, and shared on social 

media with the hashtag #onelifela. 

This year’s theme is sharing the “Joy 

of Life.” For more information, or to 

register, visit onelifela.org. 

JOHNMICHAEL FILIPPONE 

AN EARLY CHRISTMAS GIFT — In a local fundraising effort that went global, the Serra Club 

raised $25,000 toward the Mission San Gabriel restoration fund. On Dec. 16, 2020, Pat 

Livingston, LA district governor, Father Sam Ward, ADLA vocations director, Ed Lupton, Pacific 

regional director, and Pat Manzo, board member, presented a check to Archbishop José H. 

Gomez, earmarked to help the mission rebuild after last summer’s devastating fire. 


SUNDAY 

READINGS 

BY SCOTT HAHN 

1 Sam. 3:3–10, 19 / Ps. 40:2, 4, 7–10 / 1 Cor. 6:13–15, 17–20 / Jn. 1:35–42 

SEEK TRUTH. SERVE OTHERS. 

Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy, 

a Catholic, Dominican, 

independent, college-preparatory, 

day and boarding school, 

educates young women 

for a life of 

faith, integrity and truth. 

www.fsha.org 

440 St. Katherine Drive 

La Cañada Flintridge, CA 91011 

• 

626-685-8500 

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS 

“Calling of Peter and Andrew,” 

artist unknown, Netherlands. 

In the call of Samuel and the first 

apostles, this Sunday’s Readings shed 

light on our own calling to be followers 

of Christ. 

Notice in the Gospel that John’s 

disciples are prepared to hear God’s 

call. They are already looking for the 

Messiah, so they trust in John’s word 

and follow when he points out the 

Lamb of God walking by. 

Samuel is also waiting on the Lord, 

sleeping near the Ark of the Covenant 

where God’s glory dwells, taking instruction 

from Eli, the high priest. 

Samuel listened to God’s word and 

the Lord was with him. And Samuel, 

through his word, turned all Israel to 

the Lord (see 1 Samuel 3:21; 7:2–3). 

The disciples, too, heard and followed 

— words we hear repeatedly in 

Sunday’s Gospel. They stayed with the 

Lord and by their testimony brought 

others to the Lord. 

These scenes from salvation history 

should give us strength to embrace 

God’s will and to follow his call in our 

lives. 

God is constantly calling to each of 

us, personally, by name (see Isaiah 

43:1; John 10:3). He wants us to seek 

him in love, to long for his word (see 

Wisdom 6:11–12). We must desire always, 

as the apostles did, to stay where 

the Lord stays, to constantly seek his 

face (see Psalm 42:2). 

For we are not our own, but belong 

to the Lord, as Paul says in Sunday’s 

Epistle. 

We must have ears open to obedience, 

and write his word within our 

hearts. We must trust in the Lord’s 

promise, that if we come to him in 

faith, he will abide with us (see John 

15:14; 14:21–23), and raise us by his 

power. And we must reflect in our 

lives the love he has shown us, so that 

others too may find the Messiah. 

As we renew our vows of discipleship 

in this Eucharist, let us approach the 

altar singing the new song of Sunday’s 

Psalm: “Behold I come ... to do your 

will, O my God.” 

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


IN EXILE 

BY FATHER RONALD ROLHEISER, OMI 

What is your practice? 

Today, the common question in 

spiritual circles is not, “What is your 

church or your religion?” But, “What 

is your practice?” 

What is your practice? What is your 

particular explicit prayer practice? 

Is it Christian? Buddhist? Islamic? 

Secular? Do you meditate? Do you 

do centering prayer? Do you practice 

mindfulness? For how long do you do 

this each day? 

These are good questions and the 

prayer practices they refer to are good 

practices; but I take issue with one 

thing. The tendency here is to identify 

the essence of one’s discipleship 

and religious observance with a single 

explicit prayer practice, and that can 

be reductionist and simplistic. Discipleship 

is about more than one prayer 

practice. 

A friend of mine shares this story. He 

was at a spirituality gathering where 

the question most asked of everyone 

was this: “What is your practice?” 

One woman replied, “My practice is 

raising my kids!” She may have meant 

it in jest, but her quip contains an 

insight that can serve as an important 

corrective to the tendency to identify 

the essence of one’s discipleship with 

a single explicit prayer practice. 

Monks have secrets worth knowing. 

One of these is the truth that for any 

single prayer practice to be transformative 

it must be embedded in a 

larger set of practices, a much larger 

“monastic routine,” which commits 

one to a lot more than a single prayer 

practice. 

For a monk, each prayer practice is 

embedded inside a monastic routine 

and that routine, rather than any one 

single prayer practice, becomes the 

monk’s practice. Further still, that 

monastic routine, to have real value, 

must be itself predicated on fidelity to 

one’s vows. 

Hence, the question “What is your 

practice?” is a good one if it refers to 

more than just a single explicit prayer 

practice. It must also ask whether 

you are keeping the commandments. 

Are you faithful to your vows and 

commitments? Are you raising your 

kids well? Are you staying within 

Christian community? Do you reach 

out to the poor? And, yes, do you have 

some regular, explicit, habitual prayer 

practice? 

What is my own practice? 

I lean heavily on regularity and 

ritual, on a “monastic routine.” Here 

is my normal routine: Each morning 

I pray the Office of Lauds (usually in 

community). Then, before going to 

my office, I read a spiritual book for at 

least 20 minutes. At noon, I participate 

in the Eucharist, and sometime 

during the day, I go for a long walk 

and pray for an hour (mostly using the 

rosary as a mantra and praying for a 

lot of people by name). 

On days when I do not take a walk, 

I sit in meditation or centering prayer 

for about 15 minutes. Each evening, 

I pray vespers (again, usually in community). 

Once a week, I spend the 

evening writing a column on some 

aspect of spirituality. Once a month I 

celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation, 

always with the same confessor; 

and, when possible, I try to carve out 

a week each year to do a retreat. 

My practice survives on routine, 

rhythm, and ritual. These hold me 

and keep me inside my discipleship 

and my vows. They hold me more 

than I hold them. No matter how 

busy I am, no matter how distracted 

I am, and no matter whether or not 

I feel like praying on any given day, 

these rituals draw me into prayer and 

fidelity. 

To be a disciple is to put yourself 

under a discipline. Thus, the bigger 

part of my practice is my ministry and 

the chronic discipline this demands 

of me. Full disclosure, ministry is 

often more stimulating than prayer; 

but it also demands more of you and, 

if done in fidelity, can be powerfully 

transformative in terms of bringing 

you to maturity and altruism. 

Carlo Carretto, the renowned 

spiritual writer, spent much of his 

adult life in the Sahara Desert, living 

in solitude as a monk, spending many 

hours in formal prayer. However, after 

years of solitude and prayer in the desert, 

he went to visit his aging mother 

who had dedicated many years of her 

life to raising children, leaving little 

time for formal prayer. 

Visiting her, he realized something, 

namely, that his mother was more of 

a contemplative than he was! To his 

credit, Carretto drew the right lesson: 

there was nothing wrong with what 

he had been doing in the solitude of 

the desert for all those years, but there 

was something very right in what his 

mother had been doing in the busy 

bustle of raising children for so many 

years. Her life was its own monastery. 

Her practice was “raising kids.” 

I have always loved this line from 

the poet Robert Lax: “The task in life 

is not so much finding a path in the 

woods as of finding a rhythm to walk 

in.” Perhaps your rhythm is “monastic,” 

perhaps “domestic.” An explicit 

prayer practice is very important as a 

religious practice, but so too are our 

duties of state. 

Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher, award-winning author, and president of the Oblate School of Theology 

in San Antonio, Texas. Find him online at www.ronrolheiser.com and www.facebook.com/ronrolheiser. 


The completion o 


of a cathedral 

Nearly two decades 

later, the Blessed Virgin 

Mary is finally taking 

her place among the 

saints at the cathedral 

built in her name 

BY STEVE LOWERY / ANGELUS 


Faithful witnessed the unveiling of the new Marian tapestry at the Cathedral of Our Lady of 

the Angels during Mass celebrating the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God on Jan. 1. 


“SACRED MATERIAL”/JOHN NAVA, COPYRIGHT 2017. USED WITH PERMISSION. 


VICTOR ALEMÁN

VIC 

As the shrouds were removed 

from the five panels of a 

stunning new tapestry honoring 

the Blessed Virgin Mary in the 

apse of the Cathedral of Our Lady of 

the Angels before morning Mass on 

New Year’s Day, it seemed fitting that 

their removal required the sound of 

ripping Velcro. 

A necessarily harsh sound to mark 

a clean break from a harsh year, one 

that, as Archbishop José H. Gomez 

acknowledged that morning, may 

have felt like a bad nightmare for 

many. 

But more importantly, the new 

tapestry, featuring a 14-foot-high depiction 

of the cathedral’s namesake, 

hands outstretched, eyes cast toward 

the altar and congregation, was 

unveiled on the day that the Catholic 

Church celebrates the solemnity of 

Mary, Mother of God. 

And by the time Mass was finished, 

it seemed as if it had always been 

there. 

For those who have called the cathedral 

their spiritual home since it was 

built two decades ago, the 29-by-50- 

foot tapestry seemed to signal an end, 

rather than a new beginning. 

“That’s always been the whole idea 

[of the new tapestry],” said Brother 

Hilarion O’Connor, the cathedral’s 

operations manager who helped shepherd 

the project. “The idea being the 

completion of the cathedral, completion 

of the tapestries.” 

Part of that completion might have 

felt long overdue. If you’ve walked 

through the long nave of the cathedral, 

you’ve likely gazed upon the 

more than 130 images of saints depicted 

on tapestries hung on opposite 

walls. 

Perhaps the most well-known of the 

cathedral’s artistic features, those 

tapestries were made by Californian 

painter and tapestry designer John 

Nava, who used real-life models for 

his depiction of the “communion of 

saints.” 

But what a visitor did not see until 

Jan. 1 was a depiction of the most 

important saint of them all: Mary, 

whose many titles in Catholic tradition 

include “Mother of God” and 

especially for Angelenos, “Our Lady 

of the Angels.” 

“It was always a little strange that I 

had [created] 136 figures for the interior 

of the church, but the one person 

who was not depicted was Our Lady,” 

said Nava, who wasn’t the only one to 

note the odd contradiction of having 

a cathedral dedicated to Our Lady 

lacking a prominent image of her. 

Among them was Archbishop José 

H. Gomez, who, upon arriving in Los 

Angeles a decade ago, told Brother 

O’Connor: “You know, we need to 

get Our Lady into the cathedral.” 

And now she has arrived, luminous, 

in a blue robe that distinguishes her 

from the saints in the nave, who now 

seem to look up at her, and that Nava 

portrayed in muted, mostly earth 

tones that complement the cathedral’s 

natural stone. 

This is a young Mary, but one whose 

countenance contains the unmistakable 

duality of the mother who is 

a harbor for our pain, and a woman 

projecting an air of someone who has 

experienced pain herself. She is large 

enough to suggest her power, but still 

radiates a sense of human vulnerability 

that so many people connect with. 

“She is the archetypal mother, I 

didn’t want her to be imposing, rather, 

I wanted her to be open, receptive, 

sympathetic,” said Nava, who studied 

art in Florence as a young man and 

visited many of Europe’s cathedrals, a 

good deal of them dedicated to Mary. 

As he did with his “communion of 

saints” that line the wall, Nava said it 

was important for this final tapestry 

to integrate the Church’s ancient tradition 

and history with contemporary 

people and times. 

“I wanted to connect it to the New 

World,” he said. “The greatest image 

of Mary in the new world, I believe, is 

the Virgin of Guadalupe. That’s why 

in her robe, I put in that floral pattern 

from the Virgin of Guadalupe, to 

refer to that figure.” 

The model for Mary was a woman 

in her 20s that Nava has known most 

of her life, a DACA recipient who he 

said was excited to know that her face 

would be used but who will remain 

anonymous so as to not confuse 

matters. 

After all, one should be contemplating 

Mary, not the model, when 

looking at the tapestry. 

“The art history of the Church is so 

varied, rather than doing a stylized 

image, I wanted to make a realistic 

portrait that people could connect 

with,” said Nava, who took two years 

to create the tapestry. “Something 

that they could say, ‘I know someone 

that looks like that.’ ” 

Also recognizable on the tapestry’s 

two outside panels, left and right, is a 

street map of downtown Los Angeles 

that is complete to the point that its 

upper right-hand corner contains a 

symbol for Dodger Stadium. 

Though he had followed the project 

from beginning to end, New Year’s 

Day marked the first time Brother 

O’Connor had seen the tapestry in 

its entirety without scaffolding in the 

way. It is “magnificent in how Our 

Lady is looking out on the congregation,” 

he noted, and it represents a 

fulfillment of what Archbishop Emeritus 

Cardinal Roger Mahony declared 

when it was first built: “I have helped 

build the cathedral, my successors 

will complete it.” 

Brother O’Connor marveled at 

how Nava was able to meet the size 

challenges of the church, the largest 

Catholic cathedral in the United 

States, while still maintaining an air 

of contemplation and scale. 

“John has an amazing talent for 

getting the images to meet the size of 

the cathedral,” he said. “That’s a big 

challenge.” 

Indeed, with such a project, an artist 

At left, above and below: John Nava poses with the central part of his “The Baptism of the Lord” tapestry in 2002, and 18 years later with the “Mary” 

tapestry on the opposite end of the cathedral. 


“I wanted to make a realistic portrait that people 

could connect with. Something that they could 

say, ‘I know someone that looks like that.’ ” 


An angel hovering over an artistic street map of LA on the new tapestry is seen through scaffolding last September. 




is tasked with creating something that 

is visually stimulating without becoming 

distracting. The art in a church 

should move us to thought, to prayer, 

to consideration of our lives, not on 

how the art got there. 

Nava has thought a lot about the 

role of the artist in such circumstances. 

When the cathedral first opened, 

he remembers that his friend, the 

sculptor who created the statue of 

Mary at the cathedral entrance, the 

late Robert Graham, told him, “This 

isn’t about us.” 

Instead, he said, it’s about creating a 

larger meaning and consciousness for 

people. 

“When you do a show in a gallery, 

the focus is on you,” he said. “You’re 

the artist and this is your work. But 

this is not about John Nava. This 

is about creating a reality that goes 

beyond a particular painter.” 

And now that it’s done, Nava smirks 

when asked if he will be creating any 

more tapestries. He said he is happy 

that Our Lady has instantly brought a 

“rightness” to the cathedral. 

Before it was unveiled, it was not 

uncommon for congregants to look 

toward the back of the church, at 

Nava’s equally magnificent “Baptism” 

tapestry. 

“People used to joke that the church 

was backwards because everybody 

looked that way,” Nava said, gesturing 

toward the rear of the building. “They 

looked that way because there was 

someone to see.” 

Turning his head to look up at the 

vision of Mary, Nava added, “Now, 

I think we have it in the right balance.” 

 

Steve Lowery is the arts and culture 

editor for the Long Beach Post and 

a parishioner at American Martyrs 

Church in Manhattan Beach. 

January 15, 2021 • ANGELUS • 15

Estefiana Torres, 

second from right, at 

her Sept. 18 confirmation 

ceremony at St. 

Lawrence of Brindisi 

Church in Watts. From 

left: Her father, Luis 

Torres; LAPD officers 

Eric Ortiz and Ken 

Busiere, and Estefiana’s 

mother, Francisca 

Arenas, far right. 

Small drops of goodwill 

By teaming LAPD officers with Catholic school students, 

‘Operation Progress’ is changing attitudes in some of 

LA’s toughest neighborhoods 

FATHER MATT ELSHOFF 

BY TOM HOFFARTH / ANGELUS 

In a fine white dress accentuated by 

a bright red confirmation stole — 

and matching red face mask — Estefania 

Torres approached the outdoor 

altar in the tented parking lot behind 

St. Lawrence of Brindisi Church in 

Watts. 

Standing behind the 16-year-old at 

a social distance as she declared her 

confirmation name and was anointed 

on the forehead with sacred chrism 

by the church’s pastor, Father Matt 

Elshoff, was her sponsor, LAPD Sgt. 

Ken Busiere, in full black uniform. 

It is the kind of scene that nonprofit 

organization Operation Progress has 

become known for helping create. 

“I know that many young people 

today, and many young women, are 

drawn in so many difficult directions 

that can conflict with their faith and 

I think it’s important to have a strong 

Catholic mentor in their life,” said 

Busiere, a father of three girls and an 

18-year LAPD veteran assigned to the 

LA Southeast Division. 

A grassroots initiative started 20 years 

ago by LAPD officer John Coughlin as 

a way to better understand the needs 

of a community historically fraught by 

gang violence and poverty, Operation 

Progress currently boasts nearly 100 

students at three elementary schools 

and three high schools. 

Starting as early as third grade, students 

grow according to “five pillars of 

success”: academics, life skills, health 

and wellness, service, and support and 

safety. There are also 3.0 grade-point 


es, 

ight, at 

onfirmaat 

St. 

rindisi 

tts. From 

r, Luis 

officers 

Ken 

stefiarancisca 

ht. 

FATHER MATT ELSHOFF 

benchmark levels of achievement 

measured by effort over ability. There 

are surveys to measure self-confidence, 

leadership, and the ability to share 

their stories. 

But the program’s success is something 

its leaders say must be “measured 

one scholar at a time.” 

Take, for example, the trio who 

Operation Progress’ executive director 

Theresa Gartland calls the program’s 

“north stars”: three young women who 

joined the expanded pilot program 

at St. Lawrence of Brindisi School, 

graduated high school last June, and 

are now freshmen in college. 

Petra Avelar and Meah Watson grew 

up in Watts’ Nickerson Gardens 

housing development and joined 

Operation Progress in 2013. Avelar, a 

graduate of Mary Star of the Sea High 

School in San Pedro, is now at Stonehill 

College in Boston, while Watson 

is enrolled at Morgan State University 

in Baltimore. 

Araceli Gonzalez, who started this 

fall at Texas Christian University, came 

into Operation Progress in 2014 while 

in the Gonzaque Villages housing 

development. Watson and Gonzalez 

both went to St. Mary’s Academy in 

Inglewood. 

Avelar’s story was among those told 

in the 2017 documentary, “A Week 

A poster from the 2017 documentary, “A Week 

In Watts,” focused on Operation Progress. 

In Watts,” directed and produced by 

Gregory Caruso (and son of major Operation 

Progress donor Rick Caruso) 

and which boasted NBA legend Shaquille 

O’Neal as executive producer. 

The film followed the impact of the 

program on six students living within 

a two-mile radius of St. Lawrence of 

Brindisi School, an area known for 

gang violence between Crips and 

Bloods. 

Since the film’s release on Netflix, 

police departments from across the 

country have reached out to Operation 

Progress organizers. It has since been 

replicated in Ft. Worth, Texas, with the 

help of a private Christian school in an 

underserved neighborhood near there. 

St. Lawrence of Brindisi School 

counts some 60 of its current 295 

students as program participants, with 

a list of kids still waiting to be assigned 

a mentor officer. 

Some 25 officers at the LA Southeast 

Division continue as mentors, 

although Gartland would like that 

number to grow to more than 50. 

Recent officer promotions and 

reassignments happened just before 

Operation Progress was ramping up 

for the 2020-2021 school year, and it 

was during a recruitment push when 

COVID-19 hit. 

Verbum Dei High School in Watts 

(blocks away from St. Lawrence of 

Brindisi School) and St. Mary’s Academy 

in Inglewood were two of Operation 

Progress’ pilot high schools, and it 

recently added St. Pius X-St. Matthias 

Academy in Downey. 

Besides St. Lawrence of Brindisi 

School, there are a handful of students 

from nearby Catholic elementary 

schools San Miguel and St. Raphael, 

some of whom have been paired with 

officer mentors from LAPD’s 77th St. 

Division. 

Gartland said she sees a clear 

correlation not only between officer 

mentorship and the students’ school 

performance, but in the attitudes of all 

involved. 

“Families see officers in a different 

light,” said Gartland, who has led the 

organization since 2013. 

But, she added, “the best outcome for 

me is seeing how the officers’ mindset 

in the community has changed. They 

seem more softer as they interact with 

Petra Avelar poses next to a poster of herself 

in the lobby of a theater at The Grove in LA 

during the premiere of the documentary “A 

Week In Watts.” Avelar joined Operation Progress 

while at St. Lawrence of Brindisi School 

in 2013 and is now a freshman at Stonehill 

College in Boston. 

families, which is something they 

usually don’t get a chance to do.” 

When Sgt. Busiere was approached 

by her mother to 

be Estefania’s confirmation 

sponsor (her assigned LAPD Operation 

Progress mentor, Senior Lead Officer 

Roberto Yanez, isn’t Catholic), he considered 

it an honor. The program has 

given Busiere, who has mentored three 

students over the last eight years for 

Operation Progress, an intimate sense 

of what families like the Torres face. 

“I’ve seen how young people have 

changed their opinions about police 

officers, but it works both ways,” said 

Busiere, who attends Saints Peter and 

Paul Church in Wilmington with his 

family. 

“Frankly, a lot of misunderstandings 

in this country about race is because 

we don’t spend enough time with 

each other. And I think the Catholic 

worldview is one where you are better 

able to serve everyone’s needs and it 

encapsulates the core values in the 

police department. 

“If we stray from that, we’re not the 

best versions of who we should be. I’m 

not sure how I’d do this job without my 

Catholic faith.” 

If Torres’ life was changed by Oper- 

TOM HOFFARTH 


ation Progress, it is because an LAPD 

officer recommended the program to 

her mother at a crucial time: she was 

about to finish fifth grade when her 

family was evicted from their home 

amid a situation of domestic violence. 

Both her parents were arrested, and she 

was sent to foster care. 

The turn of events brought her to 

St. Lawrence of Brindisi School on 

a scholarship when the pastor at the 

time, the late Father Jesus Vela, was 

helping LAPD officers recruit new 

students for the program. 

“I was a shy, very quiet kid, and I 

didn’t realize how much of a traumatic 

phase I was going through,” said 

Torres. “I had a difficult time believing 

in police officers when they took away 

my parents. I was disappointed and 

angry and resented the police; it is their 

job to protect us. And now they want to 

help by sponsoring me?” 

Torres said getting to know officers 

and the risks they take with their own 

lives left an impression on her. 

“I can now see the relationship I have 

with the officers; it has started small 

but it continues to grow, and now it’s 

connected to my Catholic beliefs.” 

Father Elshoff has a favorite story 

he likes to tell when explaining 

the positive impact the LAPD has 

made on his flock. 

Last June, when some 20 children in 

St. Lawrence of Brindisi School’s kindergarten 

class had a Zoom promotion 

ceremony, each was asked from their 

home what they wanted to be when 

they grow up, and why. 

“I believe it was a third of them who 

said, ‘I want to be a police officer,’ and 

the reason is because ‘I want to help 

people,’ ” recalled Father Elshoff, a 

lifelong educator who once served as 

president of his alma mater, St. Francis 

High School in La Cañada Flintridge. 

“It wasn’t like they were all telegraphing 

this to each other. I believe this 

was because they so often see so many 

officers on campus mentoring their 

students.” 

St. Lawrence of Brindisi School principal 

Alicia Camacho said the officers’ 

dedication can be seen in their regular 

participation in Catholic Schools Week 

Career Day every January. They bring 

their trained dogs on campus, give 

tours of the patrol cars, and even fly a 

helicopter overhead for a greeting. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, 

the mentor officers continue to check 

in on students’ grades and meet over 

Zoom welfare updates. 

“Our new first-graders are huge fans 

of the officers,” Camacho said. “It’s 

because the officers have cultivated 

long-lasting relationships with our 

students and brought a sense of safety 

for all of us at school. I am grateful that 

our students get to know the police 

officers as individuals and caring 

citizens.” 

The parish’s relationship with the 

LAPD has also helped Father Elshoff 

stay connected with the community 

during the pandemic. He and LAPD 

Sgt. Tim Jones have been holding 

community public meetings on 

Wednesdays in the parking lot of Café 

Oaxaca restaurant on Century Boulevard 

and Central Avenue in Watts, 

making themselves available to locals. 

Father Elshoff, who moonlights as 

chaplain for LAPD’s Southeast Division, 

has taken to sharing experiences 

of the encounters on his Facebook 

page in a series dubbed “The Police 

and the Padre.” 

The Capuchin says the meetings have 

helped him know people better, and 

Father Matt Elshoff with Torres and her sponsor, Sgt. Busiere. 

the joy he’s witnessed in them despite 

the tough times “reinforces my mission 

as a priest and follower of Francis of 

Assisi. 

“It animates me to give more, and 

more often than not, in very ordinary, 

TOM HOFFARTH 


LAPD Sgt. Tim Jones 

gets on his knees to 

show his badge to a 

young boy in Watts 

during a meeting of 

“The Police and the 

Padre” outside of the 

Café Oaxaca restaurant 

on Century 

Boulevard near Central 

Avenue, across 

from Ted Watkins 

Park in Watts. 

basic ways. It really doesn’t have to be 

complicated.” 

One poignant moment Father Elshoff 

captured with his own cellphone 

camera was a time when Sgt. Jones was 

asked by a young boy if he could touch 

his badge. Jones crouched down and 

readily obliged. 

“That’s our future,” Jones said of that 

moment. “I think of that moment, 

where we have to get down to the same 

level where they are comfortable and 

talk as equals. You can see people’s 

minds shift as I talk about my own life 

and my relationship with Father Matt.” 

The son of a Southern Baptist minister, 

Jones said his relationship with 

Father Elshoff can be summed up by 

the priest’s recent birthday gift, a St. 

Timothy medal that he now wears 

every day on patrol. 

“I think you can’t know what’s right in 

a community if you don’t know what’s 

wrong,” said Jones. “I know I have a 

better understanding since when I 

came in 25 years ago. Small drops of 

goodwill will spread the love and communication 

that we’re here to serve. 

That’s pretty cool.” 

FATHER MATT ELSHOFF/FACEBOOK 

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January 15, 2021 • ANGELUS • 19 

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11/29/20 12:09 PM

Bishop Moses 

Chikwe at his episcopal 

consecration 

in Owerri, Nigeria, 

in December 2019. 

ARCHDIOCESE OF OWERRI 

A New Year’s miracle 

When news broke of a Nigerian bishop’s kidnapping 

last month, friends of ‘Father Moses’ from his time 

in SoCal sprung into action 

BY PABLO KAY / ANGELUS 

During his nearly 15 years in Southern California, 

Father Moses Chikwe was always up to something, 

even when he wasn’t taking graduate courses at 

Loyola Marymount University and UCLA. 

The Nigerian priest helped in parishes, visited the sick 

in local hospitals, served as a prayer group chaplain, and 

joined soccer matches after Sunday Masses were done. He 

even handed out rosaries to strangers on the Venice Beach 

boardwalk. 

So when news reached California that Father Chikwe, now 

an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Owerri, Nigeria, 

had been kidnapped along with his driver Dec. 27, he had 

an extensive network of old friends praying for his release. 

“I feared for the worst. I couldn’t sleep,” recalled Patrick 

Chikwe, a nephew of the bishop. The younger Chikwe, 

who joined his uncle in California eight years ago and today 

teaches at an LA area high school, knew who to call first 

when he got the news. 

“Everybody we asked started prayer chains like crazy,” said 

Gary Micaletti, who became friends with “Father Moses” 

during his time at the Church of Saint Mark in Venice. 

Former parishioners from Saint Mark and parishes in San 

Diego where he served spread the word. Family members, 

prayer groups, and convents, including the Carmelite Sisters 


in Alhambra, were quickly mobilized to pray. Nigerian 

priests serving in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles were on the 

phone with updates. 

Their efforts were not in vain. Five days after Bishop 

Chikwe and his driver, Ndubuisi Robert, were abducted, 

the Archdiocese of Owerri announced Jan. 1 they had been 

released “unhurt and without ransom.” 

“To GOD be the glory,” read a New Year’s Day post on the 

archdiocese’s Facebook account. 

Owerri Archbishop Anthony Obinna, who visited the 

53-year-old Bishop Chikwe soon after his release, said he was 

“looking and feeling very weak from the traumatic experience.” 

A video circulating on social media later showed 

Bishop Chikwe celebrating with well-wishers, dancing in 

his white bishop’s cassock and flashing that trademark bright 

smile. 

“He was famous for that smile,” said Father Michael Rocha, 

who was pastor at Saint Mark during Bishop Chikwe’s time 

there. “He was always happy. That smile, and that laugh — 

that’s what endeared him to people here.” 

He first arrived in California in 2002, when his home 

diocese in Nigeria sent him to Loyola Marymount 

University to study educational administration. He 

first took up residence at Visitation Church, just blocks from 

the school’s campus in Westchester. 

Esteban Hernandez, then a middle-schooler at the parish 

school, remembered how easily the young priest connected 

with students, despite his heavy accent and being new to the 

country. 

“He was just a lovely guy to be around,” Hernandez 

recalled. “You felt like you could always approach him on 

the schoolyard during recess or after Mass and talk about 

anything.” 

After getting his master’s at LMU, he stayed to pursue a 

doctorate in education at UCLA. He briefly lived on the 

school’s Westwood campus, until Father Rocha offered to 

put him up at St. Mark. He did not have to be asked twice. 

“He had that type of outgoing personality,” remembered 

Then-Father Moses Chikwe with Gary and Cynthia Micaletti on a visit to 

San Simeon during his time as a student priest in California. 

GARY AND CYNTHIA MICALETTI 

Father Rocha, now pastor of St. Paschal Baylon Church in 

Thousand Oaks. “He wanted to be back in a parish, and 

people embraced him and welcomed him.” 

During his five years in Venice, he helped as a hospital 

chaplain and ministered to the parish’s Legion of Mary as 

spiritual director. It was there that he grew close to Gary Micaletti 

and his wife, Cynthia, whose daughter he baptized. 

The Micalettis considered him part of their family, inviting 

him often to join them for dinner and excursions to the 

California missions. 

“Being who he is, I 

wouldn’t be surprised 

if he just convinced 

[the kidnappers] to let 

him go,” said an LA 

priest who lived with 

Bishop Chikwe. 

Once the Micalettis took him to Universal Studios, where 

Cynthia convinced him to get on the Mummy ride. They 

recalled with a laugh that he promised he’d never trust her 

again. 

“Everybody who meets him knows he’s a very humble man, 

just a beautiful-hearted man,” said Gary. 

In 2011, he moved to San Diego while completing his 

doctoral studies. He served there at St. Joseph’s Cathedral 

downtown and at St. Mark’s in San Marcos, while also serving 

as chaplain at the local veterans’ hospital. 

The friendships he formed with the Micalettis and former 

parishioners have survived the test of time — and distance. 

Even after receiving his doctorate in 2013 and going home 

to direct Owerri’s religious education office, he would come 

back during summers to help out at St. Mark’s Church in 

San Marcos and St. Paschal Baylon Church in Thousand 

Oaks. 

His friends told Angelus that he always brushed off suggestions 

that he might one day move up in the Church’s 

hierarchy. But in late 2019, their predictions proved true 

when Pope Francis named him auxiliary bishop of his home 

Diocese of Owerri, in southeastern Nigeria. 

“Several times I said, ‘Moses, I’m telling you right now, 

eventually you’re going to become a bishop.’ He would howl 

and laugh and say, ‘Absolutely not.’ ” 


Owerri Archbishop Anthony Obinna (left) and Bishop Moses Chikwe. 

ARCHDIOCESE OF OWERRI 

“He just had that pastoral presence and love of the faith, 

and an ability to get the people around him,” said Father 

Rocha. “I think that’s what a bishop is called to do.” 

Bishop Chikwe’s new assignment meant taking up a 

shepherd’s role in one of the most dangerous places in 

the world to be Catholic. 

Of the more than 4,000 Christians killed for their faith 

around the world in 2018, about 90% were from Nigeria, 

according to the aid group Open Doors. 

Nigerian Christians face violence from Muslim-majority 

Fulani herdsmen in the country’s “middle belt,” a region 

that separates Nigeria’s Muslim north and Christian south, 

as well as from Islamic terrorists from ISIS affiliate Boko 

Haram, and roving criminal gangs. 

Since the election of President Muhammadu Buhari in 

2015, the security situation in Nigeria has deteriorated, said 

Father Chidi Ekpendu, a Nigerian priest who serves as a 

judge in the LA archdiocese’s marriage tribunal. 

While there has been a recent uptick in priests being seized 

for extortion, the kidnapping of a bishop is “unprecedented,” 

Father Ekpendu told Angelus. 

“There is a lot of confusion,” said Father Ekpendu, whose 

home Diocese of Aba neighbors Owerri. “We have to say it 

the way it is: There has been a complete breakdown of law 

and order in the entire Nigerian state. People live in fear all 

the time.” 

Christians have borne the brunt of the suffering under 


Buhari’s rule. The former army general, who ruled as military 

head of state from 1983 to 1985, has been accused of 

empowering Islamic terrorists targeting Christians. 

News of Bishop Chikwe’s kidnapping came as a shock to 

the Micalettis, who had exchanged virtual messages just two 

days before on Christmas. 

Bishop Chikwe was well aware of the dangers of being a 

priest in Nigeria, but always expressed calm when asked 

about the situation there, the couple recalled. 

“He would always say that the more responsibilities you 

have, the more you need to pray,” said Cynthia. 

Questions about who kidnapped Bishop Chikwe and his 

driver and how they were released remain unclear. In a message 

to Father Rocha a few days after his liberation, Bishop 

Chikwe said he was “gradually healing” from the experience 

and asked for prayers, but didn’t offer many details about the 

ordeal. 

Patrick, who described living the agony of his uncle’s kidnapping 

here in LA as a personal “nightmare,” has not heard 

who was responsible, either, but added that upticks in crime 

in the area are common during the Christmas holidays. 

And while he’s sure all the prayers helped, Father Rocha 

also likes to imagine Bishop Chikwe’s smile — and his laugh 

— winning over even the meanest of kidnappers. 

“Being who he is, I wouldn’t be surprised if he just 

convinced them to let him go.” 

Pablo Kay is the editor-in-chief of Angelus. 

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A poster of St. Stephen holding a “Holy Vaccine,” by the Rome 

street artist known as Maupal, near the Vatican Dec. 11, 2020. 

Sticking 

to the 

science 

From lockdowns to 

vaccines, the Vatican 

has had few issues 

with listening to the 

experts on COVID-19 

BY ELISE ANN ALLEN / 

ANGELUS 

ROME — When the COV- 

ID-19 pandemic began to hit 

Europe and much of the rest 

of the world early last year, no one, it 

seemed, was prepared. 

That includes the Vatican, which, 

being its own country, has tried from 

the beginning to keep pace with 

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/CINDY WOODEN 

developing knowledge of the disease 

and its implications. It has mostly 

taken its cues from the advice given 

by top medical and science experts. 

In many ways, the pandemic has 

served as another example in how 

faith and science can be natural 

allies, assuming, of course, that the 

faithful trust the advice of experts to 

keep them safe, and that those experts 

heed what the Church has to say on 

moral and ethical questions. 

That intersection of faith and 

science has emerged as one of the 

consistent themes of Pope Francis’ 

papacy. Far from being a science 

skeptic, the pontiff seems to have 

become chaplain of the scientific 

consensus on issues from the coronavirus 

to climate change. 

Since his election in 2013, he has 

revamped both the John Paul II Institute 

for Marriage and Family Sciences 

and the Pontifical Academies for Life 

and Sciences, the two Vatican entities 

that deal directly with often-thorny 

scientific questions, and revised the 

curricula for Catholic universities. 

In doing so, he has emphasized the 

importance of dialogue and consistent 

interaction between theologians 

and secular experts in the given field. 

Pope Francis is also the first pope in 

modern times to be a trained scientist. 

He graduated from a state-run 

technical secondary school in his 

native Buenos Aires with a degree in 

chemistry, and worked in a chemistry 

lab before entering the seminary. 

This papacy’s easy relationship with 

science helps explain the Holy See’s 

reaction to the coronavirus crisis 

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/DADO RUVIC, REUTERS 


under Pope Francis’ guidance. 

The Vatican’s own COVID-19 

taskforce, for example, has five different 

working groups, one of which is 

dedicated to the research, study, and 

analysis of the coronavirus pandemic 

from an ecological, economic, political, 

labor, health care, and security 

perspective. 

Throughout Italy’s spring outbreak 

and its three-month coronavirus lockdown, 

Pope Francis urged Catholics 

in the country, despite their frustrations, 

to follow the government’s 

restrictive orders, which were based 

on advice from a scientific-technical 

committee leading the government’s 

anti-COVID response. Now, the 

Vatican is keeping that cooperative 

posture with the scientific community 

in its public guidance on the COV- 

ID-19 vaccines for Catholics. 

Last month, amid heated debate 

among some Catholics — bishops 

included — over the morality of 

using vaccines linked even remotely 

to abortion, the Congregation for 

the Doctrine of the Faith essentially 

greenlighted the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech 

and Moderna vaccines. 

The two vaccines, which were both 

developed using cell lines derived 

from aborted fetuses in the 1960s, 

were the first to be approved for use 

in several countries last month and 

claim efficacy rates of more than 

90%. 

In a Dec. 21 explanatory note, 

the department said that in cases 

in which “ethically irreproachable 

COVID-19 vaccines” are not available, 

“it is morally acceptable to 

receive COVID-19 vaccines that have 

used cell lines from aborted fetuses 

in their research and production 

process.” 

The reason for this, they said, is that 

the abortion from which medical 

personnel harvested the cell lines for 

the vaccines is “remote” enough that, 

in this case, it is not an issue. 

While stressing the “moral duty” to 

avoid using products made with cells 

from aborted fetuses, the department 

also stressed that this duty “is not 

obligatory if there is a grave danger, 

such as the otherwise uncontainable 

spread of a serious pathological 

Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago receives the COVID-19 vaccine on Dec. 23, 2020. 

agent,” in this case, COVID-19. 

“It must therefore be considered 

that, in such a case, all vaccinations 

recognized as clinically safe and effective 

can be used in good conscience 

with the certain knowledge that the 

use of such vaccines does not constitute 

formal cooperation with the 

abortion from which the cells used 

in production of the vaccines derive,” 

they said. 

Now, after announcing its acceptance 

of the vaccines for Catholics 

all over the world, the Vatican will 

actually get to distribute it. 

On Jan. 2, the Vatican’s office for 

health and hygiene announced it had 

acquired the Pfizer vaccine and will 

begin distributing it to Vatican City 

residents, employees, and their family 

members in the second half of the 

month. 

Doses will be stored in an ultra-low 

temperature refrigerator and injections 

will be delivered in the Paul VI 

Audience Hall, beginning with health 

personnel and those with greatest 

contact with the public, as well as the 

elderly. 

Pope Francis himself said he will 

receive the vaccine sometime in 

mid-January. Since early in the 

pandemic, he has perhaps been 

the world’s most vocal advocate for 

equitable distribution of the vaccines 

among the world’s poor. 

Most recently, during his traditional 

“urbi et orbi” address on Christmas 

day, Pope Francis called the vaccines 

a “light of hope” at the end of an 

otherwise dark year for many. 

Christmas, he said in the address, is 

a time to celebrate “the light of Christ 

who comes into the world, and he 

comes for all, not just for a few.” 

He then issued an appeal to all 

heads of states, businesses, and 

international organizations to seek “a 

solution for everyone” in the coronavirus 

pandemic, meaning “vaccines 

for everyone, especially the poorest 

and most vulnerable in every region 

of the planet. In the first place, the 

most needy and vulnerable.” 

Over the next few months, all eyes 

will be on how the Vatican handles 

distribution of the vaccine for its own 

employees and citizens. But whatever 

decisions await Vatican officials, we 

can expect they’ll be checking with 

the experts first. 

Elise Ann Allen is a Denver native 

who currently works as a senior correspondent 

for Crux in Rome, covering 

the Vatican and the global Church. 

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/KAREN CALLAWAY, CHICAGO CATHOLIC 


“Madonna of Mercy,” by Sano di Pietro, 15th century. 

Why we need the 

feminine genius 

In the toughest of times, the Catholic Church has 

relied on gifts that only women can offer 

BY SIMONE RIZKALLAH / ANGELUS 


The COVID-19 pandemic, it 

seems, has spared no one. 

Sure, some have been blessed 

to remain largely untouched physically 

or financially by the pandemic. 

But the anxiety of these uncertain last 

few months, and the consequences of 

isolation and loneliness, seem to have 

found us all in some way. 

As a result, the larger questions about 

destiny and meaning — ones that were 

dismissed more easily before — today 

ask to be revisited in a totally new context. 

After the bruising year that was 

2020, those questions invite Catholics 

to reflect deeply about our place in the 

post-COVID world. 

St. Augustine of Hippo lived in a time 

of chaos and civilizational collapse, 

marked by plague and political strife. 

His advice for times like these? Stay 

rooted in reality. 

“Bad times, hard times, this is what 

people keep saying; but let us live well, 

and times shall be good,” he wrote in 

the year 410. “We are the times: Such 

as we are, such are the times.” 

Such as we are, such are the times. 

The great 20th-century philosopher 

Simone Weil described being rooted 

as the least recognized and yet most 

important need of the human soul. 

But what can help us fulfill this need? 

Ironically, it was one of Weil’s admirers, 

St. Pope John Paul II, who argued 

that modern man’s loss of its own 

sense of humanity called for a “manifestation 

of that ‘genius’ which belongs 

to women.” 

“It is commonly thought,” the 

Polish pontiff wrote in his 1988 

letter “Mulieris Dignitatem” (On the 

Dignity and Vocation of Women), that 

“women are more capable than men 

of paying attention to another person, 

and that motherhood develops this 

predisposition even more.” 

Throughout history, it is the genius 

of women that God has designed to 

continually root mankind in reality. 

And this is reality: Because of Jesus 

Christ we are not victims of our 

circumstances. We are being found, 

cherished, healed, and saved. 

This is what women represent and do 

— find, cherish, heal, and save. Why? 


Because, as German writer Gertrude 

von le Fort observed, “Wherever a 

woman is most profoundly herself, 

there she is also bride and mother.” 

One of the greatest spiritual mothers 

is St. Mary Magdalene, celebrated 

liturgically as “the Apostle to the Apostles.” 

While the apostles were behind 

closed doors because of fear after Jesus’ 

execution, Mary “stood weeping outside 

the tomb” of Jesus (John 20:11). 

We perceive in her not so much fear 

or anxiety, but a solitude born from 

her affection for Jesus and the knowledge 

that only he could adequately 

respond to her insecurity. 

When her love and tears are rewarded, 

she becomes the first “testis 

divinae misericordiae” (“witness of 

divine mercy”), and then immediately 

evangelizes the apostles: “I have seen 

the Lord!” 

This particular receptivity of women 

is why women have always been and 

will continue to be the engines of the 

Church in their capacity to generate 

something new by creating a space for 

the other. 

It is always the temptation of the 

Christian to become self-absorbed, to 

focus on one’s weakness, to become 

angry at one’s limitations, and therefore 

behave negatively or reactively. 

Especially in times of crisis it is very 

easy to fall into obsessions with external 

solutions or placing one’s hope or 

certainty into politics or ideology. And 

since politics are ultimately worldly solutions 

to spiritual problems — wherever 

you happen to land in the public 

landscape — the Christian will always 

be dissatisfied. 

At the end of the day, when all our 

ideologies and formulations fail, we 

are reminded that the other demands 

to be engaged on an emotional and 

spiritual plane. 

And this is precisely the place where 

women are experts. 

Women ground us and keep us in 

the right state of mind because they 

remind us of God when we have 

forgotten him in one another. 

Consider the witness of Christian women 

in the early Church. Jesus treated 

women with the dignity their nature 

deserved and women ran with it and 

transformed the Church, the world, 

and the very empire that was crumbling 

before their eyes. They embraced 

their dignity and then generated a 

dignified civilization because of it. 

“Appearance of Jesus Christ to Maria Magdalena,” by Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov, 1835. 


This historical reality is why Archbishop 

Fulton J. Sheen noted that “to a 

great extent the level of any civilization 

is the level of its womanhood.” 

The first Christians lived in a time 

of systematic persecution, plagues, 

famines, economic hardship, a culture 

of death with soaring rates of abortion 

and infanticide (of largely baby girls), 

and zero legal rights for women. 

And yet, the Christian faith did not 

just survive — it flourished. 

In the ancient world, a woman’s 

testimony meant nothing, culturally or 

politically. So paradoxically, it was the 

witness and testimony of women that 

brought forth the newness of Christianity. 

The majority of converts and 

therefore evangelizers were initially 

women. 

The witness of happy marriages and 

families attracted pagans to this strange 

new monotheistic faith, as did their 

often fearless charity in the face of 

deadly plagues. Infected pagans were 

often abandoned by their own families 

and ended up being cared for by 

Christians. 

It seems in our own day, it will once 

again be the transcendental of the 

Good and not primarily the True or 

the Beautiful that will be most needed 

and persuasive for an unbelieving 

world. 

The feminine genius is subtle in 

expression but phenomenal in consequence. 

It is impossible to recount all 

its manifestations throughout history, 

but for those who have eyes to see and 

ears to hear, the presence and prophetic 

power of women will always serve 

as a reminder that spiritual power is 

the only power and that faith is the 

victory that overcomes the world (1 

John 5:4). 

For this reason, we can rejoice at 

what God has done for us and what 

he is doing here and now, even in this. 

This particularly feminine perception 

and communication is a “vocation 

to the other” in a world in desperate 

need of motherhood. 

Simone Rizkallah is the director of 

Program Growth for Endow. She blogs 

at www.culturalgypsy.com. 


INTERSECTIONS 

BY GREG ERLANDSON 

Health care workers at 

United Memorial Medical 

Center in Houston treat 

patients infected with 

COVID-19 on New Year’s 

Eve Dec. 31, 2020. 

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/CALLAGHAN O’HARE, REUTERS 

New year, new normal 

The year 2020 ended for me with an emergency root 

canal. It seemed a fitting way to close out a year that 

had so little to recommend it. It was a ghastly year, 

filled with disease and death, upheaval and rumors, ersatz 

controversies and real ones. Why shouldn’t it end with an 

angry molar whose nerves were calling it quits? 

And yet. When we zoom in from the macro dysfunction 

to the micro events of our daily lives, there were blessings to 

be found in 2020. So my New Year’s resolution of sorts is to 

appreciate the silver linings of 2020 in the hope that it will 

improve my attitude going into 2021. 

Take that root canal, for instance. Thank goodness there 

were dentists willing to work during a pandemic and willing 

to tackle my “hot tooth,” sticking their hands into my germ 

factory of a mouth even when they didn’t know me from 


Adam and didn’t know how well I was abiding by pandemic 

protocols. 

A blessing that I hope lingers is my rediscovery of what 

“essential” means. In 2020, I was reminded that essential did 

not mean powerful, rich, or celebrated. Essential was the 

cashier at my grocery store who showed up for work when 

there were no Plexiglas protectors and no toilet paper, when 

nerves were raw and the risk seemed oppressively real. 

Essential was not just the doctors with the big salaries. 

Essential meant the nurses in the ICUs and the ERs who did 

most of the caregiving and the handholding and too often 

lost their lives in service to others. Listening to the tearful testimonies 

of nurses who had seen so many people die alone, 

I felt for their pain and for the goodness that drove them to 

return to work each day and face that pain all over again. 

Send __ 

Name __ 

Address _ 

City ____

And it wasn’t just the nurses who acted selflessly. Another 

blessing easy to miss was that most of us cared about one another. 

Despite the blizzard of media reports about pandemic 

crazies who refused to believe it was real or who refused to 

wear masks, most of us, most of the time, were trying to do 

the right thing. 

We tried to take seriously the safeguards that were intended 

not only to save us but to save others. The pandemic exposed 

the selfishness of some, but it also affirmed that many more 

of us are guided by an altruism that characterizes humanity 

at its best. 

I consider it a blessing that in the first months of the 

pandemic I recovered the sounds of silence. Traffic was 

minimal. Air pollution levels dropped. We walked in our 

neighborhoods instead of driving to work. I started noticing 

bird songs. When I took breaks from working at the dining 

room table (my new office), I fed the mourning doves and 

cardinals who were my only regular visitors. 

Judging from the profits of Jeff Bezos and Amazon, I’m not 

sure how many of us supported our struggling local shopkeepers, 

but a lot of us tried to help the hardy entrepreneurs 

who make up the backbone of our communities. Many of 

us also donated a lot more to caring services as well, grateful 

that we had jobs and income. In 2020, need was not something 

far away. It was all around us. 

This notion of community as something real and tangible 

may be a blessing we all share in 2021. In 2020, I found 

myself walking more and greeting people more readily. If 

our public culture as embodied by social media was degenerating 

to the howl of the mob, my neighborhood culture 

became, well, more neighborly. 

Our Church had a rough go of it in 2020, with closures 

and lawsuits and the McCarrick report, but we had blessings, 

too. Pope Francis’ remarkable “urbi et orbi” in Rome at 

the height of the first wave of the pandemic was perhaps the 

most visually striking moment of his papacy. 

The livestreamed rosaries and Masses united us not just 

with our parish but with Catholics from around the world. I 

found the international audience attracted to the livestreamed 

Masses of Bishop Robert Barron to be as inspiring 

as his homilies. 

Even our pang of hunger for the Eucharist was a blessing, 

I believe. Surveys may suggest that many Catholics see the 

Eucharist as a symbol, but the hunger we felt was for more 

than a mere symbol. The challenge we face in 2021 will be 

to return to church and accustom ourselves once again to 

Mass as a community. 

This was a most extraordinary year: painful and yet not 

without rewards. I don’t think I will recover my “old normal” 

for a long time, if ever. I do hope my “new normal” contains 

some of the blessings unexpectedly found in 2020. 

Greg Erlandson is the president and editor-in-chief of Catholic 

News Service. 

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Living just 

to live? 

Pixar’s ‘Soul’ asks all the right 

questions, but prefers to leave 

the biggest one unanswered 

BY PATRICK NEVE / ANGELUS 

Joe Gardner, voiced by Jamie Foxx, in Disney and Pixar’s “Soul.” 

©2020 DISNEY/PIXAR 

Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, 

and Kierkegaard have all tried 

to answer the question: What 

is the meaning of life? 

Now, it’s Disney’s turn. 

The new Pixar movie “Soul” (now 

streaming on Disney+) follows Joe 

Gardner, a jazz musician who finally 

gets his dream gig of performing 

with a famous jazz quartet, and then 

immediately dies. Joe’s soul faces a 

large glowing light called “the Great 

Beyond,” refuses to accept his fate, and 

runs in the opposite direction. 

Joe ends up in “the Great Before,” 

the place where souls are manufactured, 

given their “spark” and sent to 

earth. The spirits who run the Great 

Before confuse him for a mentor soul 

and they pair him up with an unborn 

soul, the 22nd soul ever created, who 

has spent millennia in the Great Before 

with no desire to go to earth. After 

some spiritual hijinks, both souls end 

up on earth with 22 stuck in Joe’s body 

and Joe’s soul is in the body of a cat. 

“Soul” is standard for Pixar, with 

cute character design and a beautiful 

score. It is reminiscent of “Inside Out” 

in its personification of abstract ideas 

like human emotion and the afterlife. 

Just like NBC’s “The Good Place,” 

the afterlife is imagined as a divine 

bureaucracy, where people can slip by 

undetected and accidentally be resurrected. 

To no Catholic’s surprise, the 

movie’s theology leaves something to 

be desired. But its philosophy is what 

caught my attention. 

The characters repeatedly reference 

something called a “spark.” In the 

Great Before, a soul needs to find its 

spark in order to go to earth. Joe thinks 

the spark is a soul’s purpose and falsely 

deduces that music is his purpose for 

living. At the end of the movie, Joe 

asks one of the spirits about this and 

they say, “Oh, the spark isn’t your life’s 

purpose.” 

The spark, we learn, is connected to a 

soul’s desire to live. 22 eventually finds 

her spark after living in Joe’s body. She 

realizes life is worth living after she 

tries pizza, rides the subway, and sees 

leaves falling from a tree. She enjoys 

walking so much, she suggests walking 

could be her life’s purpose. 

In a key line, Joe responds to 22: 

“That’s not a purpose. That’s just 

living.” 

Joe realizes the spark isn’t purpose at 

all. The spark is what makes a soul enjoy 

life. So maybe your spark is music, 

math or walking. Whatever makes you 

enjoy living life is your spark. 

Ultimately, the film seeks to answer 

“What is the meaning of life?” but 

comes up with a circular answer: The 

meaning of life is just to live it. That 

might sound like a simple, wise idea, 

but it begs another question: What 

does it even mean to live in the first 

place? 

Here, finding an answer is even more 

elusive. 

There is a right way and a wrong way 

to live, and the movie acknowledges 

that. The hippies help a hedge-fund 

manager realize he’s wasting his life, 

but what makes managing a hedge 

fund different from playing music? 

Why can’t he live his life that way? 

“Soul” doesn’t distinguish between 

the right way and the wrong way to 

live enough to actually help a viewer 

discern what a “spark” really is. 

The movie claims its characters are 

in search of life’s “big questions,” 

but maybe the characters are satisfied 

with those questions remaining 

unanswered. For some reason, Joe is 

fine with knowing what happens after 

death and not telling anyone. The 

spirits beyond the grave are capable of 

communicating the meaning of life 

but choose not to. It is left up to individuals 

to find out what the meaning 

of life is for them. 

This answer is pure relativism. Ironically, 

“Soul’s” meaning of life is satisfactory 

only if you assume an objective 

Joe and 22 in “the Great Before.” 


©2020 DISNEY/PIXAR 

moral code. In other words, the movie 

gives viewers license to create their 

own meaning for life, assuming that 

meaning won’t violate the generally 

accepted moral laws. While it does 

encourage viewers not to chase after 

useless things (money, fame, etc.), it 

doesn’t give them a real reason not to 

do so. 

The decision made at the end of the 

film by a key character reveals a core 

belief of the movie: Life on earth is 

better than death. Certainly, if there 

is no heaven or hell, no personal, 

all-powerful God, and no objective 

morality, then this makes sense. 

But even if the purpose of life is simply 

living, then death is the ultimate 

inescapable defeat. And since defeat 

is inevitable, why is life worth living 

at all? 

“Soul” deserves credit — and serious 

attention — for confronting the 

question of existence and purpose 

head-on (since it is a movie made for 

children, parents should follow it up 

with a quick discussion afterward). 

And yet, Christianity gives a different, 

and radically more hopeful answer to 

the apparent hopelessness of death. 

Through the historical event of what 

was Jesus Christ’s resurrection from 

the dead, the Gospel assures victory 

over death through death. 

The key difference between “Soul” 

and say, St. Aquinas, is that the former 

Characters from Disney and Pixar’s “Soul.” 

embraces hopelessness as if it is hope 

itself. The danger here is that if the 

hopelessness isn’t felt, God is not 

sought. 

It is a philosophy that could only 

come from a culture that has embraced 

this hopelessness. A culture, in 

other words, that is in desperate need 

of the Gospel. 

Patrick Neve is a youth minister and 

speaker based in Pittsburgh. He hosts 

The Crunch Podcast and is studying for 

his master’s in theology at Franciscan 

University of Steubenville. You can 

find his writing on his website, https:// 

patneve.blog/. 

©2020 DISNEY/PIXAR ©2020 DISNEY/PIXAR 

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THE CRUX 

BY HEATHER KING 

Loch Lomond in southern Scotland. 

SHUTTERSTOCK 

Longing for a lost Eden 

Robert Macfarlane (born 1976) is 

an award-winning British writer 

on landscape, place, people, 

language, memory, and meaning. He’s 

also a fellow of Emmanuel College, 

Cambridge. 

“Mountains of the Mind” (Granta 

Books, $16) explores the history of 

mountaineering and our sometimes 

fatal fascination with the metaphysical 

dimension of precipitous, perilous 

terrain on which we long to be the first 

to place our feet or flag. 

“The Wild Places” (Penguin Books, 

$15) charts a series of journeys made 

in search of the ever-shrinking wildness 

remaining in Britain and Ireland. 

“The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot” 

(Penguin Books, $15) is a kind of elegy 

to one of Macfarlane’s heroes, the poet 

Edward Thomas (1878-1917), who 

was a lover of nature, a depressive, and 

a passionate lifelong walker, especially 

in and around the South Downs. “The 

Old Ways” include holloways, pilgrimage 

routes, cliff paths, animal passages, 

ancient byways, rights-of-way, and foraging 

grounds in England, Scotland, 

Palestine, Sichuan, and Palestine. 

Together, the three form a loose 

trilogy about the “landscape and the 

human heart,” a subject upon which 

Macfarlane speaks eloquently in a 

2012 IQ2 talk of that name available 

on YouTube. 

His books have been adapted for television 

and film and won many prestigious 

awards. There are several more. 

“Underland: A Deep Time Journey” 

(W. W. Norton & Company, $15), his 

most recent, digs deep into catacombs, 

caves, nuclear waste facilities, and 

other underground physical and imaginative 

realms, and was named a New 

York Time’s “100 Most Notable Books 

of the Year.” 

He’s the type of writer who leads you 

to 10 other artists, walkers, or poets: 

Nan Shepherd’s “The Living Mountain: 

A Celebration of the Cairngorm 

Mountains of Scotland” (Canongate 

Canons, $13), “The Peregrine,” by J.A. 

Baker (1967; reissued by New York 

Review Books Classics in 2004 with an 

introduction by Macfarlane), a kind of 

cult classic among the nature literati. 

His capacity to conjure landscape 

is alone astounding. Add to that an 

astonishingly wide-ranging grasp of 

geography, geology, natural history, 


cartography, and literature. Throw in 

the fact that he’s no mere scholar or 

armchair philosopher. 

Every book is grounded in his 

willingness to take on the physical 

hardship of mountain climbing, hiking, 

camping, sailing, and tramping. 

But what makes Macfarlane sublime 

is the aching longing for a lost Eden 

that sounds like a bass note beneath all 

his work. 

An excerpt from “The Wild Places:” 

“In 1977, a nineteen-year-old Glaswegian 

named Robert Brown was arrested 

for a murder he did not commit, and 

over the course of the following days 

had a confession beaten out of him by 

a police officer subsequently indicted 

for corruption. Brown served twenty-five 

years, and saw two appeals fail, 

before his conviction was finally overturned 

in 2002. When he was released, 

one of the first things he did was to go 

to the shore of Loch Lomond and sit 

on a boulder on the loch’s southern 

shore in sunlight, to feel, as he put it, 

‘the wind on my face, and to see the 

waves and the mountains.’ Brown had 

been out on the loch shore the day 

before he was arrested. The recollection 

of the space, that place, which he 

had not seen for a quarter of a century, 

had nourished him during his imprisonment. 

He had kept a memory of 

it, he recalled, afterwards, ‘in a secret 

compartment’ in his head.” 

Robert Frost once said, “A poem 

begins with a lump in the throat; a 

homesickness or a love sickness.” And 

perhaps above all, even when writing 

prose, Macfarlane is a poet. “The Lost 

Words: A Spell Book” (Anansi International, 

$23), however, is a collection 

of actual poems, in oversized book 

format and gorgeously illustrated by 

British writer and artist Jackie Morris. 

The idea sprang from Macfarlane’s 

discovery that words describing and 

expressive of nature were disappearing 

from the Oxford Junior Dictionary: 

bramble, conker, raven, willow, 

wren, Kingfisher, otter, magpie, fern, 

heather. 

The entry for “Heron” begins like 

this: 

“Here hunts heron. Here haunts 

heron. / Huge-hinged heron. Greywinged 

weapon. / Eked from iron and 

wreaked from blue and / Beaked with 

Robert Macfarlane 

steel: heron, statue, seeks eel.” 

Morris’ self-described “gold leaf, iconlike 

images” are faithfully realistic and 

also hauntingly evoke the supernatural 

dimension of reptiles, mammals, and 

birds. 

Children and adults alike went wild. 

“The Lost Words” was the bestselling 

poetry book of 2018, sold 500,000 

copies worldwide and has been adapted 

to, among other genres, classical 

EMMANUEL COLLEGE/UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 

music, indie folk, puppet shows, board 

games, podcasts, and theater. “Magical,” 

“bewitching,” and “the wonder 

of nature” are ways people from across 

the globe have described verse and 

artwork. 

Through crowdfunding campaigns, 

copies were purchased and donated to 

every hospice and to more than 75% of 

the primary schools across the British 

Isles. “The Lost Spells” (Anansi International, 

$30), a follow-up collection, 

began when Macfarlane scribbled 

some lines about goldfinches while 

keeping vigil over his dying grandmother. 

He and Morris hope to inspire hope, 

action, and change. And Macfarlane 

adds, “that [the work] might touch 

readers’ hearts a little in this hard 

autumn.” 

Perhaps the surest sign that Macfarlane’s 

heart is in the right place is 

this: he has three young children who, 

he notes in “The Lost Words,” have 

taught him more about the world than 

any book. 

Heather King is an award-winning author, speaker, and workshop leader. For more, visit 

heather-king.com. 

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Angelus News | January 15, 2021 | Vol. 6 No. 1

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