Angelus News | November 19, 2021

ANGELUS 

SOURCE 

& SUMMIT 

The Eucharist Issue 

November 19, 2021 Vol. 6 No. 23

November 19, 2021 

Vol. 6 • No. 23 

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Los Angeles, CA 90010-2241 

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ON THE COVER 

JACOB POPCAK 

At a moment when everyone seems to be talking about the Eucharist — 

opinion surveys, our bishops, our president, and even the secular press — 

it is a good time for Catholics to ask themselves: Is the Eucharist really 

the “source and summit” of our own lives? On Page 10, liturgy expert and 

theologian Father Neil Xavier O’Donoghue breaks down some of the 

biggest challenges and misconceptions about the sacrament. On Page 14, 

Mike Aquilina looks at the link between the Eucharist and martyrdom in the 

Church’s history. On Pages 18 and 20, contributors Kathryn Jean Lopez and 

Elise Italiano Ureneck reflect personally on the sacrament’s meaning. 

THIS PAGE 

VICTOR ALEMÁN 

Grounds workers at Calvary 

Cemetery in East Los Angeles 

pose for a photo together 

after attending All Souls’ Day 

Mass with Archbishop José 

H. Gomez on Nov. 2

CONTENTS 

Pope Watch............................................... 2 

Archbishop Gomez................................. 3 

World, Nation, and Local News...... 4-6 

In Other Words........................................ 7 

Father Rolheiser....................................... 8 

Scott Hahn.............................................. 32 

Events Calendar..................................... 33 

18 

20 

22 

24 

26 

28 

30 

Kathryn Lopez: The Eucharist and the grace of perseverant listening 

Elise Ureneck: How my late mother’s love of the Eucharist lives on 

In a South LA ‘food desert,’ a Catholic school’s mini-oasis grows 

John Allen on the diplomatic dance between Francis, Biden, and China 

Grazie Christie: Building blocks for a pro-life foundation 

‘Dune’ takes on the messiah complex temptation 

Heather King on the humanity of art from death row 

November 19, 2021 • ANGELUS • 1

Come and join in a 

Pilgrimage to 

Poland and Medjugorje 

After a long Covid 19. 

POPE WATCH 

The pope and the president 

March 28 - April 8, 2022 

Price per person; 

Double occupancy $4,900. 

If you are looking for a pilgrimage 

after being home for a long time please 

come and join us on this pilgrimage to 

the Shrine of Divine Mercy in Krakow, 

Poland and the beautiful and peaceful 

village of Medjugorje. 

The cost of the trip includes 

roundtrip airfare from all major 

US cities (including all taxes) based 

on the exchange rate of the Euro, 

room and two meals daily, and all 

transportation for site seeing. 

We will have a spiritual director 

and daily Mass. 

For more details call 

Scott Scaria at 860-289-2606 

or cell phone 860-841-1192 

or write to 

Poland-Medjugorje Pilgrimage, P.O. 

Box 281059, East Hartford, CT 06128 

or visit us on the web at 

www.polandmej.com. 

The deadline for receipt of a deposit 

of $200 is January 7, 2022. 

Balance is due by January 28, 2022. 

In order to participate in the pilgrimage, 

you must have a Covid 19 vaccination 

and travel insurance. 

Pope Francis and U.S. President 

Joe Biden discussed a range of 

topics, including the climate 

crisis, poverty, and the fight against the 

COVID-19 pandemic during a nearly 

90-minute meeting at the Vatican Oct. 

29. 

According to the president, however, 

an issue that’s been the subject of heated 

discussion among Catholics back 

home was not one of them. 

“We just talked about the fact he was 

happy that I was a good Catholic, and 

I should keep receiving Communion,” 

responded Biden when asked by reporters 

whether abortion was one of the 

topics of his meeting with the pope. 

The Vatican described the president’s 

meetings with both the pope and with 

top Vatican diplomats as consisting of 

“cordial discussions,” and said that immigration, 

human rights, and “freedom 

of religion and conscience” also came 

up. 

During their meeting in the library 

of the Apostolic Palace, Pope Francis 

gave Biden a large painted ceramic 

tile of a pilgrim walking along Rome’s 

Tiber River and pointing to St. Peter’s 

Basilica in the distance. 

Pope Francis also gave the president 

a signed copy of his message for World 

Day of Peace 2021, a collection of his 

major documents, including his document 

on human fraternity. 

Biden presented Pope Francis with a 

framed, handwoven “fiddleback” chasuble 

that had been made by Gamarellis, 

the famous Rome tailor shop, in 

1930, for Jesuits in the United States. 

The White House also donated winter 

clothing to charities in the name of 

Pope Francis to commemorate the 

World Day of the Poor Nov. 14. 

Biden also gave the pope a copy of his 

memoir, “Promise Me, Dad: A Year of 

Hope, Hardship, and Purpose,” about 

losing his firstborn son, Beau, to brain 

cancer at the age of 46, and a presidential 

command coin inscribed with 

the unit of his late son, who had been 

deployed to Iraq in 2008. 

Biden explained the reason for the 

coin to the pope: “I’m not sure this is 

appropriate, but there’s a tradition in 

America that the president has what is 

called a command coin that he gives 

to warriors and leaders, and you are the 

most significant warrior for peace I’ve 

ever met.” 

After meeting the pope, Biden went 

downstairs to meet Cardinal Pietro 

Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, 

and Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the 

Vatican foreign minister. In addition to 

his wife, Jill, the president traveled with 

a 10-person entourage of senior White 

House staff, including U.S. Secretary 

of State Antony Blinken. 

The White House said in a statement 

that those discussions included “efforts 

to rally global support for vaccinating 

the developing world against 

COVID-19” and Biden thanking the 

Vatican for its “leadership in fighting 

the climate crisis” and for “speaking 

out on behalf of the wrongfully 

detained, including in Venezuela and 

Cuba.” 

The private papal audience was 

Biden’s first presidential visit to the 

Vatican. Pope Francis had previously 

met Biden three times when Biden 

was vice president; the previous time 

was in 2016, after they both spoke at a 

conference on adult stem-cell research 

at the Vatican. 

Reporting courtesy of Catholic News 

Service. 

Papal Prayer Intention for November: We pray that people 

who suffer from depression or burnout will find support and 

a light that opens them up to life. 

Awarded Best Travel Company by the East 

Hartford Award Program three years in a row. 

2 • ANGELUS • November 19, 2021

NEW WORLD OF FAITH 

ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ 

Our common humanity 

The following is adapted from the 

conclusion of an address titled, “Reflections 

on America’s New Religions,” 

delivered by video to the 23rd Congress 

of Catholics and Public Life at San 

Pablo University in Madrid, Spain. 

The full text is available on ArchbishopGomez.org. 

The gospel of Jesus Christ remains 

the most powerful force 

for social change that the world 

has ever seen. And the Church has 

been “antiracist” from the beginning. 

All are included in her message of 

salvation. 

Jesus taught us to know and love 

God as our Father, and he called his 

Church to carry that good news to the 

ends of the earth — to gather, from 

every race, tribe and people, the one 

worldwide family of God. 

That was the meaning of Pentecost, 

when men and women from every 

nation under heaven heard the gospel 

in their own native language. That is 

what St. Paul meant when he said that 

in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, 

male or female, slave or free. 

Of course, in the Church we have 

not always lived up to our beautiful 

principles, or carried out the mission 

entrusted to us by Christ. 

But the world does not need a new 

secular religion to replace Christianity. 

It needs you and me to be better 

witnesses, better Christians. Let us begin 

by forgiving, loving, sacrificing for 

others, putting away spiritual poisons 

like resentment and envy. 

Personally, I find inspiration in the 

saints and holy figures in my country’s 

history. 

In this moment, I am looking especially 

to the Servant of God Dorothy 

Day. For me, she offers an important 

witness for how Catholics can work 

to change our social order through 

radical detachment and love for the 

poor grounded in the beatitudes, the 

Sermon on the Mount, and the works 

of mercy. 

She also had a keen sense that before 

we can change the hearts of others, 

we have to change ourselves. 

She once said, “I see only too clearly 

how bad people are. I wish I did not 

see it so. It is my own sins that give me 

such clarity. But I cannot worry much 

about your sins and miseries when 

I have so many of my own. … My 

prayer from day to day is that God will 

so enlarge my heart that I will see you 

all, and live with you all, in his love.” 

This is the attitude that we need 

right now, when our society is so polarized 

and divided. 

I am also drawing inspiration from 

the witness of Venerable Augustus 

Tolton. His is an amazing and truly 

American story. He was born in slavery, 

escaped into freedom with his 

mother, and became the first Black 

man to be ordained a priest in my 

country. 

Father Tolton once said, “The 

Catholic Church deplores a double 

slavery — that of the mind and that of 

the body. She endeavors to free us of 

both.” 

Today, we need this confidence in 

the power of the gospel. 

In this hour I think the Church must 

be a voice for individual conscience 

and tolerance, and we need to promote 

greater humility and realism about 

the human condition. Acknowledging 

our common humanity means 

recognizing our common frailty. The 

truth is that we are all sinners, people 

who want to do the right thing, but 

often do not. 

That does not mean we remain 

passive in the face of social injustice. 

But we do need to insist that fraternity 

cannot be built through animosity or 

division. True religion offers a path for 

even the worst sinners to find redemption. 

We also need to hold on to the 

supernatural understanding of God’s 

providence, the reality that God’s 

loving hand still guides our lives and 

the course of nations. 

The Church is preparing to celebrate 

the 490th anniversary of the 

apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe, 

which marks the true spiritual 

founding of America. 

Already, we are seeing signs of an 

authentic religious awakening going 

on in America, underneath all the 

controversy of our politics, the continued 

clouds of the pandemic, all the 

uncertainty about where our country 

is heading. 

I am confident that we will see this 

spiritual awakening grow and spread 

in the coming years. And Our Lady’s 

words at Tepeyac continue to strengthen 

and inspire me: “Am I not here, I 

who am your mother? Are you not in 

my shadow, under my protection?” 

The Church’s mission in this 

cultural moment — as it is in every 

time and place — is to proclaim Jesus 

Christ as the true path to liberation 

from every slavery and injustice, spiritual 

and material. 

In our preaching and practice, 

and especially in our love for our 

neighbors, let us bear witness to God’s 

beautiful vision of our common 

humanity — our common origin and 

common destiny in God. 


WORLD 

■ How strong are 

Taiwan-Vatican relations? 

Taiwan’s government affirmed its 

“strong ties” with the Vatican amid 

reports that China was pressuring 

the Holy See to cut relations with 

the disputed territory. 

The Oct. 25 statement followed 

an article in the Italian newspaper 

“Corriere della Sera” citing an 

anonymous Vatican official saying 

that the Holy See would review its 

relations with Taiwan if the Chinese 

Communist Party agreed to 

open an apostolic nunciature in 

Beijing. 

Taiwan’s foreign ministry pointed 

to the Vatican’s continued diplomatic 

ties to the island, and a message 

from Pope Francis last month in 

honor of Taiwan’s National Day. 

“[We will] continue to deepen 

exchanges with the Holy See and 

the Catholic Church based on their 

long-standing relations and shared 

values,” the statement read. 

The exchange comes after the 

Chinese government sent nearly 

150 planes into Taiwanese airspace, 

sparking fears of military invasion. 

■ Diocesan synods 

to go into overtime 

Dioceses have been given a sixmonth 

extension from the Vatican 

to complete their local synods 

ahead of the multiyear Synod on 

Synodality. 

Each diocese was asked to complete 

a local consultation process to 

discuss synodality ahead of the 2023 

meeting of bishops on the same topic. 

Initially, dioceses were to submit 

their findings in April 2022, only six 

months from the October start date. 

Following the diocesan level 

consultations, bishops will meet 

regionally to discuss their findings 

from September 2022 to March 

2023, ahead of the general assembly 

of the synod, which will meet in 

Rome in October 2023. 

■ Middle East: A prince’s plea for protection 

More than 40 

Muslim and 

Christian scholars 

and religious 

leaders are teaming 

up to protect 

places of worship 

in the Middle 

East. 

The group, led 

by Prince El Hassan 

Bin Talal of 

Jordan, released 

a Nov. 2 statement 

appealing 

to those in power 

to not destroy 

cultural heritage 

or infringe on the 

rights of worshippers. 

Tourists beneath an image of St. George inside a historic church in Salt, Jordan, on July 

31. | CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/ALAA AL SUKHNI, REUTERS 

“These abhorrent targets also include historical and archaeological sites and 

architectural heritage, including museums, libraries, and manuscripts,” the statement 

said, “which is an erasure of the memory that preserves the civilizations of 

peoples and their value core from extinction. 

“There is no doubt that the attack on places of worship and their sanctity at a 

time when worshippers perform prayer and religious rites in their premises is the 

culmination of these atrocities.” 

“This leads us to a legitimate question,” they continued. “Isn’t it time to consider 

the issue of freedom of worship as an integral part of the right to life and to consider 

the value of human heritage in relation to culture and identity?” 

The pope’s man in Glasgow — Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, center, with British Prime 

Minister Boris Johnson, left, and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the start of the U.N. Climate 

Change Conference, COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland, on Nov. 1. During the conference, Cardinal Parolin read 

parts of the pope’s message to the gathering, which stressed that a model of development focused “on fraternity 

and on the covenant between human beings and the natural environment” are urgently needed to slow climate 

change and care for its victims. | CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/CHRISTOPHER FURLONG, REUTERS POOL 


NATION 

■ Gravestones latest victim 

of supply chain disruption 

For families in mourning, global supply 

chain disruptions mean that getting 

their loved one’s gravestones can take 

months. 

“What used to take us 60 to 90 days 

now takes us six to nine months,” the 

CEO of an Oregon stone company 

that serves many Catholic cemeteries 

told the Catholic Sentinel, the news 

publication of the Archdiocese of 

Portland. 

“Generally, people think that it’s like 

ordering a pair of shoes from Amazon 

— that it’ll be here next week. That’s 

not how it works at all,” Matthias 

Shields, branch manager of Oregon 

Granite Monument and Memorial in 

Medford, Oregon, told the Catholic 

Sentinel. “By the time the memorial is 

set in the cemetery, about a hundred 

people have set their hands on it.” 

Those hands include quarry workers, 

shipping crews, stone carvers, and 

funeral home directors. And each 

of these are facing delays, from high 

demand on domestic quarries to the 

pileup of shipping containers at U.S. 

docks. 

■ Read the Bible 

next year — in Spanish 

A Spanish version of the chart-topping 

podcast “The Bible in a Year” (with 

Father Mike Schmitz) will launch in 

2022, thanks to a partnership between 

Ascension Catholic Faith Formation 

and the Juan Diego Network (JDN). 

“ ‘The Bible in a Year’ podcast has 

been not only a huge success in the 

podcasting world but it is also touching 

hundreds of thousands of lives every 

day,” José Manuel De Urquidi, founder 

and CEO of JDN, told Catholic News 

Agency. “JDN’s mission to evangelize, 

form, and entertain Latinos through 

attractive content produced in the 

highest quality possible will reach new 

and very tangible heights with this 

project.” 

Like its English counterpart, “La Bible 

en un año” (“The One Year Bible”) 

podcast, will feature daily prayer and 

commentary on two or three Scripture 

readings, structured according to “The 

Great Adventure Bible Timeline” 

developed by Scripture scholar Jeff 

Cavins. Original commentary will be 

provided by an unannounced native 

Spanish-speaking host. 

Dominican on the diamond — Houston businessman Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale and members of the Dominican 

Sisters of Mary Immaculate Province, known locally as the “Rally Nuns,” throw out the ceremonial first 

pitch before game six of the 2021 World Series between the Houston Astros and the Atlanta Braves at Minute 

Maid Park in Houston on Nov. 2. The Braves won the game 7-0 and took the World Series, 4-2. | CATHOLIC 

NEWS SERVICE/THOMAS SHEA, USA TODAY SPORTS VIA REUTERS 

Patriarch Bartholomew officiates at the “opening of 

doors” ceremony at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox 

Church and National Shrine in New York City on Nov. 

2. The church and shrine have been under construction 

for several years and are due to be completed next year. | 

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE 

■ Patriarch hospitalized 

during historic US trip 

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew 

of Constantinople was forced to extend 

his trip to the U.S. due to unexpected 

heart surgery. 

Patriarch Bartholomew, who is the 

spiritual leader of more than 300 

million Eastern Orthodox Christians, 

received a stent on Nov. 4 at Mount 

Sinai Hospital in New York. During 

his scheduled 12-day visit to the U.S., 

the 81-year-old celebrated his 30th 

anniversary as patriarch, the longest 

tenure on record. 

Stops on the patriarch’s trip included 

a visit with President Joe Biden, and 

a ceremony at a rebuilt Orthodox 

church near the World Trade Center, 

and a visit to the University of Notre 

Dame, where he received an honorary 

degree and spoke about environmental 

stability and the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“The power of ecumenical dialogue 

lies in opening up beyond ourselves 

and our own interests, beyond our 

confessions or religions,” Patriarch 

Bartholomew said at Notre Dame. “It 

means learning to speak the language 

of care and compassion. And creation 

care brings us divided, insulated believers 

before a common task that we must 

face together.” 


LOCAL 

■ LA Catholic schools 

not requiring COVID-19 

vaccinations 

Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of 

Los Angeles will not require COVID-19 

vaccinations for students, despite the 

federal emergency authorization of the 

Pfizer vaccine for children. 

In a Nov. 5 letter to parents, Catholic 

Schools Superintendent Paul Escala 

explained his department has not 

received an order from local health authorities 

requiring the vaccine, and that 

state lawmakers are expected to weigh 

adding the COVID-19 vaccine to the 

official list of required vaccines. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent statewide 

order mandating vaccines for 

students is not expected to take effect 

until at least July 2022. 

“We continue to encourage parents 

and guardians to seek advice from 

a health care professional about the 

COVID-19 vaccine for their child,” 

wrote Escala. 

■ LA starts walking 

on the synodal path 

The local phase of the universal 

Church’s multiyear Synod on Synodality 

is officially underway in the Archdiocese 

of Los Angeles. 

At an Oct. 31 Mass at the Cathedral 

of Our Lady of the Angels officially 

opening the synodal process locally, 

Archbishop José H. Gomez said it was 

a moment to “ask for the grace to think 

more deeply about our lives as disciples 

and followers of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

The archdiocese plans to use the first 

weeks of 2022 before Lent — from 

January to March — to engage in the 

“listening” phase of the synodal process, 

with listening sessions in parishes and 

in regional groups. The LA plan calls 

for existing pastoral councils at the archdiocesan, 

regional, and parish levels 

to implement the process by sharing, 

reflecting, and listening. 

The archdiocese has launched a multilanguage 

website with resources and 

a platform to collect local input: synod. 

lacatholics.org. 

■ Slain Marine remembered 

at ‘Día de los Muertos’ vigil 

A Southern 

California 

Marine killed 

during the U.S. 

withdrawal from 

Afghanistan this 

year was among 

those honored at 

the Nov. 1 “Día 

de los Muertos” 

prayer vigil at 

Calvary Cemetery 

in East LA. 

Family members 

of Marine 

Cpl. Hunter Lopez 

helped create 

a traditional 

prayer altar in his 

honor, adorned 

with pictures, 

Family members at the Nov. 1 vigil with the prayer altar built in honor of late Cpl. 

Hunter Lopez. | VICTOR ALEMÁN 

candles, mementos and a U.S. flag — one of several built for the occasion. 

Among them was his great-aunt Maria Acosta, who works in the Archdiocese of 

Los Angeles’ Office of Religious Education. 

Acosta said she knew Hunter well as a boy, but this year’s “Día de los Muertos” 

gave her the chance to “have a closer relationship with him through doing this.” 

Lopez’s family are parishioners at St. Francis of Assisi Church in the desert 

city of La Quinta, where a funeral Mass for the 22-year-old was celebrated in 

September. 

■ LMU allows Planned Parenthood 

fundraiser on campus 

A student group’s fundraiser for Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest 

abortion provider, went ahead on the campus of Loyola Marymount University 

(LMU) despite pleas from concerned students and alumni. 

Critics questioned why LMU would allow the Nov. 5 event, which was 

organized by LMU’s Women in Politics student group, given the longstanding 

Catholic teaching that abortion is a “moral evil” that involves the taking of innocent 

human life. Petitions to cancel the event gathered nearly 20,000 online 

signatures. 

In declining to block the event, an LMU spokesman insisted the fundraiser was 

not a “university-sponsored” event, despite being listed on the university’s event 

calendar. 

In a later statement, the university expressed commitment to “its Catholic, 

Jesuit, and Marymount values” and insisted it “does not support, nor does it 

fundraise, for Planned Parenthood.” 

In a statement issued before the fundraiser, Archbishop José H. Gomez said he 

was “deeply disappointed” by LMU’s decision, saying he had been in discussions 

with school officials, and emphasizing that “respect for the sanctity and dignity 

of all human life is central to Catholic identity and must be a core commitment 

in Catholic higher education.” 

Y 


V 

IN OTHER WORDS... 

Letters to the Editor 

The nuance of ‘My body, my choice’ 

Greg Erlandson’s column “The choices we make,” in the Nov. 5 issue, 

criticizes those opposed to the vaccine mandates for using the slogan 

“My body, my choice.” 

This slogan has been successfully used by abortion groups, so you can’t blame 

citizens who are opposed to vaccine mandates for making it their own. 

There are a variety of reasons one may be opposed to the vaccine mandates, but 

a lot of the disagreement with them seems to have to do with government overreach 

and the right for people to choose what is best for their families. 

In my case, my husband and I are both vaccinated, yet both of our children have 

different medical conditions for which they take regular medication. No studies 

exist regarding the effects and possible cross reactions with certain drugs and the 

vaccine. We have decided to exercise caution based upon our particular circumstance, 

as others families surely have, too. 

Hence the problem: The mandates are using a “one size fits all approach” to fix a 

problem in which there are many variables. 

“My body, my choice” does not include the choice of the unborn baby when 

used in the case of abortion. The fetus has no say in the matter. That is part of 

what makes abortion so unacceptable. 

If choice is the issue, then we as parents should have the choice to vaccinate 

our children or not. Adults who have other medical conditions should have that 

choice too, and certainly without the pressure of possibly losing a job. 

— Yadranka Draskovic, El Segundo 

What was Loyola Marymount thinking? 

After reading the news on AngelusNews.com of LMU’s decision to allow a 

Planned Parenthood fundraiser on campus, I am outraged that a Catholic university 

would allow this in any shape or form. This should be dealt with at the highest 

level. 

We sent our daughter to LMU for four years and she received her degree there 

30 years ago. If the school has changed to the degree of facilitating Planned 

Parenthood events, I would never recommend Catholic parents to do so in the 

future. 

— Rudy Tekippe, Pasadena 

Y 

Continue the conversation! To submit a letter to the editor, visit AngelusNews.com/Letters-To-The-Editor 

and use our online form or send an email to editorial@angelusnews.com. Please limit to 300 words. Letters 

may be edited for style, brevity, and clarity. 

Remembering the dead 

Archbishop José H. Gomez celebrated 

the annual “Día de los Muertos” prayer 

service at Calvary Cemetery in East LA 

on Nov. 1. | VICTOR ALEMÁN 

View more photos 

from this gallery at 

AngelusNews.com/photos-videos 

Do you have photos or a story from your 

parish that you’d like to share? Please 

send to editorial @angelusnews.com. 

“We don’t have all the 

answers. We are not 

the ones we have been 

waiting for.” 

~ Kathryn Jean Lopez in a Nov. 8 column for 

National Review, “Saving Us from the Gospel of the 

Woke,” on Archbishop Gomez’s recent address to 

Catholics in Madrid. 

“When there are disputes 

about funds to support 

low-income students, I 

always say, ‘Do what’s fair, 

do what’s right for kids.’ ” 

~ California Superintendent of Public Instruction 

Tony Thurmond. Thurmond recently apologized 

to private schools serving low-income families for 

delays in distributing tens of millions of dollars in 

federal COVID-19 aid. 

“Today’s pilgrims come 

in a hurry and hardly talk 

to anyone. But before, 

people who traveled 

were people with deep 

restlessness. They had the 

spirit deep within them.” 

~Spanish artist Irene García-Inés in a Nov. 6 New 

York Times story on her efforts to rescue the 

traditions of Spain’s historic “Camino de Santiago” 

from the perils of mass tourism. 

“The Church is being 

attacked. Everyone from 

priests to the hierarchy 

have had to hide, go into 

exile, and fear for their lives.” 

~ Families of some 150 political prisoners in a letter 

to Pope Francis asking him to speak out for basic 

human rights in Nicaragua, where strongman Daniel 

Ortega won a presidential election after jailing 

opposition leaders and banning their parties. 


08042021_ 

IN EXILE 

FATHER RONALD ROLHEISER, OMI 

Oblate of Mary Immaculate Father 

Ronald Rolheiser is a spiritual 

writer; ronaldrolheiser.com. 

Immigration — then and now 

In the summer of 1854, U.S. 

President Franklin Pierce sent 

Isaac Stevens to be governor of the 

Washington Territory, a tract of land 

controlled by the federal government. 

Gov. Stevens called for a meeting of 

Native American chiefs to discuss the 

tension between the U.S. government 

and the natives. 

One of the tribes, the Yakama, was 

stubbornly rebelling, led by their chief, 

Kamiakin. The Missionary Oblates of 

Mary Immaculate (the religious order 

to which I belong) were working with 

the Yakama nations. Chief Kamiakin 

turned to one of our Oblate priests, Father 

Charles Pandosy, for advice, asking 

him how many Europeans there were 

and when they would stop coming. 

Sadly, the advice that Father Pandosy 

gave him was of no consolation to the 

chief. In a letter to our Oblate founder 

in France, St. Eugène de Mazenod, 

Father Pandosy summed up his conversation 

with the Yakama chief. 

He told Chief Kamiakin: “It is as I 

feared. The whites will take your country 

as they have taken other countries 

from the Indians. I came from the land 

of the white man far to the east where 

the people are thicker than the grass on 

the hills. Where there are only a few 

here now, others will come with each 

year until your country will be overrun 

with them. … 

“It has been so with other tribes; it 

will be so with you. You may fight 

and delay for a time this invasion, but 

you cannot avert it. I have lived many 

summers with you and baptized a great 

number of your people into the faith. 

I have learned to love you. I cannot 

advise you or help you. I wish I could.” 

(Quote from Kay Cronin, “Cross in the 

Wilderness,” Mission Press, Toronto, c. 

1960, p. 35.) 

One-hundred and seventy years later 

the situation is the same, only the players 

are different. In 1854, Europeans 

were coming to America for a myriad 

of reasons. Some were fleeing poverty, 

others persecution, others saw no future 

for themselves in their homeland, 

others were searching for religious 

freedom, and others were immigrating 

because they saw huge possibilities 

here in terms of career and fortune. 

But, this was the problem. There 

were people already living here and 

these indigenous peoples resisted and 

resented the newcomers, perceiving 

their coming as a threat, an unfairness, 

and a seizure of their country. Even 

before they fully realized how many 

people would land on their shores, the 

indigenous nations had already intuited 

what this would mean: the end to 

their way of life. 

Does any of this sound strangely 

familiar? I recall a comment I read 

on the sports pages several years ago 

that spoke volumes. A baseball player 

in New York City to play the Yankees 

shared how, going to the stadium on 

the subway, he was taken aback by 

what he saw and heard: “There were 

people of different colors, speaking 

different languages, and I asked myself, 

who let all these people into our 

country?” 

That could have been Chief Kamiakin 

of the Yakama nation, 170 years 

ago. Today our borders everywhere are 

crowded with people trying to enter 

our Western countries, and they are 

fleeing their homelands for the same 

reasons as did the original Europeans 

who came to America. 

Most of them are fleeing persecution 

or a hopeless future for themselves in 

their own countries, even as others are 

seeking a better career and fortune for 

themselves. And, like the indigenous 

peoples, we who now live here have 

the same concerns that Chief Kamiakin 

had 170 years ago: When will this 

stop? How many of those people are 

there? What will this mean for our way 

of life, for our ethnicity, our language, 

our culture, our religion? 

Whatever our personal feelings about 

this, the answer to those questions cannot 

be much different from the answer 

Father Pandosy gave Chief Kamiakin 

all those years ago. It’s not going to 

stop, because it can’t. Why not? 

Globalization is inevitable because 

the earth is round, not endless. Sooner 

or later, we have no other option but to 

meet one another, accept one another, 

and find a way to share space and life 

with one another. Because the earth 

is round, its space and resources are 

limited, not endless. 

Moreover, there are millions of people 

who are unable to live where they 

are presently living. They will do what 

they have to for themselves and their 

families. What’s happening cannot be 

stopped. In the words of Father Pandosy, 

“We may try to fight and delay 

this invasion for a time, but we cannot 

avert it.” 

Today, we, former immigrants ourselves, 

are beginning (at least a little) to 

understand what the indigenous peoples 

must have felt when we showed 

up, uninvited, on their shores. It’s our 

turn now to know what it feels like 

when a country we consider as ours 

is progressively filling up with people 

who are different from us in ethnicity, 

language, culture, religion, and way of 

life. 

What goes around comes around. 

R 

W 

po 

af 

in 

di 

To 

FE 

co 

CO 

an 

in 

FE 

as 

Ap 

de 

No 

ce 

on 

m 

of 

It 

ad 

Al 

in 

ht 


Regarding FEMA COVID-19 Funeral Assistance 

We write to you today with the joy of July 4th in our hearts and a 

positive message for you to share. Although COVID-19 continues to 

affect our Catholic Cemeteries and Mortuaries, we see a slight decline 

in our services need. With God’s grace, our staff continues to work 

diligently with our grieving families through this challenging process. 

Today, we wanted to bring some vital information to your attention. 

FEMA has begun offering assistance and relief for funeral and burial 

costs for families who have suffered the passing of a loved one due to 

COVID-19. You may already be aware of this program through print 

and news media, but we felt we should highlight some important 

information for you. 

FEMA began accepting applications for COVID-19 funeral 

assistance on April 12, 2021. 

Applications are being accepted by phone through the 

dedicated FEMA toll-free hotline at 844-684-6333. 

No online applications will be accepted. Funeral homes, 

cemeteries, and other third parties are not eligible to apply 

on behalf of a family. Catholic Cemeteries & Mortuaries will 

make every effort to assist those Patrons requiring copies 

of documentation related to services provided by our facilities. 

It is important to note that FEMA has issued a fraud alert 

advising of possible scammers reaching out to the vulnerable. 

All must be aware that FEMA will not directly contact 

individuals and does not send individual notifications. 

We encourage those affected or anyone with questions, 

to visit the FEMA website at 

https://www.fema.gov/disasters/coronavirus/economic/funeral-assistance/faq 

For additional questions and to begin the application process, 

please contact the FEMA toll-free hotline at 844-684-6333. 

08042021_CCM_July4_COVID_FP.indd 1 

6/26/21 6:49 AM

A woman receives 

Communion during 

Mass March 27 at 

St. Brigid Church in 

Brooklyn, New York. 

| CATHOLIC NEWS 

SERVICE/GREGORY 

A. SHEMITZ 

A PLACE TO 

RECEIVE LIFE 

How can Catholics give the Eucharist the priority 

it deserves? A liturgy expert has some ideas. 

BY PABLO KAY 

What is the Eucharist? Whether 

speaking to second-grade 

catechism students or 

non-Catholics alike, explaining the 

central moment of spiritual life for 

Catholics is difficult enough. But 

getting people to appreciate it is 

another — especially after pandemic 

restrictions last year that kept people 

away from the sacrament for weeks and 

months. 

Still, the Eucharist is getting a lot of 

attention these days, with concerns 

about the lack of belief among ordinary 

Catholics in the Real Presence, talk of 

the “weaponization of the Eucharist” 

with respect to some Catholic politicians, 

and divisions among believers 

on how it should be celebrated. 

To answer some of today’s more 

relevant questions about the Eucharist, 

I reached out to Father Neil Xavier 

O’Donoghue, a theologian and liturgist 

who is a priest of the Archdiocese 

of Newark, New Jersey, but has spent 

the last decade as a seminary formator 

and theology professor in his native 

country of Ireland. 

The Eucharist keeps Father O’Donoghue 

busy, and not just because he 

gets to celebrate it: In addition to his 

teaching duties at St. Patrick’s Pontifical 

University in Maynooth, Ireland, 

he is the author of several books and 

articles on the Eucharist and its history, 

and serves as executive secretary for 

liturgy for the Irish Catholic Bishops’ 

Conference. 

In a Zoom interview, he shared his 

thoughts on a range of topics, in- 

Father Neil Xavier O’Donoghue 

teaches theology at St. 

Patrick’s Pontifical University 

in Maynooth, Ireland, and 

helps oversee liturgy 

for the Ireland Bishops’ 

Conference. 


cluding the limitations of seeing the 

Eucharist as a mere obligation, why 

good liturgy is worth spending money 

on, and why he hopes to be one of the 

few employed people in heaven. 

What is the biggest challenge you 

see right now among Catholics when 

it comes to the Eucharist? 

The biggest challenge of the Eucharist 

is to celebrate it. 

There is a huge tendency in spirituality 

to see the Eucharist as an obligation. 

During the COVID-19 shutdowns, 

people were talking a lot about 

the obligation to attend. It’s true, there 

is an obligation, but the Eucharist is 

much more than an obligation. 

I mean, it’s like having an obligation 

to breathe, or to eat, or to fall in love. 

Yes, humanity needs people to fall in 

love and get married. But those things 

can’t be reduced to the obligation, and 

it’s the same with the Eucharist. 

The Eucharist must also be a celebration, 

something where people receive 

life. As “Lumen Gentium” (“Light 

of the Nations”) famously said in the 

Second Vatican Council, the Eucharist 

is the source and the summit of 

Christian life. The Eucharist is where 

we are Christian, where we are most 

truly ourselves. 

In this month of November, when 

many people wonder about their 

connection with their beloved departed, 

one of the places where we are 

closest to our dead is when we gather 

in church. In the Eucharist, we’re 

close to the saints and the angels. 

The Eucharist is where the Church is 

herself. 

I always joke with my fellow faculty 

about this. I tell the Scripture professor 

that there will be no Scripture in heaven. 

I tell the moral theology professor 

that there will be no moral theology in 

heaven. And thank God, there’ll be no 

canon law in heaven. But in heaven, I 

will still have a job because in heaven 

there will be liturgy, liturgy done well 

that is life-giving. 

You say that the Eucharist cannot 

be reduced to a legal obligation, but 

something that gives life. Why did 

the Second Vatican Council emphasize 

the aspect of the community 

One notable change in the ordinary celebration of Mass as a result of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) was the 

direction of the priest during the Eucharist: At left, the celebrant faces the altar at a priestly ordination Mass in Corpus 

Christi, Texas, in 1961. At right, Pope Francis faces the people during Mass at a parish in Rome in 2014. | CATHOLIC 

NEWS SERVICE 

in the Eucharist? If the Eucharist 

brings me Jesus, why do other people 

need to be involved? 

Because the Church is a community, 

and especially in the Catholic view, it’s 

not simply me and Jesus. 

In the monastic tradition, for somebody 

to become a hermit, they have 

to spend many years in community 

beforehand preparing, because it can’t 

be just me and Jesus: It has to be each 

one of us as members of the Church, 

among many brothers and sisters with 

Jesus Christ as the oldest brother, as 

St. Paul says. 

In the Eucharist, there’s this imagery 

of a family, of a community celebrating 

together. That’s why the angels 

and saints are part of every celebration, 

which is why we say “with the angels, 

with the saints, with the archangels, 

with the cherubim, and the seraphim” 

at the end of the preface in Mass. 

Sure, all those figures are present at 

Mass. There’s St. Padre Pio, St. Pope 

John Paul II, but also there has to be 

my Auntie Mildred as well. There 

has to be that next door neighbor and 

these other people, because this is the 

nature of the Church. This is the way 

that God set up our salvation. 

It’s also important to remember that 

our happiness comes when we are 

open to other people, whereas sin 

always has this effect of enclosing us in 

ourselves. 

If you look at Celtic art, like the Book 

of Kells, you often see the image of 

a snake swallowing its tail. And if a 

snake swallows its tail, things aren’t 

going to end well. Eventually you’re 

going to turn yourself inside out, and 

this is what sin does to us. It makes us 

alone. It centers us in ourselves. 

Pope Francis is always speaking 

against this self-referential temptation 

in Christianity: to only look at ourselves, 

to look at our belly buttons, 

and not to see the other, to not realize 

that I have a people around me. We 

have to realize that we’re not going 

to make it to heaven as a solo effort 

or by our own self-generated merit. 

The Lord desires to bring us there as 

part of a community, a people, and an 

assembly. 


What you’re talking about reminds 

me of this popular quote attributed 

to Blessed Carlo Acutis, who called 

the Eucharist “the highway to heaven.” 

How theologically correct is that 

expression? 

I would say it’s very correct. Obviously, 

God is God, and God can bring 

people to heaven without the Eucharist. 

So it is possible that somebody who 

is an unbeliever, or who belongs to 

another faith, or who belongs to a 

Christian community that doesn’t celebrate 

sacraments — obviously, God 

can bring that person to heaven. There 

are many ways for God to bring them 

to heaven: by penance, love of Scripture, 

by their service, by the openness 

of their souls to the working of God, 

by their prayer. All these are ways to 

orient themselves toward God. 

But by actively participating in the 

Eucharist, we can kind of leapfrog into 

heaven. It’s an easier way to get there. 

And I suppose that’s probably the 

reason that God calls weaker people, 

generally, into his Church. 

This is why in the Church we can 

never be too proud of ourselves, and 

we should never consider ourselves to 

be better than others. God calls the 

Born in 1991, Blessed Carlo Acutis created 

a website cataloguing eucharistic 

miracles around the world before his 

death in 2006. He is known for calling 

the Eucharist “the highway to heaven.” 

| CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE 

weak and he helps them, he covers 

them with more dignity and he gives 

them gifts like the Eucharist to help 

bring them to heaven. 

What place should eucharistic adoration 

have in the lives of Catholics? 

Eucharistic adoration is a very important 

devotion. It is a great consolation, 

and has been a great discovery 

in the Church. It has been one of the 

treasures of spirituality that have come 

about since the time of the Reformation 

and the Council of Trent. Much 

of its foundation can be found in the 

13th century when Pope Urban IV instituted 

the feast of Corpus Christi and 

asked St. Thomas Aquinas to compose 

the liturgical texts for the new liturgical 

feast. 

We have to remember that adoration 

is a moment for reflecting on what we 

receive during the celebration of the 

Eucharist. Adoration cannot substitute 

the Eucharist itself. The celebration 

is the source and the summit, and yes, 

we can bask in the afterglow of the 

eucharistic celebration. But ultimately, 

Christ became present in the Eucharist 

so that we might be transformed 

and become what we eat. 

Becoming what we eat means becoming 

like Christ. It means that we can 

have a new nature, a new way of being. 

It means we can forgive our enemies 

and love those who persecute us. We 

can be generous. In situations where 

“The Eucharist is the place where 

we are most truly ourselves.” 

we might normally want to be stingy, 

we can give of ourselves. And we can 

help others due to our meeting with 

Christ in the Eucharist. 

Depending on who you ask nowadays, 

you will hear the Eucharist 

being understood in terms of a sacrificial 

act, a moment of communal 

thanksgiving, or the Paschal Mystery 

— an action of God that brings us 

from death to life. Are those aspects 

all compatible with one another? 

The answer has to be yes. 

First of all, the Eucharist is so big that 

we can never fully understand it. But 

very clearly from the very beginning 

from the New Testament and definitely 

in the early Church, there is a 

sacrificial dimension to the Eucharist. 

This is Catholic teaching, this cannot 

change. 

However, yes, there’s also an aspect 

of a communal thanksgiving. There 

is the Paschal Mystery. But all are 

insufficient attempts, in that while 

what they say is true, they cannot 

grasp everything. Still, everybody has 

to accept these aspects. You can have 

a personal or theological preference, 

or a preferred emphasis for one aspect 

or another, but neither side can deny 

the other. When we start denying the 

other, then we’re in trouble. 

If you look at the Catechism of the 

Catholic Church, you will see there’s a 

very in-depth treatment of the Eucha- 


Pope Francis holds the 

monstrance as he delivers his 

extraordinary blessing “urbi 

et orbi” at the Vatican March 

27, 2020. | VATICAN MEDIA/ 


rist there. Then there is “Ecclesia de 

Eucharistia” (“Church of the Eucharist”) 

from St. Pope John Paul II. Then 

there are so many magisterial teaching 

documents, so many excellent books 

written about the Eucharist. We can 

never capture it all, but as long as we 

are being comprehensive, all of these 

interpretations are good. 

What’s the hardest part of getting 

people, even your students — priests 

and seminarians among them — to 

appreciate the gift of the Eucharist? 

I think there’s a danger that the 

Eucharist gets lost among the many 

other good things that the Church 

does. The Eucharist has to be given 

priority. 

If we invest our time, energy, talent, 

and our money in the celebration of 

the Eucharist, then we will receive 

more back from it. 

If we see that fewer people are going 

to Mass, we shouldn’t just say, “Well, 

they should go to Mass, it’s their 

responsibility, it’s their duty to go, they 

should be loyal to their local parish.” 

Instead, we should say, “What can 

we do? How can we make our liturgy 

more alive, more inviting?” 

Jesus is fully present in the Eucharist, 

and if Jesus is infinite, then the 

Eucharist is infinite. Yet most of us go 

to Mass and we are not infinitely transformed. 

Limited beings that we are, we 

approach the Eucharist maybe not as 

well prepared as we should. 

Perhaps the biggest insight of the liturgical 

movement of the 20th century 

and the Second Vatican Council is 

that if we celebrate in a better way, we 

get more benefit from the Eucharist: 

if we prepare people better; if, rather 

than a small percentage of Scripture 

that gets repeated over and over again, 

we have a more abundant lectionary 

over three years, that covers a much 

higher percentage of the Bible; if we 

have signs that speak to people; if we 

have the liturgy in a language that 

people can actually understand — if 

we make these changes, this can help 

our people to receive more. 

In church, everyone comes as they 

come. Someone can show up to Mass 

hungover and you can have the Sistine 

Chapel choir singing, a resurrected 

Fulton Sheen preaching, and they 

receive nothing. 

Another person, say Mother Teresa, 

can show up at a liturgy where 

everything is bad and she can go out 

totally transformed because she has 

such great faith. But in general, if we 

celebrate in a better way and invest 

more in this celebration, then in 

general, people will take away more 

from it. 

Pablo Kay is the editor-in-chief of 

Angelus. 

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“The Crucifixion of Saint Peter,” 1601, by Caravaggio. 

| WIKIMEDIA COMMONS 

What 

true sacrifice 

looks like 

For the first Christians, martyrdom and 

the Eucharist were inseparable. 

BY MIKE AQUILINA 

The company of the first believers 

devoted themselves to the 

teaching of the apostles and the 

communion, the breaking of the bread, 

and the prayers (Acts 2:42). 

The Mass is what the early Christians 

did. St. Paul’s letters are notable for 

their concerns about table fellowship. 

Later books of the Bible, Hebrews and 

Revelation, also take up priestly and 

liturgical matters. The Mass was defining 

for the first Christians. But there 

was another distinguishing Christian 

act in the ancient Church: martyrdom. 

Martyrdom occupied the attention 


of the early Christians because it was 

always a real possibility. Shortly after 

the Catholic faith arrived in Rome, 

the emperor, Nero, discovered that 

Christians could provide an almost unlimited 

supply of victims for his circus 

spectacles. The emperors needed to 

keep the people amused, and one way 

to do so was by giving them spectacularly 

violent entertainments in the 

circus. 

So the Christians were doused 

with pitch and set on fire, or sent to 

battle hungry wild animals and armed 

gladiators. Over time, Nero’s perverted 

whims settled into legal precedents, 

and the situation 

continued for 

centuries. 

The Christians 

applied a 

certain term to 

their co-religionists 

who were 

made victims 

of persecution. 

They called 

them “martyrs” 

— “martures” 

— which means, 

literally, witnesses 

in a court of 

law. And to the 

martyrs they 

gave a reverence 

matched only by 

their reverence 

for the Eucharist. 

In fact, the 

early Christians 

used the same language to describe 

martyrdom as they used to describe the 

Eucharist. We see this in the New Testament 

Book of Revelation, when John 

describes his vision of heaven. There, 

he saw “under the altar the souls of 

those who had been slain for the word 

of God and for the witness they had 

borne.” There, under the altar of sacrifice, 

were the martyrs, the witnesses. 

That image brings it all together. 

For, in those first generations of the 

Church, the most common phrase 

used to describe the Mass was “the 

sacrifice.” Both the “Didache” and St. 

Ignatius of Antioch refer to it as “the 

sacrifice.” And yet martyrdom, too, was 

the sacrifice. 

And so, in A.D. 107, when St. Ignatius 

described his own impending execution, 

he imagined it in eucharistic 

terms. He said he was like the wine at 

the offertory. He wrote to the Romans, 

“Grant me nothing more than that I 

be poured out to God, while an altar 

is still ready.” Later in the same letter 

he wrote, “Let me be food for the wild 

beasts, through whom I can reach 

God. I am God’s wheat, ground fine by 

the lion’s teeth to be made purest bread 

for Christ.” 

St. Ignatius was bread, and he was 

wine; his martyrdom was a sacrifice. It 

was, in a sense, a eucharist. 

St. Ignatius’ friend St. Polycarp also 

A depiction of the martyrdom of St. Ignatius of Antioch from the Menologion of Basil II manuscript, circa 

A.D. 1000. | PUBLIC DOMAIN/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS 

died a martyr’s death. St. Polycarp 

was bishop of Smyrna and had been 

converted by the apostle John. St. 

Polycarp’s secretary wrote a detailed 

account of the bishop’s martyrdom, 

and he described it, once again, as a 

kind of eucharist. St. Polycarp’s last 

words are a long prayer of thanksgiving 

that echoes the great eucharistic 

prayers of the ancient world and today. 

It includes an invocation of the Holy 

Spirit, a doxology of the Trinity, and a 

great Amen at the end. 

When the flames reached the body 

of the old bishop, his secretary tells us 

that the pyre gave off not the odor of 

burning flesh, but the aroma of baking 

bread and incense. In yet another martyrdom, 

then, we find a pure offering 

of bread — a eucharist. 

Such images recur in many other 

writings. The story of the martyr St. 

Pionius proceeds verbatim in the words 

of the eucharistic prayer: “and looking 

up to heaven he gave thanks to God.” 

In a similar way, the priest St. Irenaeus 

of Sirmium cried out, in the midst of 

torture, “With my endurance I am 

even now offering sacrifice to my God 

to whom I have always offered sacrifice.” 

But what is it about martyrdom that 

makes it like the Mass? 

Well, what has Jesus done in the 

Mass? He has given himself to us, and 

he’s held nothing 

back. He gives us 

his body, blood, 

soul, and divinity. 

And that’s love: 

it’s the total gift 

of self. That’s 

the very love the 

martyrs wanted 

to imitate. Jesus 

had given himself 

entirely for them. 

They wanted to 

give themselves 

entirely for him. 

If Jesus would 

become bread for 

them, they would 

allow the lions to 

make them wheat 

for Jesus. 

Martyrdom was 

a total gift of self. 

The Eucharist 

was a total gift of self. In the Eucharist, 

Jesus gave himself to us. In martyrdom, 

we give ourselves back to him. 

However, we know that very few of 

the ancient Christians died for the 

Catholic faith. There were perhaps 

thousands of martyrs — but the 

Church, even in the third century, 

had membership in the millions. What 

about the rest? How did they live the 

Eucharist? 

For most of the early Christians, 

“martyrdom” came not with lions, or 

fire, or the sword. For most it consisted 

in a daily dying to self in imitation of 

Jesus Christ. 

Jesus had told them: “If anyone would 

come after me, let him deny himself 

... daily.” So the Christians denied 


“Adoration of the Mystic Lamb,” the central panel of the Ghent Altarpiece by Jan van Eyck, 1432. | WIKIMEDIA COMMONS 

themselves, in imitation of Jesus. They 

would never make a habit of eating 

lavishly as long as others were going 

hungry. They would never keep an 

opulent wardrobe while others dressed 

in rags. And they would never hold 

back their testimony as long as any of 

their neighbors were living in sin or in 

ignorance of the love of Jesus. 

Whatever they had, these Christians 

gave. They gave of themselves — just 

as the martyrs gave themselves in the 

arena — and just as Jesus Christ gave 

himself in the Eucharist. 

In Christ, they had come into a holy 

Communion. In baptism, they were 

baptized into his death — his martyrdom. 

In the Mass, they became one 

with him in the deepest, closest, most 

intimate bond possible. 

This was, and is, the deepest truth 

of the faith. In Jesus Christ, we live 

as sons and daughters of the eternal 

Father — we share his own divine 

life. In Jesus Christ, we can call God 

our Father because God is eternally 

his Father. In the New Testament, St. 

Peter puts our holy Communion in the 

most powerful terms: We have become 

partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 

1:10). And what is that nature? How 

does God live in eternity? 

Christianity teaches that God is love. 

God is self-giving, life-giving love. This 

is the life the martyrs knew, especially 

at the moment of their death. But they 

themselves had been caught up into 

that life so long before and so many 

times — whenever they had joined 

with the Church for the teaching of 

the apostles and the communion, the 

breaking of the bread, and the prayers. 

Jesus gave himself entirely to them, 

and they gave themselves in return. 

At every Eucharist, he gives himself 

entirely to us, and we give ourselves 

entirely in return. Father says, “The 

body of Christ,” and we say, “Amen.” 

When Catholics do that, we consent to 

the communion. We’re accepting the 

cross of Christ. We’re accepting our 

own martyrdom. 

St. Paul signaled this in his Letter to 

the Romans: “I appeal to you therefore, 

brethren, by the mercies of God, to 

present your bodies as a living sacrifice, 

holy and acceptable to God, which 

is your spiritual worship.” Surely St. 

Paul’s words reached many future martyrs 

in Rome, where he himself would 

one day die by beheading. 

But his words reached many others as 

well, men and women whose sacrifice 

would be something quiet and hidden 

and noticed only by God. St. Paul also 

referred to our bodies as “temples of 

the Holy Spirit.” In the ancient world, 

temples were not mere shrines; they 

were places of sacrifice. 

And so are we. Our bodies are places 

of sacrifice, and our lives are the offering 

on the altar. We ourselves are the 

Mass in motion. 

So our everyday life should be a voluntary 

sacrifice. Listen to the Church’s 

traditional language of penance and 

reparation, mortification, and fasting. 

It’s all about self-possession, self-denial, 

self-mastery. It’s good to be disciplined, 

and self-denial is a means to achieving 

discipline. But discipline, too, is a 

means and not an end. Why should we 

want to possess ourselves? 

We possess ourselves in order to give 

ourselves away — just like Jesus, just 

like the martyrs. Only then can we truly 

become ourselves. For we are made 

in God’s image, and God is life-giving 

love, whose human life was a self-giving 

sacrifice. 

The Mass is that sacrifice, and all our 

lives must be placed upon the altar and 

taken up into the Eucharist — all the 

hours we spend at our desks or in the 

kitchen or in the field. 

When we give ourselves without 

holding back, we are living like the 

early Christians. We are living like the 

martyrs. We are living the Eucharist. 

Mike Aquilina is a contributing editor to 

Angelus and author of many books, most 

recently “Friendship and the Fathers: How 

the Early Church Evangelized” (Emmaus 

Road Publishing, $22.95). 

N 

o 

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Oblate Father Fenelon Sylfrard, right, and Deacon Hernst Bellevue elevate the Eucharist 

on Aug. 15. | CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/GREGORY A. SHEMITZ 

FUEL FOR THE 

JOURNEY 

BY 

What eucharistic coherence 

looks like in the pews. 

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ 

Christ! Jesus Christ! Jesus 

Christ!” 

“Jesus 

At a recent Mass for Persecuted 

Christians in Africa held on the 

feast of St. Peter Claver, the sounds of 

a Ghanaian choir burst out rejoicing 

through St. Patrick’s Cathedral during 

the eucharistic prayer. 

When you think about it, such a 

response to the act of bread and wine 

becoming the body and blood of Jesus 

Christ seems quite appropriate. 

It reminded me of a baptism I attended 

at the Basilica of Our Lady of 

Guadalupe in Mexico City. We were 

upstairs in the baptistery, and as the 

baby became a Christian, we heard 

voices coming from below: “Viva Cristo 

Rey! Viva Cristo Rey! Viva Cristo 

Rey!” They had no idea what was 

happening above them. They had just 

finished Mass. Again, an appropriate 

response to the reality before them. 

This is eucharistic coherence: being 

so in tune with the Lord in the host, 

that our voices and our lives proclaim 

what it is that we receive. 

So why is it that just the other day 

at Mass, as we were approaching the 

moment of consecration, I saw a woman 

answering her phone? Why was I 

thinking about a deadline? 

“Lamb of God, you take away the 

sins of the world! Have mercy on us! 

Grant us peace!” 

My primary concern is this: Do we 

know Jesus is present before us? Do we 

know how precious the priesthood is, 

that Jesus comes to us through the fiat 

of a priest? 

I recently attended a Mass with a 

family in their home. After Mass, the 

three young sons, all under 8, thanked 

Jesus for coming to their home in 

such a powerful way. (The younger 

one may have needed a little more 

prompting, as is appropriate: He is 

a little boy, after all.) Later in life, I 

pray they can grow in appreciation for 

the tremendous gift of a Mass in the 

home, a gift in some ways their late 

father helped give them by the way he 

lived his life. 

Let’s face it though: Most of us don’t 

believe as we ought or sufficiently 

thank Jesus for dwelling with us. Of 

course, we can’t. Unlike the Blessed 

Mother, we’re all imperfect. But are 

we at least asking for the grace of 

silent, perseverant listening? 


Jesus speaks to us in the words of 

Scripture and within our hearts where 

he and the Father and the Holy Spirit 

dwell. Our Trinitarian lives ought not 

be so mysterious. There’s a practicality 

to them. If we believe, the Eucharist 

is our fuel. We know we should not 

receive him unworthily, so it follows 

that we should receive him in a state 

of grace, helped by the sacrament of 

confession. Right? 

If we leave Jesus to Sunday for an 

hour only, do we really believe he is 

Our Lord and Savior? Do we want to 

live with him as the center? Do we ask 

for the grace of eucharistic coherence 

in our lives? This current discussion 

among the U.S. bishops about this 

concept — important as it is — is 

about so much more than politicians 

or policy. 

Eucharistic coherence is about the 

way we are called to live our lives. 

Do we hate our political enemies, or 

fellow Catholics who think differently 

than us? Do we consider what 

A priest gives the 

Eucharist to a communicant 

during a Mass 

at St. Agnes Cathedral 

in Rockville Centre, 

New York, in 2020. 

| CATHOLIC NEWS 

SERVICE/ 

GREGORY A. 

SHEMITZ 

it means to be radically loving and 

welcoming? Do the young people in 

our lives know that we would help 

them, should they face hardships like 

unplanned pregnancies? Have we 

ever considered what that might look 

like? Do we care that there are foster 

children who need permanent homes 

— forever families who will give them 

the kind of love and support we may 

take for granted in our lives? 

Eucharistic coherence shouldn’t be 

a matter of controversy. It should be a 

challenge. It should be how we wake 

up in the morning, keep focused during 

the day, give thanks, and ask for 

forgiveness as the day draws to a close. 

Are we prepared for the coming 

eucharistic revival being planned 

by our shepherds if we’re answering 

phones during the liturgy, walking in 

right before Communion, or allowing 

ourselves to be distracted? Do we 

believe that Jesus comes to us in the 

Mass — and in all the sacraments? If 

it’s just box-checking for living some 

surface of a moral life, there may not 

be much left to revive. 

If you believe, share the joy of the 

truth. Eucharistic coherence in our 

time will not come from a statement, 

report, or even one beautiful Mass 

and time of eucharistic adoration 

livestreamed to the world. It’s going to 

come from believers sharing the joy 

that comes from Christ dwelling in us. 

We are so angry and confused because 

we do not believe as we ought. 

That’s partially because we’re human. 

But it’s also because we are letting 

ourselves be distracted. 

Go to Christ. Stay with Christ. If 

Catholic bishops can show us they 

believe, their witness will do more 

than any statement ever will. Bishops, 

teach the truth. But, for goodness 

sake, live it. As you raise the host for 

us at Mass, raise our hearts to live with 

a singular focus and unwavering faith 

in the Lord whom you make present 

for us. 

Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow 

at the National Review Institute, 

editor-at-large of National Review 

magazine, and the author of “A Year 

with the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for 

Daily Living” (Tan Books, $44.95). 

November 19, 2021 • ANGELUS • 19

A prayer card remembering the author’s mother with a Mass 

card for the repose of her soul. | SUBMITTED PHOTO 

MY MOM’S 

SAVING MEDICINE 

Our family will benefit 

from my late mother’s 

love for the Eucharist 

long after her death. 

So will she. 

BY ELISE ITALIANO URENECK 

Research suggests that the childhood 

memories which stick 

with us the most are the ones 

attached to strong emotional responses, 

events that embody the nature of 

our childhood, or what matters most to 

us as adults. 

One of my earliest memories is from 

Sunday Mass when I was about 4 

years old. Our family was sitting in 

the first pew, close enough to see every 

movement and hear every prayer made 

by the priest. As I rubbed my knees 

across the cracked leather kneeler, I 

scooted close to my mother to ask her 

a question about something inconsequential. 

She leaned down and with 

the most serious tone I’d ever heard 

her use said, “We never talk during the 

consecration,” and turned her head 

back to the altar with laser focus. 

I think about this experience regularly 

at Mass, moreso now that I have 

young children squirming next to 

me in the pew. On the way home, 

my mother didn’t offer to explain the 

liturgy or what the Eucharist was. In 

fact, we didn’t really talk about Communion 

again until I was preparing to 

receive it for the first time. 

But her tone and focus led me to 

conclude that something serious was 

happening on the altar. I didn’t experience 

her admonition as punitive; it 

was my earliest introduction to reverence, 

of reserving time and attention 

for things that are sacred. 

This was the first of three lessons my 

mother gave me on the Eucharist. 

The second came nearly three decades 

later. Six months before the world 

went into lockdown, my mother was 

rendered homebound. Two years into 

a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis 

(ALS), she could not physically 

get out the door for Mass. Her muscles 

were atrophying, her breathing compromised, 

and the routine of getting 

dressed and “ready” was too laborious 

for her and my father, her caregiver. 

My parents, once extraordinary 

ministers of the Eucharist, were soon 

at the mercy of others to bring them 

Communion. A neighbor eventually 

began to bring them two hosts on 

Tuesday mornings, and when I would 

visit them, I would take my mother’s 


pix to and from Sunday Mass. Eventually 

I would only bring back one host 

for the two of them, as she could only 

consume a tiny morsel lest she choke. 

During those privileged moments of 

giving my weary parents Communion, 

I thought of Pope Francis’ description 

of the Eucharist as “medicine for the 

sick.” To date, there is no cure for 

ALS. The only medication on the market 

promises to extend patients’ lives 

for several weeks or months. 

Despite a hope for a miracle, we all 

knew that my mom’s saving medicine 

would be the Eucharist. “Whoever 

eats my flesh and drinks my blood 

has eternal life,” the Lord said (John 

6:54). As her earthly life was nearing 

its completion and as her quality of 

life diminished, my mom held on to 

that promise. In fact, she whispered to 

me one evening, “People with death 

sentences — either in prison or with 

a terminal illness — think about their 

last meal. I hope mine is the Eucharist.” 

My mother was teaching me in those 

moments of weakness — when stretching 

out her tongue to receive the host 

took extraordinary effort — to think 

about the things that will not pass 

away. She was also showing me that it 

was the medicine I needed to fortify 

myself for the inevitable. 

On Aug. 10 of this year, I stood next 

to my mother’s casket, greeting nearly 

300 people who came to pay their 

respects at her wake. Among those in 

line were members of our hometown 

parish, where my mother had worked 

in the rectory. More than one parishioner 

shared with me that my mom 

was known for spending an inordinate 

amount of time with the bereaved who 

came to the office seeking Mass cards. 

I learned that my mom often asked 

them to share about the person who 

had died, and how she could pray for 

those who were left behind. This small 

act of engaging people in conversation 

with sincere curiosity turned out to be 

a bigger consolation to parishioners 

than we realized. 

I was touched but not surprised to 

learn this about her, because the third 

lesson my mother delivered on the 

Eucharist was an explicit one: She 

taught my brother and me about the 

importance of having the sacrifice of 

the Mass offered for the dead. 

Throughout my childhood I remember 

regularly stopping by the parish to 

pick up Mass cards for friends, relatives, 

and neighbors. My mom was the 

one who made sure that our extended 

family gathered together at Mass to 

pray for our deceased loved ones on 

their birthdays or the anniversary of 

their deaths. 

In doing this, my mom made sure 

that it was the Eucharist that brought 

us together to mark moments of 

mourning and remembrance. But it 

was also the Eucharist that joined us 

with our deceased loved ones. She 

taught us that the dead are gathered 

around the altar with us at every Mass, 

albeit in an invisible way, since it’s 

where heaven meets earth. 

In the weeks and months since her 

funeral, my father, brother, and I have 

opened several hundred sympathy 

cards. Included in that count were 

nearly 150 Mass cards. It has been an 

enormous consolation that my mom is 

reaping what she sowed. 

Since I first read them, I have often 

recounted the words of Pope Francis 

to young people, delivered on his 2019 

trip to Romania: 

“As you continue to grow in every 

way — stronger, older, and even in 

importance — do not forget the most 

beautiful and worthwhile lesson you 

learned at home. It is the wisdom 

that comes from age. When you grow 

up, do not forget your mother and 

your grandmother, and the simple 

but robust faith that gave them the 

strength and tenacity to keep going 

and not to give up. It is a reason for 

you to give thanks and to ask for the 

generosity, courage, and selflessness of 

a “home-grown” faith that is unobtrusive, 

yet slowly but surely builds up the 

kingdom of God.” 

I grieve that my children will not remember 

their grandmother. But I am 

consoled by the Holy Father’s words, 

because I will pass down my mother’s 

lessons on the Eucharist to them. And 

at the altar they will share that meal 

with their grandmother as often as they 

frequent it, the saving medicine for us 

all 

Elise Italiano Ureneck is a communications 

consultant writing from Boston. 

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A Catholic Charities staff member shows St. Frances Cabrini second-graders 

how to properly remove and repot plants from the garden. | ADRIAN FLORES 

A garden grows 

in West Athens 

Catholic schoolchildren are 

cultivating a sense of hope in one 

of LA’s worst ‘food deserts.’ 

BY DANA BARTHOLOMEW 

Luke Figueroa looked into a planter being filled with 

dirt outside St. Frances Xavier Cabrini School and 

imagined a cornucopia of garden vegetables. 

And a fresh accompaniment for his dinner. 

“I have a plant ready; it’s a green bean,” said Figueroa, 10, 

who lives not far from the parish school in South Los Angeles. 

“We’ve been watching it germinate. When it’s ready, 

we’re going to eat it. With butter and salt.” 

He was among a beehive of Cabrini kids who on a recent 

day banged out eight planter boxes, nearly doubling the 

size of the parish school garden in a region largely devoid 

of supermarkets and fresh produce. 

The Cabrini Garden is among a growing number of little 

Edens sprouting from parish schools accompanied with a 

curriculum designed to foster health, nutrition, and a love 

of nature as well as garden vegetables. 

Eight gardens, funded by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles 

and managed by Catholic Charities of Los Angeles, rise 

in wooden box planters overflowing with tomatoes, other 

veggies, herbs, and spices. 

Each above-ground oasis — which cost $5,000 at Cabrini 

School plus $1,000 for its recent expansion — was supported 

by the Catholic Relief Services’ Rice Bowl program. 

Similar gardens and teaching programs have sprung up 

at Sacred Heart Elementary School in Lincoln Heights, 

St. Ignatius of Loyola School in Highland Park, St. John 

Chrysostom School in Inglewood, St. Joseph’s School in 

Hawthorne, St. Joseph’s School in Pomona, St. Thomas 

Aquinas School in Monterey Park, and St. Margaret’s 

Center in Lennox. 

“We’ve funded eight parish gardens, including South 

Los Angeles, an underserved area deemed a ‘food desert’ 

because of few supermarkets,” said Adrian Flores, associate 


director of the archdiocesan Office of Life, Justice and 

Peace. “The program teaches kids food nutrition and how 

to take care of gardens. 

“This is something easy that kids can bring home to their 

families.” 

A food desert brought to life 

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Church, which once operated 

out of a neighborhood barbecue joint, was founded 75 

years ago and named after the first American citizen to 

be canonized — and a patron saint for all immigrants. Its 

parish school was opened five years later. 

Today, its soaring bell tower looks down upon Los Angeles 

Southwest College, the 105 freeway, and a vast stretch 

of convenience stores, liquor stores, fast-food stands and 

doughnut shops. 

The West Athens parish and school lie at the bottom 

end of a 51-square-mile region now known as South Los 

Angeles, where 95% of its residents are Latino or Black, 

and 1 in 5 of its 750,000 residents live below the poverty 

line, and where 1 in 3 residents live more than a mile away 

from only seven supermarkets in South LA, according to a 

recent Geodesign study. 

It’s also a federally designated “food desert,” where a lack 

of access to fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful 

whole foods pose a significant risk to people’s health. 

That’s where Catholic Charities of Los Angeles and its 

Calfresh Healthy Living program at parish schools come 

in. It has added health and nutrition into the curriculum 

of each garden school, including such topics as where food 

comes from, how plants grow, and how to create a healthy, 

well-balanced diet. 

“Our goal is to improve health outcomes in low-income 

areas,” said Nancy Lewis, manager of Catholic Charities of 

LA’s Calfresh program. “It’s also about caring for Mother 

Earth, from the pope’s encyclical, ‘Laudato Si’.” 

She was referring to the 2015 encyclical of Pope Francis, 

“On Care for our Common Home,” which calls on 

humanity to protect the planet and its poor. 

“We want to build awareness, one community at a time, 

one school at a time, one child at a time,” Lewis said. “You 

have to have hope. These are our children.” 

A Cabrini Garden transformed by kids 

On a cool morning in late October, Cabrini School’s 

nearly 230 K-eighth-grade students filed in, the boys in 

white shirts and black ties, the girls in black-and-white 

plaid tunics, all dressed in Cabrini French-blue sweaters. 

The crisp uniforms doubled as Cabrini gardening duds. 

“Dear heavenly Father, we come to you with thanksgiving 

in our hearts,” said Carmen Orinoco-Hart over the P.A. 

system, the school’s principal of 11 years. “We come to you 

to thank you for our blessings.” 

Their blessings include two fall harvests of precious plants 

since their garden was installed in early 2019. 

“Oh my gosh. They’re co-parents. They’re so proud of 

their growing babies,” Janet Mackey, Cabrini vice principal 

and an eighth-grade teacher, said. “In this community, all 

they have is processed food.” 

A pair of St. Frances Cabrini 

third-graders at work on their 

garden. | ADRIAN FLORES 

“The garden means a lot,” said 

Sophia Tellez, 11, of Inglewood, 

an officer of the student body. “I 

learned how to plant and germinate 

seeds. I’m caring for a pea 

seed. I love peas, ever since I was 

a little kid. My grandmother taught me how to love them, 

especially in soup.” 

After a half-hour lecture by Lewis on germination, around 

75 Cabrini kids filed out to the school garden, where Lewis 

oversaw the expansion. 

Teams of students gathered in front of 10 planter boxes 

filled with tomatoes, eggplants, zucchinis and many varieties 

of herbs and peppers, on the east side of the school. 

Last summer, it gave them the first taste of salad. This fall, 

a new crop is in time for Thanksgiving. 

In 20 minutes, they’d assembled four 3-foot wooden boxes, 

screwed in the wheels, filled them with soil, and sown 

them with lettuce seed. 

“Good job!” said Flores. “High fives! Thumbs up. Good 

job, guys. Way to go.” 

At the end of two box-building sessions, students blessed 

each box with the waters of life, which slowly spread across 

the darkening soil to the seeds below. 

Dana Bartholomew is an award-winning freelance writer 

living in Los Angeles. 

November 19, 2021 • ANGELUS • 23

ock 

nd Tom 

udy at 

pt. 8, 

E PHOTO 

U.S. President Joe Biden meets with Pope Francis at the Vatican Oct. 29. | CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/VATICAN MEDIA 

Generals in a new world war 

Can the U.S. and the Vatican find a way to enlist China 

in the fight against climate change? 

BY JOHN L. ALLEN JR. 

ROME — In a written message 

to the COP26 summit in Glasgow, 

Pope Francis compared 

the twin impact of COVID-19 and 

climate change to a world war, calling 

on the international community to 

respond now “as in the aftermath of 

World War II.” 

“The wounds inflicted on our 

human family by the COVID-19 

pandemic and the phenomenon of 

climate change are comparable to 

those resulting from a global conflict,” 

Pope Francis said. 

To be honest, the statement didn’t 

cause much of a stir amid all the 

other drama of the Glasgow event, in 

part because it’s precisely the sort of 

dramatic rhetoric from Pope Francis 

on climate change which, by now, has 

become familiar. 

Perhaps the most consistent reaction 

from a media point of view simply was 

to underline that the comments came 

in a written message rather than in 

person, after Pope Francis had all but 

vowed to make the trip to Glasgow 

for the summit. The Vatican still has 

offered no explanation for his pullout, 

and, given how palpably Pope Francis 

seemed to want to make the trip, it 

leaves one wondering if his recovery 

from colon surgery over the summer 

is turning out to be more complicated 

than anticipated. 

Yet it’s worth staying with the pope’s 

analogy for a moment, in part because 

of an obvious question it leaves hanging: 

If this is our generation’s World 

War II, who are the allies and who’s 

the axis? 

That question, like so many topics 

about the Vatican these days, leads us 

by a short path to China. 

Shortly after a tête-à-tête with Pope 

Francis in the Vatican on Oct. 29, 

U.S. President Joe Biden used his 

platform in Glasgow this week to 

scold the leaders of both China and 

Russia for not showing up. (He was 

mum about the pontiff’s own no- 


show, but perhaps after their virtually 

unprecedented 75-minute exchange, 

Biden knows more about that story 

than we do.) 

“It just is a gigantic issue and they 

walked away,” Biden said of the 

Chinese leadership. “How do you do 

that and claim to have any leadership 

mantle?” 

China didn’t wait long to fire back. 

“Actions speak louder than words,” 

foreign ministry spokesman Wang 

Wenbin said Wednesday. “What 

we need in order to deal with climate 

change is 

A factory in Tangshan, 

China, in an undated 

photo. | CATHOLIC 

NEWS SERVICE/KIM 

KYUNG-HOON, REUTERS 

concrete action 

rather than 

empty words. 

China’s actions 

in response to 

climate change 

are real.” 

Zhang Jun, China’s 

permanent representative to the 

United Nations, added sharply, “We 

are not the ones who withdrew from 

the Paris Agreement.” 

To be honest, this doesn’t sound 

much like the sort of language allies 

use in public about one another. 

The problem is that if we really are 

in a war against climate change, it’s a 

war that can’t be won without China 

and the U.S. being on the same side. 

By themselves, China and the U.S. 

produce twice as much carbon emissions 

every year than the next eight 

nations on the top 10 list combined. 

For sure, this battle can’t be won 

without massive efforts by Beijing. In 

1979, the year of the “Four Modernizations” 

under Deng Xiaoping, China 

was just in fifth place on the annual 

carbon emissions list, generating fewer 

than 300 million tons a year; by 2006 

China was the world’s worst polluter. 

Today, its smokestacks and other carbon-generating 

machines spew out a 

staggering 2,777 tons every year, more 

than a quarter of all emissions on 

the planet — all of which, of course, 

amounts to an ironic X-ray of the success 

of Deng’s economic reforms. 

President Xi Jinping has pledged that 

China’s emissions will peak around 

2030, and that by 2060 the country 

will be carbon neutral. Yet it’s not 

clear exactly how Xi plans to achieve 

that aim, and Climate Action Tracker, 

an international group of scientists 

and policy experts, has judged China’s 

efforts to date “highly insufficient.” 

If one’s truly serious about winning 

this war, in other words, China has 

to join the allies. How to get them to 

do it? 

That’s the $64,000 question of 

today’s geopolitics, and nobody seems 

to know the answer. Whatever it turns 

out to be, however, it likely will have 

to involve some combination of hard 

and soft power — the stick of political, 

economic, and even military 

pressure, combined with the carrot of 

moral suasion and a certain restraint 

about criticizing China in public 

rhetoric. 

(The same could be said of virtually 

any other objective with China, by 

the way, from improving its dismal 

human rights and religious freedom 

record to avoiding a war over Taiwan.) 

As it happens, the U.S. and the Vatican 

are the world’s most important 

hard and soft powers, respectively. 

The U.S. has a limited but real capacity 

to exert pressure on China, while 

the Vatican offers China the prospect 

of acceptance and moral credibility in 

the international arena. 

We may never know if China was 

discussed by Biden and Pope Francis 

during the 75 minutes they spent together, 

though it would be odd if two 

major world leaders got together these 

days and the subject didn’t somehow 

come up. 

Assuming it was, perhaps Biden 

prodded Pope Francis to cash in some 

of the political capital he amassed 

with Beijing by approving a controversial 

deal that gave China significant 

leverage in the appointment of Catholic 

bishops in the country. 

Perhaps Pope Francis replied that 

Rome and Washington have an effective 

good cop/bad cop dynamic in 

place — though, presumably, without 

using the argot of American crime 

dramas — encouraging Biden to 

continue wielding the stick while he’ll 

keep dangling carrots. 

Whatever the exchange, only time 

will tell if this de facto partnership 

works in drawing China into the 

allies — to fight what both pope and 

president clearly see as the last war, 

in all probability, either man will ever 

fight. 

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


WITH GRACE 

DR. GRAZIE POZO CHRISTIE 

Pro-life through and through 

Last month I took part in a pro-life 

congress sponsored by the Archdiocese 

of Miami called “Congreso Pro 

Vida.” Talks were given in Spanish, 

English, and Creole. Mine, given 

in Spanish, was titled “Encuentra 

Tu Voz” (“Find Your Voice”), and 

centered on how to become a public 

voice on life issues meaningful to 

Catholics. 

I shared my own story with the 

audience: how I went from being a 

complacent pro-life Catholic, satisfied 

with helping out at our parish diaper 

drive and accepting my own children 

as blessings, to becoming a vocal advocate 

for the dignity of life. 

I also told them about my falling-offmy-horse 

conversion, which started 

with the adoption of our fifth child 

from China. The knowledge that she 

was one of those inconvenient children, 

discarded by a society and an 

escapee from termination who miraculously 

made it into our open arms, 

inspired in me a desire to save the 

rest of these little angels. Of course, I 

couldn’t save them all, but it became 

blindingly clear that I had the duty to 

do as much as I could. 

The particulars of my story after that, 

although I shared them, were not 

important. It was the general shape of 

the transformation that I thought was 

worth communicating. There in the 

audience were good men and women 

from every social class and profession, 

with differing talents and strengths, 

eager to sweeten the bitterness of 

modern society 

A pro-life advocate prays 

a rosary near the U.S. 

Supreme Court building 

in Washington, D.C., on 

Oct. 4, the first day of the 

high court’s new term. 

| TYLER ORSBURN/ 


that uses and 

discards remorselessly. 

But what does it 

take to find that 

voice? 

First, I told 

them, is a strong 

interior life. 

Like every noble 

quest, our advocacy 

has to start with Christ in the 

center and radiate outwardly. Daily 

mental prayer and frequent Communion 

and confession keep us in a state 

of grace and point all our work toward 

the glory of God, rather than our own. 

We rectify our intentions, curb our 

passions, soften our tone, and see 

souls in need everywhere, when we 

have a strong interior life. We tamp 

down that need to win arguments 

and oppose for the sake of opposing 

and triumphing. We avoid, in a word, 

voluntarism, in which our will to 

dominate and succeed makes all our 

hard work sterile. 

Besides making us fruitful, our interior 

life also fills us with the confidence 

of one who knows he is a child of 

God, and that if we are soldiers in a 

battle, it is only one of many battles of 

a war that has already been won. 

Second: unity of life. Our own 

“ L 

a 

w 

S 

O 

R 

f 

P 


Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie is a mother of five 

who practices radiology in the Miami area. 

personal lives have to be all of a piece, 

with no incongruities to mar our 

message. I’m not talking about being 

perfected saints on earth, although 

our own sanctification should be our 

constant preoccupation. But the way 

we speak, the pastimes we seek, our 

outward appearance, should all be a 

shining example in a dark world. 

How many times have we heard (or 

made) a flippant comment about 

children as burdens, or the elderly 

as useless charges? Being pro-life 

through and through creates a quiet 

example, at home and at work, at 

school and with our friends: treating 

our own body with respect, clothing it 

in modesty, enriching with our example 

the attractiveness of parenthood 

and the family, and always exhibiting 

those delicacies of human interaction 

that work against degradation and 

vulgarity. 

Third: Search for the way our own 

personal experiences and perspective 

point out some distinct shape for our 

advocacy. For me, I explained, it was 

the adoption of an abandoned child 

and my work as a radiologist. Time 

and again I’ve used my little fetal patients, 

and my daughter’s tremendous 

worth as a daughter of God, to move 

hearts. Everyone has these lights, in 

some form, that can be used to illuminate 

the dark corners of the culture of 

death. 

And fourth, and perhaps hardest of 

all: audacity and a fine disdain for the 

respect of the world. It takes a strong 

backbone to stand up when everyone 

around you is sitting complacently. 

It takes a special kind of detachment 

to disregard those whose opinion you 

value and risk having them write you 

off as a crank. It takes courage to keep 

finding opportunities to communicate, 

teach, explain, protect, and protest in 

a society that is very much going in 

the wrong direction. You’ll feel out of 

joint, but after a while it can come as 

natural as breathing. 

And if you are afraid of looking ridiculous 

or clumsy, well, you will learn 

to laugh heartily at your own wounded 

vanity. After all, the dignity we should 

be most concerned about is the dignity 

of the “other,” not our own. 

Like Sister de Lourdes and Sister Florence 

Kruczek (right), 91, some 30,000 senior 

Catholic sisters, brothers, and religious order 

priests have spent their lives doing the Lord’s 

work. Most served for little or no pay, and now 

their religious communities do not have enough 

retirement savings. Your gift to the Retirement 

Fund for Religious offers vital support for 

necessities, such as medications and nursing 

care. Please be generous. 

Roughly 94 percent of donations 

directly aid senior religious. 

“ Live with good humor 

and just do the Lord’s 

work,” says Franciscan 

Sister de Lourdes 

Okoniewski (left), 87. 

Retirement Fund 

for Religious 

Please give to those who have given a lifetime. 

Please give at your local parish 

December 7–8. 

To donate by mail: 

Archdiocese of Los Angeles 

Attn: Office of Vicar for Women Religious 

3424 Wilshire Blvd 

Los Angeles CA 90010-2241 

Make check payable to Archdiocese of Los Angeles/RFR. 

retiredreligious.org 

©2019 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, DC. All rights reserved. 

Photo: Jim Judkis 


NOW PLAYING DUNE 

IN SEARCH 

OF A SAVIOR 

The original writer of ‘Dune’ was allergic to messiahworship. 

Does the new film adaptation betray his vision? 

BY MSGR. RICHARD ANTALL 

Timothée Chalamet and 

Rebecca Ferguson star in 

“Dune.” | © 2021 LEGEND- 

ARY AND WARNER BROS. 

ENTERTAINMENT INC. 

The author of the 1965 science-fiction 

novel “Dune,” 

Frank Herbert, was not a great 

writer. 

Still, I must confess enjoying the book 

as a young man so much that I quickly 

read the succeeding novels. The future 

universe he imagined in “Dune” still 

has its appeal to me, despite my disappointment 

in where those subsequent 

books took the story and its characters. 

The man had a great imagination. 

So does the director of the film’s second 

film adaptation, which came out 

in theaters Oct. 22 and has received 

mostly positive reviews — and plenty of 

buzz in the cybersphere. 

In fact, the gifted Denis Villenueve 

recently gave an interview that resonated 

with me. He recalled reading 

the lengthy novel at 14 and, even 

then, imagining making a film of it. 

Although he was warned that “Dune” 

fanatics would be hard to please, he 

said he made the movie with only 

one admirer of the book in his mind: 

himself. 

He managed to please me, too — 

although it has yet to be seen if he can 

keep up the magic in the second half of 

the film adaptation (quite correctly, he 

realized the story would have to be split 

into two movies). 

The film successfully immerses us 

in a futuristic constellation of worlds 

where, following an abolition of artificial 

intelligence won in a bloody war, 

a mysterious emperor rules, sharing 

power with several rival feudal dynasties. 

A powerful and secretive Space 

Guild controls interstellar trade and 

travel, while the mysterious magical sisterhood 

of Beni Gesserit wields unseen 

influence. 

The world of “Dune” is a funhouse 

intergalactic mirror of medieval history, 

with all sorts of religious symbolism 

thrown in. There are especially quasi-Islamic 

notions of the Mahdi (chosen 

one) and of the jihad holy war. A race 

of Bedouin-like warriors inhabit the 

desert planet Arrakis, the only source of 

“spice,” which is the basic element of 

the future culture, being both a kind of 

drug and an essential fuel of civilization. 

Herbert said that his novels were 

“philosophic” fiction and he managed 

to weave all sorts of allusions to modern 

problems and issues into his future civilization: 

ecology, the scarcity of natural 

resources, perpetual power conflicts 

and shaky political alliances, religious 

fanaticism and mysticism, human 

genetic manipulation, the dangers of 

technological advances, a mysterious 


feminism of occult powers, imperialism, 

and colonialism — it’s all there 

wrapped up into a space opera and the 

warriors still have capes and swords. 

Paul Atreides, played with some 

intensity by up-and-coming heartthrob 

actor Timothée Chalamet, is the son 

of Duke Leto Atreides, whose family, 

descendants of the Greek Atreides 

clan of Agamemnon, are given feudal 

rights over the planet Arrakis and its 

spice trade. His mother, Jessica, is a 

Beni Gesseret sister, a concubine with 

witchlike supernatural powers, who 

was supposed to give birth to a baby girl 

who would marry the heir of the rival 

Harkonnen dynasty, uniting political 

power and eventually breeding a future 

prodigy. 

The Lady Jessica disobeyed her order’s 

Reverend Mother and, skipping steps, 

anticipated the goal of the secret genetic 

program, the birth of the “Kwisatz 

Haderach,” a messiah figure who would 

be able to see beyond space and time 

and transform civilization. 

The first part of “Dune” the novel and 

the present movie is about the discovery 

of Paul’s heroic destiny. Like the 

mythologist specialist Joseph Campbell’s 

“Hero with a Thousand Faces,” 

the young man has special powers and 

a salvific mission revealed to him only 

during a dangerous adventure. 

He is to be the long-awaited “Mahdi” 

messiah for the people of Arrakis 

and lead their liberation from foreign 

powers. Herbert saw an Arthurian motif 

to his story. Instead of Excalibur, there 

is an encounter with the hallucinogenic 

spice and his transformation into a 

Fremen “Mahdi,” or chosen one. 

The heroic cycle described by 

Campbell is still popular culture, 

echoed even in the essentially puerile 

Marvel movies of people who discover 

their supernatural attributes through 

enduring suffering and conflict with 

evil powers. It is a sort of basic salvation 

myth. Someone will come who will 

deliver us, and that special person will 

have unique powers. 

However — and this is an interesting 

twist — Herbert did not believe in hero 

worship. He warned that no one should 

ever identify Paul with the Christ story, 

but he revealed in a 1980 Omni magazine 

essay that he had in mind leaders 

who had wrapped themselves “in the 

mythic fabric of the society. Hitler did 

it. Churchill did it. Franklin Roosevelt 

did it. Stalin did it. Mussolini did it. My 

favorite examples are John F. Kennedy 

and George Patton.” 

Yes, all of them are together in Herbert’s 

conception of the dangers of hero 

worship. 

“This, then,” Herbert wrote, “was one 

Timothée Chalamet 

portrays Paul Atreides in 

“Dune.” | © 2021 LEGEND- 

ARY AND WARNER BROS. 

ENTERTAINMENT INC. 

of my themes for ‘Dune’: Don’t give 

over all your critical faculties to people 

in power, no matter how admirable 

those people may appear to be. … 

Enormous problems arise when human 

mistakes are made on the grand scale 

available to a superhero. … Heroes are 

painful, superheroes are a catastrophe.” 

If Villeneuve is aware of Herbert’s 

antipathy to his own superhero, there 

is not much of a hint in this first part 

of “Dune.” In the books that follow the 

original “Dune,” Paul the superhero 

transcends humanity in power and 

eventually becomes inhuman. He is 

not a hero but an antihero. 

In other words, the evolution of Paul 

in the series of novels parallels the 

skeptical development of his creator’s 

thought. In very striking and spookily 

contemporary language, Herbert once 

declared, “I now believe that evolution, 

or deevolution [sic] never ends short of 

death, that no society has ever achieved 

an absolute pinnacle, that all humans 

are not created equal. In fact, I believe 

attempts to create some abstract equalization 

create a morass of injustices that 

rebound on the equalizers.” 

Pretty heady stuff that, whatever 

the dramatic rhetoric means exactly. 

Both that quote and the further novels 

indicate that the foundational myth of 

the long-awaited messiah can contain 

complex contradictions, 

and 

Herbert didn’t 

trust leaders to 

save us. 

You can, of 

course, just enjoy 

this first movie 

as a story of the 

battle of good and evil, in an exotic fictional 

universe with a fugue of modern 

themes that can make good conversation 

with fellow aficionados. I did. 

Msgr. Richard Antall is pastor of Holy 

Name Church in Cleveland, Ohio, and 

the author of several books. His latest 

novel, “The X-mas Files” (Atmosphere 

Press, $17.99), is now available for 

purchase. 


DESIRE LINES 

HEATHER KING 

Resurrecting the dead: Art from death row 

“Locked in a Dark Calm,” 2016, by Tameca Cole. 

| IMAGE VIA MARKINGTIMEART.COM 

Zena Hitz | PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS 

Nicole R. Fleetwood is the 

author of “Marking Time: Art 

in the Age of Mass Incarceration” 

(Harvard University Press, 

$27.95). 

There are two ways to read her book. 

One is as an indictment of the prison 

industry. 

Here, however, I needed no convincing. 

The U.S. has the highest rate 

of incarceration in the world, with 

almost 2.3 million people behind 

bars. Incarceration has increased 50% 

in the last 40 years. Black Americans 

are incarcerated in state prisons at 

nearly five times the rate of white 

Americans. 

No human being, whatever his or 

her crime, should be subject, to name 

just one example, to the torture of 

24/7 confinement. 

The second way is as a book, as the 

subtitle implies, about the art made in 

prisons. 

As Fleetwood beautifully details, 

such art is made against almost 

insurmountable odds, the first being 

simply to acquire the materials. 

Prisoners employ almost superhuman 

ingenuity in that regard, using among 

other things hair gel, ash, tin foil, human 

hair, toothpaste, dye from M&M 

candies, and bits of fabric from sheets 

and clothing. 

After all that, the art is often confiscated 

or forbidden. Many states have 

laws against selling it. Unimaginably 

harsh conditions that can include 

solitary confinement for years on end 

are intended to break the prisoner, 

and frequently do. Even so, many 

inmates manage to use art as an 

expression of the human spirit, of the 

soul’s longing, and of the refusal to 

be extinguished as an individual of 

dignity and worth. 

Todd (Hyung-Rae) Tarselli has been 

incarcerated in Pennsylvania since 

1992, seven of those years in solitary 

confinement. Among other projects, 

he has collected maple leaves that 

flutter over the razor wire, past the 

guard towers, and into the yard, and 

draws scenes of nature: a chipmunk, a 

stand of trees in autumn. 

Dean Gillespie, wrongly convicted, 

spent 20 years in Ohio prisons. For 

one project, he clandestinely amassed 

a quantity of dental compound from 

which he made hundreds of tiny 

bricks and, utilizing popsicle sticks, 

cardboard, and chipboard, constructed 

a replica of a mid-century movie 

theater complete with curtained 

windows and silver marquee. 

One of the most haunting images 

The cover of “Marking Time,” by Nicole R. Fleetwood. 

| AMAZON 


Heather King is an award-winning 

author, speaker, and workshop leader. 

in the book is the self-portrait, in 

pencil and pen, drawn by Billy Sell 

in 2012, while he was being held in 

long-term isolation at the SHU unit 

of California’s Corcoran State Prison. 

His eyes, behind rimless spectacles, 

question, ache, burn, agonize, and 

indict the viewer, all at the same time. 

Sell committed suicide in his cell the 

following year. 

Lisette Oblitas caused an accident 

while drunk in which Phyllis Porter, 

an elderly woman much beloved by 

her family and community, died. 

During her 4 ½ years in a Connecticut 

prison, Oblitas used art as a way 

to honor the life she had inadvertently 

taken. 

“In Your Eyes” (2013), for example, 

is a self-portrait in which she depicts 

her own face with the eyes of Porter. 

“I use her eyes because I feel my life 

is no longer mine,” Oblitas noted. “It’s 

also hers. Part of her lives within me. 

And through her forgiveness and her 

family’s forgiveness, I use her eyes as 

a lens where I can now see with more 

compassion toward others.” 

Julie Green, an artist who died last 

month, used art and prisons in a different 

way. Green was known for her 

“Last Supper” series, in which over a 

period of decades she depicted more 

than 800 of the last meals requested 

by U.S. convicted inmates before 

being executed. 

An art professor at Oregon State University, 

Green advanced no particular 

political agenda, though her hope was 

that capital punishment in the U.S. 

would end. 

Living in Oklahoma in 1999, Green 

would read in the morning paper of 

executions that had taken place the 

night before, including descriptions 

of the prisoner’s clothing and last 

meal. “Comfort food,” she thought. 

“It humanized death row for me … I 

related to that inmate.” 

She started doing sketches on paper, 

illustrating the meals. Then she 

thought to match medium with content 

and realized — ah, plates. 

She painted in blue on used white 

ceramic plates of various shapes and 

sizes. Photos of the plates are archived 

by state and date. Each meal is 

described, along with the date it was 

eaten, but the inmates are not named. 

The state of California allocates $50 

to accommodate last meal requests. 

An inmate executed on Jan. 29, 2002, 

asked for two grilled cheese sandwiches, 

a pint of cottage cheese, hom 

iny, a piece of peach pie, a pint of 

chocolate ice cream, and radishes. 

Requests across the country range 

from one honey bun (South Carolina) 

to pickled pig’s knuckles and pig’s tails 

(Tennessee) to a single apple (Montana). 

One man received permission for his 

mother to come 

“Billy Sell, Self-Portrait,” 

2012, as part of the 

Marking Time: Art in the 

Age of Mass Incarceration 

installation at 

MoMA PS1 in 2020. 

| IMAGE VIA FACEBOOK 

@MARKINGTIMEART 

into the prison 

and “homecook” 

his last 

supper: German 

ravioli and 

dumplings. 

An inmate 

from Indiana 

shared pizza and 

a birthday cake 

with 15 family 

members and friends. Green noted 

on her painted plate that he had never 

had a birthday cake before. Several 

plates read “None” or “Declined” — 

as in no last meal requested. 

One-thousand five-hundred thirty-eight 

people have been executed 

in the U.S. since the 1970s. In very 

different ways, Fleetwood and Green 

move toward resurrecting them. 


LETTER AND SPIRIT 

SCOTT HAHN 

Scott Hahn is founder of the 

St. Paul Center for Biblical 

Theology; stpaulcenter.com. 

From communion to kingship 

We don’t often appreciate God’s tender mercies — 

the compensations and consolations he gives us 

when he knows we’ll have to suffer. 

Take November, for example. It’s the month when we 

have to endure elections. I’m grateful for the blessings of 

democracy, and I take my voting seriously. But I have to 

confess I’ve found the last few national elections difficult, to 

say the least. 

I’m grateful to God for his foreknowledge of such trials — 

and for filling November’s calendar with delights. 

Every year, we begin the month with communion and we 

end with kingship. On Nov. 1, we’re reminded of the bigger 

societal picture as we celebrate All Saints’ Day. We remember 

all those who, as Chesterton said, make up the “democracy 

of the dead.” We have our rich tradition and customs 

today because countless unknown Christians faithfully 

received them from their parents, and then faithfully passed 

them on to their children. 

The gospel did not endure because it enjoyed state sponsorship 

or protection. Much of the time the Church has 

suffered persecution from states and princes (even Christian 

princes). But the saints stay on task, whether they enjoy 

favor or disfavor. 

Every November we have that holy day to remind us that 

such saints are living still, as they lived under the Roman 

emperors and the later caliphs. No matter what happens on 

election day, we’re living among saints. 

And I don’t mean only the saints on earth or simply the 

saints in heaven. I mean all of it. The Church is, as a novelist 

once said, “Here comes everybody” — every Christian 

on earth and everyone in heaven. 

The name Catholic comes from 

“Monument of Christ the 

King” in Cieszyn, Poland. 

| WIKIMEDIA COMMONS 

the Greek word meaning “universal.” 

You won’t find a more multicultural, 

international, global, and planetary 

institution than the Roman Catholic 

Church. And yet it’s so much more 

than the wildest dreams of political 

imperialists. It’s not merely planetary. It’s cosmic. It 

includes all the earth and all of heaven. 

And over it all is Christ the King, whose feast we celebrate 

at the end of November, on the last Sunday of the Church’s 

year. No matter whom we find in the White House or the 

statehouse or any chamber of government, Christ is king in 

glory, and he rules from our altars and tabernacles. He rules 

in our hearts. He rules in our homes, where we pass on the 

faith, quietly and steadfastly and with good cheer. 

No one should outdo us, then, in celebrating Thanksgiving 

this month. Yes, it’s a secular feast. But it is an honorable 

one, because it fulfills the urgent and constant exhortation 

of St. Paul: “Have no anxiety about anything, but in 

everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let 

your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6). 

So let us not be overwhelmed by anything life sends us 

this month. In the Church we enjoy a kingdom for all ages. 

We take our place in that society that spans generations. We 

give thanks, as the saints have always done, for all things. 


■ SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 13 

Introduction to the Scriptures. Holy Spirit Retreat Center, 

4316 Lanai Rd., Encino, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. With Terry Dicks, 

MTS. For more information, visit www.hsrcenter.com or call 

818-784-4515. 

12th Annual African American Catholic Ancestral Mass. 

St. Odilia Church, 1335 E. 53rd St., Los Angeles, 90011, 

12 p.m. Mass will be livestreamed on AACCFE’s Facebook 

account. 

■ SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 14 

Don Bosco Technical Institute Open House. 1151 San 

Gabriel Blvd., Rosemead, 12-4 p.m. Open house includes 

campus tour, exploration of state-of-the-art applied science 

labs, and overview of the school’s college prep curriculum. 

For more information, visit boscotech.edu, call 626-940- 

2000, or email admissions@boscotech.edu. 

International Thomas Merton Society Chapter Meetings. 

Holy Spirit Retreat Center, 4316 Lanai Rd., Encino, 2-4 

p.m. Meetings held on Sundays in October, November, and 

December, hosted by Sister Chris Machado, SSS. For more 

information, visit www.hsrcenter.com or call 818-784-4515. 

Black Catholic Month Mass. St. Agatha Church, 2646 S. 

Mansfield Ave., Los Angeles, 10:30 a.m. The Black History 

Month Committee is hosting Masses in celebration of Black 

Catholics. Nov. 14: Sister Thea Bowman, Nov. 21: Servant 

of God Father Augustus Tolton, Nov. 28: Former Auxiliary 

Bishop of Los Angeles Archdiocese Carl A. Fisher. For more 

information, call St. Agatha at 323-935-8127. 

■ WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17 

“Growing Stronger in Our Faith” Weekly Series. St. Dorothy 

Church, 241 S. Valley Center Ave., Glendora, 7-8:30 p.m. 

Wednesdays through April 6, 2022. Deepen your understanding 

of the Catholic faith through dynamic DVD presentations 

by top scholars and apologists like Bishop Robert 

Barron, Scott Hahn, Ph.D., and Brant Pitre, Ph.D. Free event, 

no reservations required. Call 626-335-2811 or visit www. 

stdorothy.org for more information. 

Virtual Record Clearing Clinic for Veterans. Legal team will 

help with traffic tickets, quality of life citations, and expungement 

of criminal convictions, 5-8 p.m. Free clinic is open to 

all Southern California veterans who have eligible cases in a 

California State Superior Court. Participants can call in or join 

online via Zoom. Registration required. Call 213-896-6537 

or email inquiries-veterans@lacba.org. For more information, 

visit lacba.org/veterans. 

■ THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18 

Children’s Bureau: Foster Care Zoom Orientation. Children’s 

Bureau is now offering two virtual ways for individuals 

and couples to learn how to help children in foster care 

while reunifying with birth families or how to provide legal 

permanency by adoption, 4-5 p.m. A live Zoom orientation 

will be hosted by a Children’s Bureau team member and a 

foster parent. For those who want to learn at their own pace 

about becoming a foster and/or fost-adopt parent, an online 

orientation presentation is available. To RSVP for the live orientation 

or to request the online orientation, email rfrecruitment@all4kids.org. 

Virtual Centering Prayer. Hosted by Pippa Currey and team 

from the Holy Spirit Retreat Center, the group meets every 

Thursday on Zoom, 10 a.m.-12 p.m. For more information, 

visit www.hsrcenter.com or call 818-784-4515. 

“Neighbors at the Border.” Zoom conference, 5 p.m. The 

Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at USC presents 

an ecumenical conversation on migration and immigration 

in Christian thought moderated by Alejandra Molina of 

Religion News Service. The conversation will feature Rev. 

Julia Lambert Fogg, Ph.D., of California Lutheran University, 

Father vănThanh Nguyễn, SVD, of Catholic Theological 

Union at Chicago, and Father Erik Berrelleza, SJ, of Santa 

Clara University. For more information and to RSVP, visit 

https://bit.ly/BorderNeighbors. 

■ FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19 

Dinner Theatre: “The Creole Mafia.” Church of the 

Transfiguration, 2515 W. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Los 

Angeles, 6:30 p.m. Preferred seating: $65/person; general 

admission: $55/person. All proceeds go toward school full 

tuition scholarships. For more information, visit aaccfe. 

org. 

■ SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20 

Spiritual Doorways: Welcoming the Sacred into a 

COVID World. Holy Spirit Retreat Center, 4316 Lanai 

Rd., Encino, 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. With Bryanna Benedetti-Coomber, 

MDiv. For more information, visit www. 

hsrcenter.com or call 818-784-4515. 

St. Jerome Annual Crafts Faire. St. Jerome Church, 5550 

Thornburn St., Westchester, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. and Nov. 21, 8 

a.m.-2 p.m. Free parking, no entrance fee. Breakfast and 

lunch available, holiday music, handmade items, and raffles. 

Masks and social distancing required. Call 310-670- 

7801 for more information. 

Spiritual Leadership Conference for Filipinos in Pastoral 

Ministry. St. Columban Church, 125 Loma Dr., Los 

Angeles, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Guest speaker and Mass celebrant: 

Father John Cordero, MMHC. All Filipino ministry members 

and parishioners are invited. For more information, 

text Yoly Lasmarias at 213-509-0805. 

Homeless Connect Day in Leimert Park. Transfiguration 

Gospel Choir will perform a free concert at 5 p.m. For 

more information, visit aaccfe.org. 

■ SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21 

“Pueblo Amante de Maria” Virtual Procession, Rosary, 

and Tagalog Mass. Hosted by Pippa Currey and team 

from the Holy Spirit Retreat Center, the group meets every 

Thursday on Zoom, 10 a.m.-12 p.m. For more information, 

visit www.hsrcenter.com or call 818-784-4515. 

Installation Mass for Father Anthony M. Bozeman, SSJ. 

Church of the Transfiguration, 2515 W. Martin Luther 

King Jr. Blvd., Los Angeles, 10 a.m. Mass followed by 

luncheon. Cost: $45/person. For more information, visit 

aaccfe.org. 

■ WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 1 

“The Inner Journey: Finding the Treasure Within” 

Workshop with Father James Clarke. Four-part online 

workshop (Dec. 1, Jan. 12, Feb. 9, March 2) will help participants 

uncover traditional ways of entering the interior 

sanctum of the soul. Learn more at https://cal.lmu.edu/ 

event/the-inner-journey-workshop. 

■ SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4 

Advent Silent Saturday: Centering Prayer and Silence. 

Holy Spirit Retreat Center, 4316 Lanai Rd., Encino, 9 a.m.- 

12 p.m. With Pippa Currey. For more information, visit 

www.hsrcenter.com or call 818-784-4515. 

Items for the calendar of events are due four weeks prior to the date of the event. They may be emailed to calendar@angelusnews.com. 

All calendar items must include the name, date, time, address of the event, and a phone number for additional information.

Angelus News | November 19, 2021 | Vol. 6 No. 23

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