Angelus News | January 26, 2024 | Vol. 9 No. 2

ANGELUS 

FIGHTING 

CHANCE 

How his school’s 

‘prayer force’ 

took on cancer — 

and won 

January 26, 2024 Vol. 9 No. 2

January 26, 2024 

Vol. 9 • No. 2 

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ON THE COVER 


High school student Atticus Maldonado smiles 

between classes at St. Pius X-St. Matthias Academy 

in Downey. On Page 10, Angelus contributor Steve 

Lowery has the incredible story of how Maldonado’s 

school community rallied behind him in prayer — and 

why his unlikely recovery from a rare cancer may not 

even be the story’s biggest miracle. 

THIS PAGE 


The St. Charles Choir performed a free concert at St. 

Charles Borromeo Church in North Hollywood on Jan. 

14 with a musical prayer for peace in the Holy Land. 

The choir was originally scheduled to perform in the 

Holy Land during its pilgrimage, but the Hamas’ attack 

on Israel on Oct. 7 canceled the trip. 

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Always Forward - newsletter.angelusnews.com

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 

14 

16 

18 

20 

24 

26 

28 

30 

After visiting Auschwitz, LA teacher brings her experience back to students 

Here are some 2024 California laws that Catholics should know about 

Imprisoned Nicaraguan bishop is freed, along with other jailed priests 

Infertility isn’t a Catholic problem. But are there Catholic answers? 

Charlie Camosy: What’s behind the ‘deplorable’ tragedy of surrogacy 

Robert Brennan asks: Am I the only one who doesn’t have a podcast? 

‘Poor Things’: Award season favorite mistakes provocative for interesting 

Heather King: LA Natural History Museum’s ‘100 Carats’ exhibit is a jewel 

January 26, 2024 • ANGELUS • 1

POPE WATCH 

Hoping hell is empty 

While a pope can resign, Pope 

Francis said it is not something he is 

thinking about or worrying about now. 

“It is neither a thought, nor a worry, 

nor even a desire; it is a possibility, 

open to all popes. But for the moment 

it is not at the center of my thoughts, 

my worries, my feelings,” he said in an 

interview on Italian television Jan. 14. 

“As long as I feel I still have the capacity 

to serve, I will go on,” the 87-yearold 

pope said. “When I can no longer 

do it, it will be time to think about it.” 

Francis made the comments in an 

interview lasting more than 50 minutes 

on the program “Che Tempo Che Fa” 

on Italy’s Nove channel. 

He also said that “in August I have 

to make a trip to Polynesia” and that 

sometime after that, he hopes to go to 

Argentina for the first time since his 

election in 2013. 

Francis was asked how he imagines 

hell if he really believes God forgives 

everyone who asks. 

“It’s difficult to imagine it,” the pope 

said. “What I would say is not a dogma 

of faith, but my personal thought: I like 

to think hell is empty; I hope it is.” 

The pontiff was also asked about his 

approval of Fiducia Supplicans (“Supplicating 

Trust”), the Dicastery for the 

Doctrine of the Faith’s declaration that 

a priest can offer informal blessings 

to gay couples as long as it is clear the 

Church is not equating their union to 

marriage. 

“The Lord blesses everyone who is 

capable of being baptized, that is, every 

person,” said Francis. “But then people 

must enter into conversation with the 

Lord’s blessing and see what path the 

Lord is proposing for them.” 

The pastoral work of the Church, he 

said, is to “take them by the hand and 

help them to go down that road, not 

condemn them from the start.” 

“I always tell confessors: Forgive 

everything and treat people as kindly 

as the Lord treats us. And then if you 

want to help people, you can talk and 

help them move on, but forgive everyone,” 

he said. 

Fabio Fazio, the program’s host, asked 

the pope about the phrase in the classic 

Act of Contrition: “I detest all my sins 

because of thy just punishments.” 

“Sin deserves punishment,” the 

pope said. But he said he believes 

the “literary expression” in the classic 

version of the prayer “is too harsh given 

God’s love. I prefer to say, ‘Because by 

sinning I have saddened your heart.’ ” 

Francis said that in his 54 years of 

priesthood, he’s only denied forgiveness 

in confession once, because of the 

person’s “hypocrisy.” 

“I’ve always forgiven everything even 

when I knew the person could fall 

again, but the Lord forgives us. He 

helps us not to fall or to fall less, but he 

always forgives.” 

Asked what worries him, Francis 

responded that “some things do scare 

me. Some things frighten me. For example, 

this escalation of war frightens 

me.” 

With nuclear weapons stockpiled, he 

said, one wonders “how will we end 

up, like Noah’s ark? That scares me, 

the capacity for self-destruction that 

humanity has today.” 

Reporting courtesy of Catholic News 

Service Rome bureau chief Cindy 

Wooden. 

Papal Prayer Intention for January: We pray that the Holy 

Spirit may help us to recognize the gift of different charisms 

within the Christian community and to discover the richness 

of different traditions and rituals in the Catholic Church. 

2 • ANGELUS • January 26, 2024

NEW WORLD OF FAITH 

ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ 

OneLife LA — 10 years on 

Ten years ago, we founded 

OneLife LA with the hope of 

starting a new conversation and 

encouraging a new way of thinking 

about the right to life and the cause of 

human dignity in our city and in our 

nation. 

At that time, Roe v. Wade was the 

law of the land. The lives of millions 

of unborn children were being taken 

in the womb each year as the result of 

that 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, 

which claimed to find a “right” to 

abortion in the federal constitution. 

Catholics and other concerned 

citizens had long taken to gathering 

on Jan. 22, the anniversary of Roe v. 

Wade, to peacefully march for an end 

to abortion and advocate for public 

policies that support women, children, 

and families. 

The pro-life movement is one of the 

most diverse and significant initiatives 

for nonviolent social change and civil 

rights in our nation’s history, and it 

is a coalition of conscience rooted in 

the prayers and sacrifices of countless 

ordinary Americans from every race 

and walk of life. 

Our aim with OneLife LA is to help 

support and broaden this movement 

by raising awareness of the beauty and 

dignity of every human life, from conception 

to natural death. We also want 

to recommit ourselves, as Catholics, to 

our duty to work for the beautiful Gospel 

vision of a culture of life and love. 

The Church has always defended the 

unborn child’s right to life, since the 

first century. 

We still believe that abortion is a 

grave evil and social injustice, because 

it attacks life itself and targets the 

weakest, most defenseless members of 

our community. We also believe, as the 

popes teach, that the right to life is the 

foundation of every other human right. 

Sadly, even beyond abortion, we see 

everywhere in our society the spreading 

of an anti-human spirit, a disregard 

for the sacredness of human life. 

In many ways, our society is forgetting 

the beautiful vision of Jesus and the 

Church. 

Jesus brought into the world a profound, 

radically new idea about the 

human person. 

He taught that everyone is created for 

a reason by the Father, who from before 

the world’s foundation knows us and 

loves us and has a plan and purpose for 

our lives. 

Every person, from the moment of 

conception, is created in God’s own 

image to be his own beloved son or 

daughter. 

Jesus told us that we are so precious 

that every hair on our head is numbered, 

and that God gives every child an 

angel in heaven, to guard and guide 

that child. 

And to show us how much we are 

loved, Jesus offered his own life on the 

cross for the redemption of all men 

and women, again, without exceptions. 

Even secular historians recognize that 

these Christian truths marked a “revolution” 

in human thought and shaped 

the foundation of Western civilization, 

changing how we think about women, 

children, the family, the poor, and 

more. 

These truths are the basis of our 

country’s founding belief that all men 

and women are created equal, with 

God-given rights and freedoms, and 

that the purpose of government is to 

safeguard these rights and freedoms. 

OneLife LA is about proclaiming 

these truths and restoring this vision of 

the human person in our society. 

America has changed in these past 10 

years. Thanks be to God, Roe v. Wade 

has been overturned. 

But abortion remains widespread and 

threats to unborn life have multiplied 

— through embryo research, “surrogate” 

motherhood, and a host of new 

“reproductive” technologies. 

We still face the challenge of building 

a society and economy that supports 

marriages and families, where every 

woman has the help she needs to bring 

her child into this world in love. 

More than that, we need to keep 

working for a society where no one is a 

stranger and there is no life that is not 

worth living, no life that can be left 

behind or thrown away. 

That means resisting the growing 

pressures for assisted suicide and 

insisting that the elderly and disabled 

be cared for with true compassion, as 

children of God. 

That means serving the homeless 

and the mentally ill, the immigrant, 

and the prisoner. It means confronting 

racial and economic injustices, and the 

crises of drugs, family breakdown, and 

human trafficking. 

We need to keep working for a society where no 

life can be left behind or thrown away. 

Ten years on, OneLife LA continues 

to be a dream worth living for. It is the 

dream of the world as God intends it 

to be. 

Pray for me and I will pray for you. 

And let us ask our holy Mary, the 

mother of life, to help us to build a 

world where every life is precious and 

sacred, where every person is treated 

as a child of God, and where we love 

every person as Jesus loves us. 


WORLD 

■ Lebanon: Bishops warn of larger war ‘time bomb’ 

As Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza continues, Lebanon’s Maronite Catholic 

bishops are sounding the alarm about the risk of a larger war in the region. 

National and international authorities must “take serious steps and adopt the 

necessary diplomatic and political measures to free Lebanon from this burden that 

weighs on its demography, its economy, and its balance,” wrote the bishops in a 

nine-point statement Jan. 3. 

The bishops focused primarily on conflicts along the Israel-Lebanese border, exacerbated 

by Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas, citing casualties and injuries in the 

region. They called on Israel to announce “a final ceasefire,” and for negotiations 

for a two-state solution in its ongoing war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. 

The bishops also warned about a yet-unfelt threat from Syrian refugees in the 

country. 

“The searches carried out by the military and security forces have shown that the 

displaced people are in possession of ammunition and sophisticated weapons,” 

the statement said. “This is a time bomb that poses a real threat to the Lebanese 

people.” 

A nation’s hunger — People displaced by fighting between the Syrian Democratic Forces and Islamic State 

militants are pictured in a file photo carrying boxes of food aid given by the United Nations World Food Program 

at a refugee camp in Ain Issa. The U.N. said it would end its main food assistance program in January across 

war-torn Syria, where more than 12 million people lack regular access to sufficient food. | OSV NEWS/ERIK DE 

CASTRO, REUTERS 

■ African bishops say no 

to new blessing rules, with 

Rome’s thumbs up 

The bishops of Africa announced they 

would not permit blessings for homosexual 

couples within the continent, in 

response to the Dec. 18 Vatican declaration 

allowing priests to bless couples 

in irregular marriages. 

Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo of the 

Democratic Republic of Congo, president 

of the Symposium of Episcopal 

Conferences of Africa and Madagascar, 

issued a Jan. 11 letter which described 

itself as a synthesis of all the African 

bishops’ opinions. 

He said that, while the bishops “have 

strongly reaffirmed their communion 

with Pope Francis,” they believe 

enabling the blessings proposed by 

the Vatican “cannot be carried out in 

Africa without exposing themselves to 

scandals.” 

“The African Bishops’ Conferences 

emphasize that people with homosexual 

tendencies must be treated with 

respect and dignity, while reminding 

them that unions of persons of the 

same-sex are contrary to the will of 

God and therefore cannot receive the 

blessing of the Church,” the letter read. 

Ambongo told Catholic News Agency 

that the letter “received the agreement” 

of Pope Francis and Cardinal Victor 

Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery 

for the Doctrine of the Faith. 

■ Knights to help renovate 

Rome’s most famous canopy 

After almost 400 years, the famous 100-foot-tall canopy 

standing over the main altar of St. Peter’s will be getting 

some much-needed repairs. 

Known as a baldachin, Baroque master Gian Lorenzo 

Bernini’s 17th-century masterpiece will be covered in scaffolding 

for an estimated 10 months. 

The project is estimated to cost 700,000 euros ($766,000) 

and will be entirely funded by the Knights of Columbus, 

which has funded 17 other Vatican restoration projects. 

“We’re in union with the Holy See, with the successor of 

St. Peter, and so these kinds of projects are very much in 

keeping with who we are and our mission,” Patrick Kelly, 

supreme knight, told Catholic News Service. 

Bernini’s baldacchino in St. Peter’s Basilica. | CNS/LOLO GOMEZ 


NATION 

■ White House to gut conscience protection rules 

The Biden administration announced plans to reverse a 2019 rule that would 

have enforced conscience protections for certain health care providers. 

The old Trump-era rule, which never took effect due to lawsuits, would have 

stripped federal funding from facilities that required workers to provide any service 

they objected to, such as abortions, contraception, gender-affirming care, and 

sterilization. 

The new Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rules are scheduled 

to go into effect March 11. The HHS said the old rules sometimes undermined 

“the balance Congress struck between safeguarding conscience rights and protecting 

access to health care.” 

Andrea Picciotti-Bayer, director of the Conscience Project, told Catholic News 

Agency that the change doesn’t change legal protections for health care workers 

with conscience, but makes them harder to enforce. 

“[The White House] is incapable of erasing those rights,” she said. “But it looks 

like they’re going to do all in their power to make people think that they don’t have 

them.” 

Martin Scorcese in the 2021 PBS show “The Oratorio: 

A Documentary with Martin Scorsese.” | PBS 

■ Scorsese sets his 

sights on Jesus (again) 

Martin Scorsese said he wants to get 

rid of the stigma around organized 

religion — so he’s making an 80-minute 

film about Jesus. 

“Right now, ‘religion,’ you say that 

word and everyone is up in arms 

because it’s failed in so many ways,” 

Scorsese told the Los Angeles Times. 

“But that doesn’t mean necessarily 

that the initial impulse was wrong. 

Let’s get back. Let’s just think about it. 

You may reject it. But it might make a 

difference in how you live your life.” 

The director said he has finished a 

screenplay, set mainly in the present 

day, with writing collaborator Kent 

Jones based on “A Life of Jesus” by 

novelist Shusaku Endo. This will be 

Scorsese’s second adaptation of an 

Endo book, following the 2016 film 

“Silence.” 

Scorsese directed the 1988 film “The 

Last Temptation of Christ,” which was 

heavily criticized by Catholics at the 

time for its depiction of Christ and 

rated “morally offensive” by the U.S. 

Conference of Catholic Bishops 

Scorsese cited meeting with Pope 

Francis in 2023 as the inspiration for 

the film, which is set to be shot this 

year. 

■ Illinois teen’s fundraiser to save 

Catholic school has unlikely success 

A Catholic grade school in Ingleside, Illinois, was brought back from the brink of 

insolvency thanks to one high-school-aged alumna. 

Susan Lutzke, a 17-year-old who attended St. Bede School as a child, learned 

last December that the school was facing closure due, in part, to decreased state 

funding. The next morning, she started a GoFundMe campaign. 

By Jan. 13, the campaign had raised $380,000 of the $400,000 needed to close the 

budget gap. 

“It’s pretty crazy. I don’t think I ever really expected it to get where it is,” Lutzke said. 

As of press time, neither the school nor the Archdiocese of Chicago had made any 

definitive statement about St. Bede’s fate. 

Opening a new chapter — Boston Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley greets Carlos Metola, postulator for the sainthood 

cause for Servant of God Carmen Hernández, co-initiator of the Neocatechumenal Way, at a Jan. 7 event in 

Boston to officially introduce the English translation of a book of Hernández’s diaries. Hernández’s sainthood 

cause was opened officially in December 2022. Metola confirmed that a medical committee is studying two 

reported medical “favors” attributed to Hernandez’s intercession that have occurred in the U.S. since her death in 

2016. | OSV NEWS/GREGORY L. TRACY, THE PILOT 


LOCAL 

Walking for change — The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet were among many other religious sisters, supporters, 

and advocates who participated at the 2024 LA Walk for Freedom to End Human Trafficking on Jan. 13. 

Blessed Sacrament Church in Hollywood hosted the event and was the starting location for the two-mile walk. | 

SISTERS OF ST JOSEPH OF CARONDELET 

■ Are you ready? LA Congress lineup announced 

A local filmmaker will headline the 2024 Los Angeles Religious Education Congress 

in Anaheim, set for Feb. 15-18. 

Congress keynote speaker Jessica Sarowitz is the founder of Miraflores Films and 

executive producer of the 2023 documentary, “With This Light,” on the life of 

Maria Rosa Leggol. 

This year’s workshop speaker lineup also includes Cardinal Robert McElroy, 

who will speak about the Synod on Synodality, Angelus contributor John L. Allen 

Jr., Archbishop Joseph Nguyen of Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, Auxiliary Bishop José 

Arturo Cepeda of Detroit, and Victims Assistance Ministry Coordinator Heather 

Banis for the Archdiocese of LA. 

Youth Day on Feb. 15 will include a workshop on “Gaming, God, & the Heroic 

Life” and another titled “Awkward: When Following God Gets Uncomfortable.” 

Get more information and register at recongress.org. 

■ Abbots in Orange 

County launch Catholic 

fundraising firm 

St. Michael’s Abbey in Orange 

County has launched a consulting 

and fundraising firm to help Catholic 

institutions make progress on their 

projects. 

The firm, the Abbey Group, will 

help religious organizations, educational 

institutions, and leaders with 

“ambitious apostolic endeavors and 

strong leadership but are in need of 

the financial and temporal resources 

to accomplish their objectives,” 

Gregory Clark, the strategic planning 

director of the Abbey Group, told 

Catholic News Agency. 

The idea for the firm came after the 

abbey’s success in raising more than 

$150 million for a capital campaign to 

build a new monastery. 

The Abbey Group doesn’t market its 

services but instead relies on word-ofmouth 

to allow for effectively vetting 

of the organizations and projects it 

pursues. The group said they take on 

only four projects at a time. 

“It is an authentically Catholic 

approach to fundraising — one that 

is desperately needed in our Church 

during this moment in her history,” 

said R. Shane Giblin, CEO and 

co-founder of the Abbey Group. 

Y 

■ USC Catholic students attend SEEK Conference in St. Louis 

USC students and local seminarians were 

among the thousands at the 2024 SEEK Conference 

in St. Louis, Missouri, this month. 

Organized by FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic 

University Students), SEEK featured guest 

speakers, daily prayer, Eucharistic adoration, 

workshops, and live music, plus additional 

ways to evangelize, including seminary formation, 

missionary opportunities, and volunteer 

work. 

Guest speakers at the Jan. 1-5 conference 

included Father Mike Schmitz, the host of the 

popular podcast “The Bible in a Year,” Tim 

Glemkowski, CEO of the National Eucharistic 

Revival, and Sister Mary Grace, SV. 

Next year’s event will be Jan. 1-5 in Salt Lake 

City, Utah. 

USC students from the Caruso Catholic Center with women religious at 

this year’s SEEK conference. | USC CARUSO CATHOLIC CENTER 


V 

IN OTHER WORDS... 

Letters to the Editor 

After Fiducia Supplicans, nothing may be the same 

In his article “Explaining to do” in the Jan. 12 issue, John L. Allen Jr. 

takes a cautious approach in explaining why Fiducia Supplicans may 

be less consequential than media reaction to it might seem. I disagree with this 

assessment. 

As Allen himself notes, the fact that the prefect of the Dicastery of the Doctrine 

of the Faith had to “clarify” that this document was not “heretical” or “blasphemous” 

is unprecedented, and is a clear sign that we have entered a new era in 

the Church. The Vatican can now issue purposely ambiguous declarations on 

doctrinal matters, issue multiple “clarifications” in the media, and get away with 

it. This would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. 

I still don’t know if Fiducia Supplicans is meant to lay the groundwork for 

changes to doctrine in the future, or if it’s Pope Francis’ way of trying to keep the 

Church together in a difficult time. But let’s not pretend the debate over same-sex 

blessings will go away quietly in the future. 

— James Stance, East Los Angeles 

What about the synod? 

I found it concerning that the end-of-2023 summary on AngelusNews.com (by 

OSV News) did not highlight the global Church synodal process, one of the most 

significant Church happenings since the Second Vatican Council. 

— Barbara Born 

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. 

Catholicism in color 

Amy Rodriguez is a digital artist from Pasadena. Rodriguez spoke with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles on how digital 

media can help connect Catholics with God, while not ignoring the in-person relationship with him. Watch Amy’s and 

all #LACatholicsStory videos at lacatholics.org/stories. | ADLA 

To view this video 

and others, visit 

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. 

“This is John Steinbeck, 

‘Grapes of Wrath,’ stuff.” 

~ Father Dennis Kriz, pastor of St. Philip Benizi 

Church in Fullerton, in a Jan. 11 Orange County 

Register article on three Catholic churches starting 

a mini-loan program to keep people from going 

homeless. 

“That is our mission: to 

give people a taste of the 

Gospel even in secular 

landscapes.” 

~ Msgr. Georg Austen of the German Catholic 

charity group “Bonifatiuswerk,” which supported 

the December 2023 opening of the northernmost 

Trappist monastery church in the world in Norway, 

in a Jan. 13 National Catholic Register article. 

“What the researchers 

need to figure out is where 

stupidity is harmful.” 

~ Selma Šabanović, Indiana University Bloomington 

roboticist, in a Jan. 4 Wired article on designing 

robots to help people with dementia. 

“It’s not an exaggeration to 

say behavior on the road 

today is the worst I’ve ever 

seen.” 

~ Capt. Michael Brown, a state police district 

commander in Michigan, in a Jan. 10 New York 

Times article on why American drivers are so 

deadly. 

“Even if I have struggled 

with these sins for years, 

it is never too late to break 

free from them, and even if 

I fall, Jesus will keep loving 

me through it.” 

~ Elizabeth Gedra, a sophomore at Auburn 

University, in an interview with “The Pillar” on her 

experience at the FOCUS SEEK 2024 conference in 

St. Louis this month. 


IN EXILE 

FATHER RONALD ROLHEISER, OMI 

Oblate of Mary Immaculate Father 

Ronald Rolheiser is a spiritual 

writer; ronrolheiser.com 

Piety and humor 

Piety is the enemy of humor, at 

least whenever something less 

than piety is masquerading as 

piety. Here’s an example: I once lived 

in community with an overly serious 

man who, after someone would tell 

a colorful joke, would bring us back 

to earth with the question, “Would 

you tell a joke like that in front of the 

Blessed Sacrament?” That not only 

deflated the joke and its teller, but it 

also took the oxygen out of the room. 

There’s a response I would have 

liked to have given to his question, 

namely, a joke my Oblate novice 

master used to tell, one whose irony 

exposes false piety. The joke runs 

this way: A young woman was getting 

married and her family could not 

afford a venue for a reception for the 

wedding. The parish priest generously 

offered them the foyer at the 

entrance of the church, telling them 

they could bring in a cake and have 

a reception there. The father of the 

bride asked whether they might also 

bring in some liquor. “Absolutely 

not,” the priest replied, “you can’t 

drink liquor in a church!” “But,” protested 

the bride’s father, “Jesus drank 

wine at the wedding feast of Cana.” 

“But not in front of the Blessed Sacrament!” 

replied the priest. 

Admittedly, humor can be impious, 

crass, offensive, dirty, but whenever 

that’s the case the fault normally lies 

more in the aesthetics than in the 

content of the joke. A joke isn’t offensive 

because it is about sex or religion 

or any other area we surround with 

sacredness. 

Humor is offensive when it crosses 

a line in terms of respect, taste, and 

aesthetics. Humor is offensive when 

it is bad art. Bad art crosses a line in 

terms of respect, either vis-à-vis its 

audience or its subject matter. What 

can make a joke offensive or dirty is 

when it is told, or how it is told, or to 

whom it is told, or the tone in which 

it is told, or lack of sensitivity to what 

is being told, or the color of the 

language as it is being told. Whether 

or not it can be told before the 

Blessed Sacrament isn’t a criterion. 

If a joke shouldn’t be told in front of 

the Blessed Sacrament it shouldn’t be 

told in front of anyone. There aren’t 

two standards of offensiveness. 

Still, bad piety is the enemy of 

humor. It’s also the enemy of robust, 

earthy living. But, that is only the 

case for bad piety, not genuine piety. 

Genuine piety is one of the fruits 

of the Holy Spirit and is a healthy 

reverence before all of life. But it’s 

a reverence that, while healthily 

respectful, is not offended by humor 

(even robust, earthy humor) providing 

the humor isn’t aesthetically 

offensive — akin to nudity, which 

can be healthy in art but offensive in 

pornography. 

False sensitivity that masks itself 

as piety also strips all spirituality of 

humor, save for the most pious kind. 

In doing that, in effect, it makes Jesus, 

Mary, and the saints humorless, 

and thus less than fully human and 

healthy. One of our mentors at our 

Oblate novitiate told us young novices 

that there is not a single incident 

reported in Scripture of Jesus ever 

laughing. He told us this to dampen 

our natural, youthful, rambunctious 

energy, as if this was somehow a 

hindrance to being religious. 

Humorous energy is not a hindrance 

to being religious. To the 

contrary. Jesus is the paragon of all 

that is healthily human, and he, no 

doubt, was a fully healthy, robust, 

delightful human person, and none 

of those words (healthy, robust, 

delightful) would apply to him if he 

hadn’t had a healthy, indeed earthy, 

sense of humor. 

For 15 years I taught a course 

entitled The Theology of God to 

seminarians and others preparing 

for ministry. I would try to cover all 

the required bases asked for in the 

curriculum — biblical revelation, 

patristic insights, normative Church 

teachings, and speculative views from 

contemporary theologians. But, inside 

all of this, like a recurring theme 

in an opera, I would tell the students 

this: In all your preaching and teaching 

and pastoral practices, whatever 

else, try not to make God look stupid. 

Try not to make God look unintelligent, 

tribal, petty, rigid, nationalistic, 

angry, or fearful. 

Every homily, every theological 

teaching, every ecclesial practice, 

and every pastoral practice ultimately 

reflects an image of God whether 

we want it to or not. And if there is 

something less than healthy in our 

preaching or pastoral practices, the 

God who underwrites it will also 

appear as unhealthy. A healthy God 

does not undergird an unhealthy theology, 

ecclesiology, or anthropology. 

Hence, if we teach a Jesus who is 

humorless, who takes offense at the 

earthiness of life, who is uncomfortable 

hearing the word sex, who 

flinches at colorful language, and 

who is afraid to smile and chuckle at 

irony, wit, and humor, we make Jesus 

appear as rigid and uptight, a prude, 

and not the person you want to be 

beside at table. 


THE MIRACLE ON 

GARDENDALE STREET 

A year ago, Atticus Maldonado was facing stage 4 cancer and low odds 

of survival. Then his school community’s ‘prayer force’ stepped in. 

BY STEVE LOWERY 

Atticus Maldonado with St. Pius X-St. Matthias Academy 

president Christian De Larkin (left) and school principal Claudia 

Rodarte during his first week back at school this month 

since his cancer diagnosis. | VICTOR ALEMÁN 


Miracles are nice but, truth be 

told, all Atticus Maldonado 

really wanted for Christmas 

was to be just another kid. 

Though it’s wonderful to know he’s 

been on so many people’s minds — 

and in their prayers — now all he wants 

is to blend back into the St. Pius X-St. 

Matthias Academy (PMA) community 

that helped to sustain him and his 

family for more than a year. 

“I’m good with not being in the 

spotlight,” he said. “I’d like to be just a 

regular student again.” 

In December 2022, Maldonado was 

diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a 

rare and unusually aggressive form of 

cancer of the soft tissue. 

What was more, and worse, doctors 

told him that he was at stage 4 of the 

disease, a stage with about a 20% rate of 

survival. 

The news of his illness spread quickly 

through the tightknit community of St. 

Pius X-St. Matthias in Downey. Masses 

were offered for his health. Friends 

made visits. Gifts were given. And an 

unknowable amount of time was spent 

thinking about him, his family, and 

what their struggle meant for the rest 

of us. 

In that time, he went from the sweet 

kid who loved baseball, Hot Wheels, 

and being an altar server, to a young 

man a whole lot of people were praying 

for, rooting for, and shedding tears for. 

His fight was theirs now. 

“There were moments when I was so 

angry about why this happened to my 

child, that I couldn’t pray,” his mother 

Evelyn Ochoa said. “And when I 

couldn’t pray for my own child, they 

did. This tribe that came together for 

us. I birthed him but, through that 

time, he was ours.” 

Anna Granados, in many ways the 

leader of that tribe, said that whenever 

the prayer group she helped found 

would turn their attention to Maldonado, 

“he became everybody’s kid.” 

Fitting since, before his diagnosis, 

Maldonado was as typical a Catholic 

kid as one could imagine — save for an 

exceptionally developed level of faith. 

Evelyn admitted her son’s faith has 

“always been greater than mine,” and 

said that when informed of his cancer 

diagnosis “it felt like my whole world 

came tumbling down. All I had was 

questions, no answers. You know, why? 

Why my kid? He’s such a good kid.” 

And yet, moments after the diagnosis, 

she looked at her son to find him 

smiling, seemingly as unconcerned as 

if he’d just been diagnosed with a cold. 

Confused, she asked him how he was 

feeling to which he replied, “OK. God 

loves me.” 

Around the same time, Granados had 

helped start the Parents in Prayer group 

Maldonado works during 

class. | VICTOR ALEMÁN 

at PMA, having felt a calling from the 

Blessed Virgin Mary to do so. 

“These times are hard for kids, for 

our families,” she said. “The rosary is a 

weapon for these times. Our youth is 

going through so much and we felt the 

need to help out, especially because we 

are so close here.” 

With a student population that hovers 

around 500, PMA is the kind of place 

where students know not just one 

another, but one another’s families, 

too. Many arrive in packs from local 

parishes and have known one another 

since they were young children. Not 

only is Maldonado friends with Anna’s 

kids, but her husband, Jaime, coached 

him in sports at a local park. 

The prayer group would always dedicate 

the first mystery of the rosary to 

Maldonado. Anna, whose own mother 

was battling cancer, was always there, 

rain or shine, along with about 17 core 

members of the group. Sometimes 

they were joined by Evelyn, who found 

herself both strengthened and overwhelmed 

by the group’s devotion to her 

son and family. 

“Many of these women were just 

people I’d said hello to and now they 

had become a force, a prayer force,” 

she said. “Praying for my son like it was 

their son.” 

None of which surprised PMA’s president, 

Christian De Larkin. Along with 

Parents in Prayer, a student campaign 

to send Maldonado direct messages got 

underway so that he knew he had not 

been forgotten. When it was mentioned 

how much he missed baseball, he was 

invited to sit in the dugout during a 

PMA game. When it was discovered 

that he was a serious collector of Hot 

Wheel cars, Christine Godoy, part of 

the prayer force and whose daughter 

Eva is a classmate of Maldonado, 

mentioned that her husband actually 

worked for Hot Wheels. 

“So he put together this really cool 

collection of limited edition cars and 

we took it over to Atticus and when he 

saw what it was he almost burst into 

tears,” De Larkin said. “This is what 


Maldonado with his mother, Evelyn 

Ochoa, and school chaplain Father 

Sam Ward at a special school Mass 

last September for Childhood Cancer 

Awareness Month. | SEMAJ SANDERS 

you sign up for in Catholic education. 

“You show how much you love each 

other, the whole person, including 

the spiritual, in tough times and good. 

That’s what this wonderful group of 

people did, created all these moments 

of grace as Atticus went through this 

crazy time.” 

And during that crazy time, Atticus 

remained pretty much Atticus. Evelyn 

described him cracking jokes throughout 

the process, “making me laugh 

while he’s vomiting from the chemo,” 

her son sustained by a faith she said she 

wishes she could “bottle and drink from 

every day.” 

His faith was such that he believed 

he could not only survive but serve 

through his illness. He volunteered to 

be part of a rhabdomyosarcoma study. 

Though his mom thought he had 

enough to worry about just getting better, 

the kid who wanted to be an altar 

server since he was 7, and had more 

recently taken to training younger servers 

at his home parish of St. Gertrude 

Church in Bell Gardens, said he was 

just following a divine plan for him. 

“I felt maybe this was a sign from 

God, a way I could help others so 

that another kid wouldn’t have to go 

through what I did,” he said. “This can 

help a kid from experiencing the same 

speed bump I did, maybe save another 

kid’s life.” 

Evelyn showed up at the PMA Christmas 

Tree Lighting ceremony Dec. 1, 

2023, to share the news that her son 

was now cancer-free and was now in 

the maintenance phase of treatment, 

which will continue for another six 

months. She thanked all those who 

did everything they could to make that 

happen. Some people started calling it 

the Miracle on Gardendale Street, the 

street the school is located on. 

Maldonado, of course, was just happy 

it meant that he could go back to 

school. He did so for the first time in 

a long while on Jan. 8, as PMA went 

back after Christmas break. He said he 

was a little nervous about being able to 

keep up with school and homework, 

but by the end of the day felt like he 

was back in the flow of things. 

“He arrived in uniform wearing a 

beanie to cover his head and joined us 

for our morning assembly,” De Larkin 

said. “There he sat among his peers in 

the junior section of the 

gym and began his first 

day of school as a normal 

student. It was a beautiful 

sight to see.” 

Maldonado agreed it was 

nice. He said he thought 

there might be a lot of 

questions from classmates 

about what he’d gone 

through, but none ever 

came. 

“No one really asked me. 

It was pretty good to not 

talk about it.” 

So perhaps he can find his way back 

to normal sooner than later, though 

always with a faith his mother calls “out 

of this world,” a faith that combines the 

innocence of a child with the strength 

of a survivor. 

“I guess I just feel like if something 

bad happens, I’m going to get through 

it,” he said. “It’s just a speed bump. Me 

and God, I feel like we have a pretty 

good connection.” 

Steve Lowery is a veteran journalist 

who has written for the Los Angeles 

Times, the Los Angeles Daily News, 

the Press-Telegram, New Times LA, the 

District, Long Beach Post, and the OC 

Weekly. 

Maldonado with friends at St. Pius X-St. Matthias Academy earlier this month. | VICTOR ALEMÁN 


Andi ium endam fuga. Nemperiora 

qui aceptas pellitatatur alit 

eatet eumquis cipiet pos mo 

omnim rem. Xero tem invendantio 

estium ut officto modipsanis ex elit, 

omnimusda aciatur, conecabo. Bor as 

ercium re debitis nate erit abo. Nemperfero 

blaborum eres siminci andicit 

landenimolut optatus minciti aerata 

non et harchitatium int in res eum 

fuga. Itature pror acepe volest aliciet 

optatatecto to magniet expelibus sit 

estiorumquid quunt aborupti sum, 

volorepudi cori tempori tatur, omnis 

sunt volent. 

Lorehenihit, que nem re, ipsaepr 

atibus voluptat a ped que dit as sunt ea 

quam fugiam apient facipsae iureium, 

namusam, experspel id quam alisci 

occum quos aut etus, to maioriatemo 

Credit 


ABSORBING AUSCHWITZ 

After seeing the Holocaust site close-up, an 

LA-area Catholic school teacher is bringing her 

experience back to students. 

Michelle Herrera poses outside of 

the Polin Museum of the History of 

Polish Jews in Warsaw, Poland, during 

a trip as part of the Auschwitz Legacy 

Fellowship. | MICHELLE HERRERA 

BY NATALIE ROMANO 

Catholic school teacher Michelle 

Herrera never had a 

Jewish friend, never stepped 

inside a Jewish synagogue, and never 

learned much about the Jewish faith. 

But after noticing a rise in antisemitism 

in recent years, Herrera thought 

it was time to better inform herself 

and her students. So she joined the 

Auschwitz Legacy Fellowship, a 

unique program that gives American 

teachers academic-focused tours of 

the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial 

and Museum in Poland. Herrera knew 

seeing the concentration and extermination 

camps was going to be difficult, 

but it was tougher than expected. 

“That first night I prayed the most,” 

she said. “I wasn’t ready for the emotions 

that came up … nothing can 

prepare you for it.” 

The Auschwitz Legacy Fellowship 

is a yearlong intensive education on 

the Holocaust, antisemitism, and 

Auschwitz-Birkenau, the network of 

Nazi-run camps where more than 

1 million people, mostly Jews, were 

murdered. The Auschwitz-Birkenau 

Memorial Foundation (ABMF) 

launched the initiative in 2022 so 

younger generations would be taught 

not only the history of the Holocaust 

but its social relevance today. 

This year, the ABMF, with partners 

like Holocaust Museum LA, invited 

teachers from California to apply to 

the fully funded program. It includes 

in-person and online classes as well as 

a weeklong tour of historical sites in 

Poland. Herrera, who teaches theology 

at Ramona Convent Secondary 

School in Alhambra, was one of 20 

educators chosen from Southern California 

and the only Catholic school 

teacher. 

“I felt a certain responsibility with 

that,” Herrera said. “I thought about 

what this history teaches us about 


our faith and how do we enter the 

conversation. 

“I wanted to receive what I was there 

for.” 

Herrera visited Poland in 2016 for 

World Youth Day, but the mood of 

this trip was quite different. As soon 

as she arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 

she felt a “heaviness” in the air. Rain 

and gray skies added to the gloominess. 

The fellows, accompanied by 

representatives like Sarah Klein from 

Holocaust Museum LA, toured prisoner 

barracks and what remains of the 

deadly gas chambers. Herrera had no 

words for the latter except to say she is 

now a “witness” to atrocity. 

Especially chilling, she said, were the 

exhibits of personal items seized from 

prisoners — including shoes, eyeglasses, 

and even a collection of hair that 

had been removed to curb the spread 

of lice. 

“Seeing the amount of hair that was 

shaved off people’s heads — that alone 

got me,” said Herrera. “I just had to 

walk out alone under my umbrella. 

I just needed a moment to gather 

myself.” 

Although nothing could erase those 

cruelties from her mind, Herrera 

said she found solace in the courage 

shown by prisoners like St. Maximilian 

Kolbe. In 1941, the Catholic priest 

was arrested for hiding Jews from the 

Nazis, and while serving his sentence 

in Auschwitz-Birkenau, he willingly 

accepted another prisoner’s death sentence 

so that man could live. Decades 

later, Polish-born St. Pope John Paul II 

placed a paschal candle in St. Kolbe’s 

prison cell. 

“That was cool to get to see with my 

own eyes,” Herrera said. “I didn’t know 

the candle was still there. I think I 

needed that in the midst of so much 

darkness and intensity.” 

The Montebello native said even 

though the experience was deeply 

emotional, she never forgot why she 

was there: her students. 

“My teacher hat was definitely on,” 

Herrera said. “I took notes, tried to put 

it all together for myself, and think 

about how I’m going to teach this.” 

After the tour, Auschwitz Legacy 

Fellows were given school lesson plans 

on how to explain the Nazis’ brutality 

and the antisemitism that led to it. 

Herrera takes on those difficult topics 

in her theology classes and allows her 

students to weigh in. 

“That’s what stuck out to me, how 

things evolve over time,” said Iana Anikalumibao, 

a sophomore at Ramona. 

“(Bias) doesn’t just drop out of the sky. 

We should be spreading peace instead 

of blind hate.” 

Herrera also shares with her students 

how imprisoned Jews secretly drew 

pictures, wrote poems, and documented 

what was happening to them. The 

students say hearing those accounts 

made the Holocaust more real. 

“You could really connect with their 

stories,” said Madelyn Macias, a sophomore 

at Ramona. “It wasn’t just numbers 

you would read in a textbook. You 

could tell they were real people.” 

Herrera, a product of Catholic 

schools herself, has been teaching for 

about five years at Ramona, an all-girls 

high school sponsored by the Sisters 

of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. 

She’s also the campus minister. 

Ramona officials say by participating 

in the Auschwitz Legacy Fellowship, 

Herrera is opening her students’ eyes, 

and others’ too. 

“Michelle is very committed to what 

she’s doing here, particularly in the 

theology department,” said Sister 

Kathleen Callaway, SNJM, president 

of Ramona. “She took the initiative to 

do this, to enrich her experience as a 

teacher. I also hope some of the other 

participants were enriched by having 

her Catholic perspective.” 

Herrera and others involved with 

the Auschwitz Legacy Fellowship 

are closely following 

the ongoing conflict 

between Israel and 

Hamas militants in 

Gaza. 

The Oct. 7 attack on 

Israel and the retaliatory 

strikes in Gaza 

have given rise to hate 

crimes in the United 

States with both Jews 

and Muslims being 

targeted. Klein noted 

the current crisis and 

its fallout are exactly 

why the fellowship 

program exists. 

“I want to make it 

clear that hatred for American Jews is 

never OK and blaming them for the 

activity of the Israeli government is an 

old anti-Jewish trope,” said Klein, senior 

manager of museum education at 

Holocaust Museum LA. “The Jewish 

people persevere, not only persevere 

but thrive. A lot of that, I think, comes 

from remembering who we are, our 

past, and then using that to create a 

better future so we can live in peace 

and safety.” 

As an Auschwitz Legacy Fellow and a 

Catholic, Herrera feels called to help 

with that effort. 

“I feel a change and a transition from 

the experience,” Herrera said. “As 

people of faith, we are called to be 

witnesses, allies, and advocates when 

we see hate rising, especially with 

our Jewish brothers and sisters with 

whom we share a common spiritual 

heritage.” 

Herrera also wants to empower her 

students to act as “bridge builders” 

who can change the world for the 

better. 

“I feel called to invest into this next 

generation of faith leaders and particularly 

here at Ramona, young female 

faith leaders,” said Herrera. “I really 

love my students.” 

Natalie Romano is a freelance writer 

for Angelus and the Inland Catholic 

Byte, the news website of the Diocese of 

San Bernardino. 

Madelyn Macias, left, and Iana Anikalumibao are both 

sophomores at Ramona Convent Secondary School 

in Alhambra, where Michelle Herrera is helping teach 

her students about the Holocaust and antisemitism. | 

VERONICA FERNANDEZ 


The California State Capitol 

building. | SHUTTERSTOCK 

LETTERS OF THE LAW 

Many new California laws for 2024 will leave Catholics 

in the state either satisfied or concerned. 

BY ANGELUS STAFF 

With 2024 underway, several 

new California laws have 

taken effect — or will soon 

— that would be of interest to Catholic 

residents in the state and beyond. 

Here are just some of the hundreds 

of laws being put into action in 2024. 

Read or search for all bills at leginfo. 

legislature.ca.gov. 

ABORTION 

Several bills related to abortion were 

signed into law by California Gov. 

Gavin Newsom. Said Newsom: “The 

right to an abortion is enshrined in 

California’s Constitution. We will 

continue to protect women and health 

care workers who are seeking and 

providing basic care.” 

SB 345: Crafted by state Democrat 

Sen. Nancy Skinner, this law would 

protect health care professionals who 

perform or provide abortions and 

gender-affirming care in California 

from punishment by states where these 

procedures are illegal. The bill would 

also safeguard any out-of-state patients 

who came to California to receive this 

care. 

AB 352: The bill would require 

companies and institutions that 

manage electronic health records from 

protecting, separating, and shielding a 

patient’s data as it relates to abortion, 

contraceptives, and gender-affirming 

care. The bill, authored by state 

Democrat Assemblywoman Rebecca 

Bauer-Kahan, would also prohibit 

healthcare providers from releasing 

medical information that would identify 

someone who received those specific 

services. Companies need to comply 

by July 1. 

SB 385: State Senate President Pro 

Tem Democrat Toni Atkins generated 

this bill that would allow physician 

assistants to be trained beyond their 

normal instruction to perform certain 

abortions without the supervision of a 

physician or surgeon. The goal of the 

bill is to expand the number of health 

care providers who have the ability to 

perform abortions. 

HEALTH 

Several bills increased health care 

services and health-related leave for all 

California residents, including more 

for undocumented immigrants. Said 

Newsom: “We’re making it known that 

the health and well-being of workers 

and their families is of the utmost importance 

for California’s future.” 

Expanding Medi-Cal to immigrants: 

With this new bill, California made 

history, becoming the first state in the 

U.S. to provide health care coverage 

to undocumented immigrants of all 


ages. The state had already provided 

coverage to those under 26 years old 

and for immigrants over 50. This law 

is expected to cost $4 billion annually, 

but a new bill has already been 

introduced attempting to repeal it. The 

move brings California closer to its 

goal of providing health care coverage 

to all of its residents. 

SB 616: California Democrat Sen. 

Lena Gonzales initiated this bill that 

would guarantee eligible workers in 

the state receive at least five days of 

paid sick leave. After five days, employers 

can control how many more days 

the employee could accrue. The new 

law increased the minimum number 

of sick days from the three that were 

approved in 2015. “Too many folks are 

still having to choose between skipping 

a day’s pay and taking care of themselves 

or their family members when 

they get sick,” Newsom said. 

SB 848: Under this new law, an employee 

would be granted up to five days 

of leave for a “reproductive loss,” which 

includes miscarriages, in vitro fertilization, 

or failed adoption or surrogacy. 

The bill, sponsored by state Democrat 

Sen. Susan Rubio, would apply to both 

parents. 

HOUSING 

SB 4: It’s no secret that California 

has continually fallen short in creating 

housing for its growing population, 

especially affordable housing. Several 

bills were passed in the latest legislative 

session meant to spur housing construction 

by removing some of the red 

tape. SB 4, dubbed the “Yes in God’s 

Backyard” bill, is one of those laws, 

allowing religious institutions, colleges, 

and universities to build affordable 

housing on their land without having 

to go through lengthy rezoning processes 

and environmental reviews. 

A church, for example, could have 

unused land that it could develop for 

affordable housing, and would have 

the ability to build the project “by 

right” — without needing a discretionary 

approval process. 

The bill does have restrictions on affordable 

housing — requiring a 55-year 

commitment for rentals and a 45-year 

commitment on owned units — and 

distance from industrial or refinery 

sites. 

“The era of saying no to housing is 

coming to an end,” said state Democrat 

Sen. Scott Wiener, who authored 

the bill. “We’ve been planting seeds 

for years to get California to a brighter 

housing future.” 

A pro-abortion rally in downtown 

Los Angeles on May 14, 

2022. | SHUTTERSTOCK 

LGBT 

California continues to introduce 

policies for those who identify as 

“LGBT” that Newsom said “will help 

protect vulnerable youth, promote 

acceptance, and create more supportive 

environments in our schools and 

communities.” 

AB 5: Dubbed the “Safe and Supportive 

Schools Act,” state Democrat 

Assemblyman Rick Zbur authored this 

bill, which would require the California 

Board of Education to develop an 

online training curriculum to support 

LGBT cultural competency training 

for teachers and other certificated 

employees, starting with the 2025–26 

school year. At least one hour of 

training would be required annually for 

teachers of students in grades 7-12. 

SB 760: Introduced by state Democrat 

Sen. Josh Newman, this law would 

require schools to provide at least one 

gender-neutral bathroom by July 1, 

2026. The law applies to all public 

and private schools with students in 

grades 1-12. The bill does not apply to 

transitional kindergarten or kindergarten 

classes. 

MISCELLANEOUS 

SB 2: Controversial, and already challenged 

in court, the law would prohibit 

someone from carrying a firearm into 

specific locations, including places of 

worship, schools, and other “sensitive 

areas.” The law, authored by state 

Democrat Sen. Anthony Portantino, 

would also amend several requirements 

to allow a person to carry a concealed 

firearm. A federal appeals court 

had allowed for the law to go into effect 

on Jan. 1, but a special appellate panel 

blocked it on Jan. 6 until the case can 

be heard again in April. Beyond the 

law, Newsom has previously called for 

the U.S. Constitution to be amended 

to include gun safety measures. 

AB 645: Introduced by state Democrat 

Assembly Members Laura Friedman 

and Phil Ting, this bill allows 

six California cities — including Los 

Angeles, Glendale, and Long Beach 

— to install “speed cameras” near 

schools or areas where high-velocity 

incidents have occurred. Drivers will 

receive a warning in the first 60 days of 

installing the cameras and then fines 

ranging from $50-$500 will be assessed 

depending on how far over the speed 

limit. The law is a pilot program that 

will last until Jan. 1, 2032. 


FREE BUT 

IN EXILE 

In a surprise 

development, a 

Nicaraguan bishop 

and several other 

churchmen were 

sent to Rome thanks 

to some behindthe-scenes 

Vatican 

diplomacy. 

BY DAVID AGREN 

MEXICO CITY (OSV News) 

— Bishop Rolando Álvarez 

of Matagalpa was released 

from prison after more than 500 days 

of detention and sent into exile along 

with 18 imprisoned churchmen as the 

Nicaraguan government expelled its 

most prominent critic, whose presence 

behind bars bore witness to the 

Sandinista regime’s descent into totalitarianism, 

along with its unrelenting 

persecution of the Catholic Church. 

Vatican News confirmed Jan. 14 that 

with the exception of one priest who 

remained in Venezuela, all released 

priests, including Álvarez and Bishop 

Isidoro Mora of Siuna, have arrived in 

Rome “in the last few hours” and are 

“guests of the Holy See.” 

Photographs circulated on X, 

formerly Twitter, showed the two 

freed bishops concelebrating Mass in 

Rome and the churchmen meeting 

with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican 

secretary of state. 

Independent Nicaraguan media 

reported Jan. 14 that the churchmen 

had departed Nicaragua on a flight for 

Rome after the government reached 

an agreement with the Vatican for 

their release and exile. Auxiliary 

Bishop Silvio José Báez of Managua 

— who left the country in 2019 

— also confirmed the news at his 

weekly Mass in Miami, and was visibly 

moved. 

“This is the power of the people of 

God’s prayers,” he said. “The criminal 

Sandinista dictatorship of [President] 

Daniel Ortega has not been able to 

defeat the power of God.” 

The Nicaraguan government acknowledged 

the churchmen’s release 

in a Jan. 14 statement, which “deeply 

thanked” Pope Francis and Parolin 

“for the very respectful and discreet 

coordination carried out to make possible 

the Vatican trip of two bishops, 

15 priests, and two seminarians.” 

The statement continued: “They 

have been received by Vatican authorities, 

in compliance with agreements of 

good faith and goodwill, which seek to 

promote understanding and improve 

Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa 

walks outside a Catholic church in Managua in 2022. 

Álvarez, who had been the Nicaraguan government’s 

most prominent critic, was flown to Rome along with 

18 other imprisoned churchmen on Jan. 14. | OSV 

NEWS/MAYNOR VALENZUELA, REUTERS 

communication between the Holy See 

and Nicaragua, for peace and good.” 

The statement struck an unusually 

respectful tone — far from the 

government’s frequent accusations of 

terrorism and coup mongering against 

Church leaders, who attempted to 

unsuccessfully facilitate a national 

dialogue after mass protests erupted 

demanding Ortega’s ouster. The Nicaraguan 

government also severed relations 

with the Vatican and expelled 

the nuncio, Archbishop Waldemar 

Stanislaw Sommertag, in 2022. The 

Vatican subsequently closed its embassy 

in March 2023. 

“We recognize the chance for direct, 


Photos circulated on social media showed Bishop Rolando Álvarez and Bishop Isidoro Mora 

celebrating Mass and being greeted by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin. | X.COM 

prudent, and very serious dialogue, a 

responsible and careful dialogue,” the 

government statement said. 

The release of 19 churchmen — including 

Mora and more than a dozen 

priests detained during a wave of 

detentions over the Christmas period 

— provoked reactions of joy among 

Nicaraguans in exile, along with statements 

of defiance. 

“ ‘Get up quickly.’ The chains fell 

from his wrists,” Báez said on X, quoting 

Acts 12:7. 

“With great joy, I thank God that my 

brother bishops, priests, and seminarians 

are out of prison. Justice has 

triumphed. The power of the prayer of 

God’s people has been displayed.” 

Ambassador Brian A. Nichols, assistant 

secretary for Western Hemisphere 

Affairs in the U.S. Department of 

State, said on X that the regime “expelled 

19 unjustly detained Catholic 

clergy, including Álvarez.” 

“We are reassured to see the release 

of these religious leaders. All people 

have the right to worship at home and 

abroad. We continue to call for the 

release of all those unjustly detained 

and the restoration of the fundamental 

freedoms of the Nicaraguan people,” 

Nichols emphasized. 

Álvarez has become the face of resistance 

in Nicaragua, raising his voice 

against the increasing intolerance of 

the Sandinista regime, which has subdued 

the business community, forced 

the free press out of the country, and 

attempted to control the Catholic 

Church. 

The bishop spent more than 500 days 

in custody after police arrested him in 

August 2022 during a pre-dawn raid 

on his diocesan curia, where he had 

been holed up protesting the seizure 

of Catholic media outlets. In February 

2023, he was sentenced to 26 years in 

prison on charges of conspiracy and 

spreading false information — one day 

after he refused to leave the country. 

Álvarez refused subsequent attempts 

at exiling him — as expulsion or refusing 

priests reentry to the country after 

traveling abroad became a common 

tactic. 

“The dictatorship feels safer or more 

comfortable with religious people 

outside the country than inside the 

country,” Arturo McFields Yescas, a 

former Nicaraguan diplomat in exile, 

told OSV News. 

“When they are inside [the country] 

they consider them a threat, a danger, 

a counterweight to their official 

narrative. And when they are outside, 

[the regime] feels that they no longer 

have that critical voice, or that voice of 

truth, which spoke to the people and 

people listened to,” he said. 

David Agren writes for OSV News 

from Mexico City. 

What’s next? 

The release and exile of Bishop Rolando Álvarez and 

18 other churchmen from Nicaragua to Rome was 

a welcome surprise for those who have been praying 

and pleading for his release. 

But the news has done little to relax concerns about violations 

against religious freedom in the country, and left the 

Catholic Church there in a weakened state. 

Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa reported Jan. 15 that 

among those exiled by the Ortega government were two 

priests from Álvarez’s Diocese of Matagalpa, who had been 

kidnapped by police over the Christmas holidays, later 

released, and then again detained and taken to Managua’s 

airport to be flown away with the other exiles. 

“Matagalpa is left without ecclesiastical authorities,” 

tweeted Nicaraguan human rights activist Yader Morazan 

in response to the news. 

The government continues to threaten priests who speak 

out publicly against the Ortega regime with arrest or expulsion. 

There are still believed to be several Catholic priests 

in custody, and an estimated 15% of Nicaragua’s Catholic 

clergy are believed to be in exile. 

— Pablo Kay 


SHUTTERSTOCK 

SEARCHING IN THE DESERT 

Infertility isn’t a 

Catholic problem. But 

as it becomes more 

common, a growing 

number of couples are 

turning to the Church 

for help. 

BY ELISE URENECK 

Cassie Taylor and her husband, 

Michael, were married in 

2016. She was 27 and in the 

midst of a reversion to the faith; her 

husband, 31, had discerned out of 

religious life because he felt a strong 

desire to be a husband and father. 

Two years into marriage, Cassie was 

diagnosed with ovarian and uterine 

cancer and had to undergo a hysterectomy. 

“From the time we found out I was 

sick to the time of the surgery, it was 

only three months,” Cassie remembered. 

“We had to come to terms very 

quickly with the reality that we were 

never going to have our own biological 

children.” 

Her oncologist proposed getting a 

surrogate. Friends asked if she wanted 

to freeze her eggs. Cassie wanted to explain 

her commitment to the Church’s 

position against the use of technology 

which separates procreation from 

sexual intercourse and endangers 

embryonic life, but the pressure to find 

any solution was palpable. 

“There’s only so much you can do to 

defend the faith from the exam table,” 

she laughed. Then her tone turned 

somber. “At that point, I just wanted a 

place to talk about my grief.” 

*** 

“Like every young Catholic couple 

… we thought we were going to look at 

each other and get pregnant,” Matthew 

Marcolini shared in a video reflection 

for the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia. 


After months of failed pregnancy tests, 

surgery, and the reality of infertility 

setting in, his wife, Elizabeth, experienced 

a spiritual desolation. 

“It’s hard to believe that a God who 

loves you wouldn’t want to give his 

daughter everything that she’s asking 

for,” she confided in a friend. 

Matthew struggled watching his wife 

suffer such profound disappointment. 

The couple thought back to a conversation 

they had in marriage prep in 

which they both shared they were open 

to adoption. “That was a hypothetical 

conversation, but a providential one,” 

Elizabeth said. 

Five years into marriage, after prayers 

and pilgrimages in search of peace, 

they got a phone call from a friend who 

had heard an announcement at daily 

Mass: a local woman was two weeks 

away from giving birth and looking 

for adoptive parents for her child with 

medical needs. 

Matthew told his wife that someone 

had found their baby. 

*** 

Catholic couples like the Taylors 

and Marcolinis are used to hearing 

about the need to be “open to life” and 

forsake personal comfort for having a 

larger family than the social ideal. 

But a growing number are struggling 

with the opposite: not being able to 

conceive or bear children at all. 

They are part of a statistically significant 

number of people across the 

world experiencing infertility, broadly 

defined as the inability to conceive 

after one year of unprotected sex for 

women under 35 and six months for 

women 35 and older. 

According to a report issued by the 

World Health Organization, 1 in 6 people 

worldwide — between 60 and 80 

million couples — experience infertility 

during their reproductive years. 

In the U.S., 1 in 5 married women between 

the ages of 15-49 with no prior 

births have difficulty conceiving. Miscarriage 

moves that rate up to 1 in 4. 

Common causes of infertility include: 

Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, which 

impedes ovulation; improper functioning 

of the thyroid, pituitary gland, and 

hypothalamus; structural abnormalities 

or growths in reproductive organs; 

endometriosis, in which uterine lining 

grows outside of the uterus; poor sperm 

quality and count; and sexually transmitted 

infections. 

Additionally, delayed childbearing 

is driving up rates. More women are 

waiting until their mid-late 30s and 

early 40s to try to conceive. 

According to Caroline Gilbert, a certified 

nurse practitioner at University 

of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Divine 

Mercy Women’s Health, “Fertility 

drops a little after 30 but takes a nose 

dive after 40.” 

“I don’t think a lot of women want 

to be getting married later, especially 

my Catholic female patients,” she said. 

“But that’s just the way the world is.” 

The default assumption within the 

medical community is that individuals 

and couples will use artificial means of 

procreation — from donor gametes to 

IVF to surrogates — to have biologically 

related children. Insurance companies 

today are more likely to provide 

coverage for these services but not for 

alternative treatments. And the proliferation 

of celebrities using these means 

of reproduction is shifting cultural perceptions 

about everything from success 

rates to moral acceptance. 

*** 

The challenge the Church faces is to 

help an increasing number of Catholics, 

many who suffer in silence, to 

discern God’s plan for their marriage 

and pursue avenues to be fruitful that 

respect God’s plan for life and love. 

Therese Bermpohl, director of the 

Office of Family Life for the Diocese 

of Arlington, Virginia, said she was 

receiving call after call from priests 

asking what they could do for couples 

in their parishes who felt unseen and 

needed support. 

“I think as a Church we tend to minimize 

the loss and grief associated with 

infertility and miscarriage.” 

Her office launched Our Fruitful 

Love, a website that “provides practical 

resources, testimonials, Church teaching, 

and a community that stands with 

people in their sorrow and grief.” 

One of their 

most popular 

initiatives has 

been an annual 

novena 

concluding on 

A doctor is pictured in a 

file photo preparing eggs 

and sperm for an attempt 

at artificial insemination. | 

OSV NEWS/ALESSANDRO 

BIANCHI, REUTERS 

the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. 

Bishop Michael Burbidge, who leads 

the diocese, offers a private Mass for 

participants at its conclusion. 

While she encourages participants to 

pray for miracles, she’s always moved 

when people let her know it helped 

them come to “complete peace” about 

God’s plan for their marriage. 


Bermpohl established a mentorship 

program which pairs up more experienced 

couples with those new to 

grief, expectation, and disappointment. 

“Community is key,” she said. 

Chris O’Neill, director of the Office 

of Marriage and Family Life for the 

Diocese of New Orleans, said his team 

tries to address infertility in marriage 

preparation. 

“We try to emphasize how a child is a 

gift,” he said. “We share with couples 

that you love each other and attend 

to a life that you share together, and 

that life starts to bear fruit. It may 

or may not include children. The 

commitment is not to build the life 

you want — it’s to love each other with 

everything you have and to let the marriage 

take the shape that God grants.” 

How and when the Church speaks 

about infertility is a topic which Melissa 

Moschella, associate 

professor of philosophy at 

The Catholic University of 

America, thinks a good deal 

about. 

“The places where the 

Church talks most directly 

about infertility are in documents 

concerning ethical 

issues about reproductive 

technologies,” she noted, 

citing Donum Vitae (“The 

Gift of Life”) and Dignitas 

Personae (“The Dignity of 

the Person”). 

Moshcella believes there 

are limitations to that 

treatment, because infertility 

is never explored as its 

own topic. And while the 

Church expresses sympathy 

for couples who desire to 

have a child, it has not yet 

offered a comprehensive 

theological look at marital 

fruitfulness outside of 

forming a family through 

procreation or adoption. 

In her courses exploring 

the ethics of reproductive technologies, 

Moschella has begun presenting students 

with information about fertility 

awareness-based methods of family 

planning. “Most of my female students 

have never heard of these. Most don’t 

understand how their cycles work or 

what the signs of fertility are,” she said. 

“The fact that things can actually be 

treated is new to them.” 

*** 

The good news is that Catholic physicians 

have been advancing treatment 

for infertility for decades. 

Gilbert is a part of a health care practice 

that specializes in Naprotechnology, 

an approach to fertility pioneered 

by Dr. Thomas W. Hilgers, the director 

of the Saint Paul VI Institute for the 

Study of Human Reproduction and the 

National Center for Women’s Health 

in Omaha, Nebraska. 

With colleagues at the St. Louis 

University and Creighton University 

Schools of Medicine, he developed 

what is known as the Creighton Model 

FertilityCare System. Beyond helping 

to address infertility, this method 

is used to treat repeat miscarriage, 

postpartum depression, premenstrual 

symptoms, and preterm birth. 

Unlike mainstream endocrinology 

and fertility medicine, which uses a 

standard 28-day cycle to evaluate hormonal 

imbalances in women, Naprotechnology 

looks at each individual 

woman’s biomarkers to create what 

Gilbert calls a “total hormonal profile.” 

“Standard fertility medicine will 

spend three months prescribing 

medicine to strengthen ovulation and 

then move onto IVF,” Gilbert said. 

“Naprotechnology seeks to restore 

fertility by getting to the root cause of 

the problem.” 

The practice involves an analysis of 

all of the hormones involved in a women’s 

cycle (not only those related to 

ovulation), robust testing of the thyroid, 

surgical interventions, and identifying 

causes of inflammation or insulin 

resistance. 

Gilbert noted that physicians are starting 

to acknowledge that the Western 

diet and lifestyle is contributing to the 

issue. 

“As far as male infertility is concerned, 

alcohol, drugs, high blood 

pressure, and cholesterol can all contribute,” 

she said. “For women, there 

are a lot of endocrine disruptors 

in our diet, cosmetics, 

and the containers we drink 

and eat out of.” 

Gilbert says the widespread 

prescription of the birth 

control pill to girls, who 

often stay on it until they 

are ready for childbearing, is 

contributing to the problem. 

Some studies indicate 

that the pill interferes with 

the production of cervical 

mucus, which is important 

for fertilization. 

But a bigger issue is that the 

pill is widely prescribed to 

relieve painful symptoms of 

menstruation, which are often 

indicative of underlying 

issues like endometriosis. Because 

the condition advances 

even when symptoms are 

Dr. Thomas W. Hilgers, ameliorated, women come 

director of the Pope Paul off the pill after a decade or 

VI Institute on the Study of more to find that they had 

Human Reproduction. | CNS been unknowingly masking 

an underlying condition. 

While not all of her 

patients conceive, Gilbert finds satisfaction 

that almost all of them say that 

they are thankful to have “found someone 

to take them seriously, listen to 

them, and give them a real diagnosis.” 

*** 

Many women report that they simply 

want someone to acknowledge they 


exist and to hear what it feels like to 

have their body fail them. 

A turning point for Cassie Taylor 

was registering for an online retreat 

focused on infertility and grief, hosted 

by a ministry called Springs in the 

Desert. She was relieved to hear they 

were “Christ-focused, not conception-focused.” 

Springs in the Desert was born from 

the personal experience of Ann Koschute, 

who began to observe common 

feelings about identity, vocation, 

and isolation in her conversations with 

other Catholic women experiencing 

infertility. 

“We’re all kind of hidden,” she said. 

“The ministry started out of necessity, 

because we needed accompaniment.” 

Springs in the Desert has become 

one of the leading ministries for 

Catholic couples experiencing infertility, 

offering retreats, educational and 

pastoral resources, a podcast, small 

groups, and online events. 

Taylor now manages its social media 

accounts and hosts its podcast. The 

demand is increasing, evidenced by 

the growing body of podcast listeners, 

engagement with social media, and 

the number of dioceses promoting its 

work. 

Koschute hopes they can help facilitate 

some changes in the way Catholics 

approach the topic and those 

affected by it. 

“Within the Catholic space, there is 

often an idolizing of the child and the 

big Catholic family, which is the flip 

side of the contraceptive mentality and 

a culture focused on self-fulfillment. 

But it can create a culture that says the 

way to holiness is producing children. 

“We need to be reminded that our 

marriages are life-giving, that they are 

powerful witnesses in a world where 

people so easily give up on theirs 

because they don’t get what they want 

or don’t feel personally fulfilled,” she 

said. 

Her ultimate hope for the ministry is 

that couples will better come to know 

Christ as the wellspring in what she 

calls the “desert of infertility.” 

Marcolini wishes Catholics would 

refrain from making assumptions 

about childless couples, couples with a 

small number of children, or couples 

who have adopted, saying that it’s impossible 

to know what anyone is going 

Dr. Anne Nolte, right, a family physician with the 

National Gianna Center for Women’s Health and 

Fertility in New York, follows Catholic teaching and 

guidelines for health care in her practice. | CNS/ 

GREGORY A. SHEMITZ 

through or what has gone into their 

discernment. 

Now a mother of two adopted 

daughters, Zelie, 2, and Gianna, 6 

months, Elizabeth said her experience 

“has been a deeper invitation into the 

mystery of divine love since we are all 

adopted sons and daughters of God.” 

She and her husband share their story 

with other couples preparing for marriage 

in their diocese. 

When asked what she would say to 

others facing infertility, Elizabeth said 

to pray for what you desire, but not to 

spend your marriage and life waiting 

for something that is not promised. 

“Receive what God has for you today. 

God is a God of the present, not of the 

past or the future,” she said. “So live 

right now.” 

Elise Italiano Ureneck is a communications 

consultant writing from Rhode 

Island. 


OF WOMBS 

AND WOUNDS 

Pope Francis’ recent condemnation of 

surrogacy was needed. But can we talk 

more about what’s driving the practice? 

BY CHARLIE CAMOSY 

In his annual foreign policy address 

to diplomats accredited to the Holy 

See, Pope Francis this month made 

some striking remarks on a topic not 

typically associated with foreign policy. 

“The path to peace calls for respect 

for life, for every human life, starting 

with the life of the unborn child in the 

mother’s womb, which cannot be suppressed 

or turned into an object of trafficking. 

In this regard, I deem deplorable 

the practice of so-called surrogate 

motherhood, which represents a grave 

violation of the dignity of the woman 

and the child, based on the exploitation 

of situations of the mother’s material 

needs. A child is always a gift and never 

the basis of a commercial contract. 

Consequently, I express my hope for an 

effort by the international community 

to prohibit this practice universally. At 

every moment of its existence, human 

life must be preserved and defended; 

yet I note with regret, especially in the 

West, the continued spread of a culture 

of death, which in the name of a false 

compassion discards children, the 

elderly, and the sick.” 

The Holy Father often tries to do two 

things at once: (1) hold fast to traditional 

doctrine (if often in ways that 

are intentionally and helpfully nonpolitical) 

and (2) emphasize the pastoral 

value of mercy. This is evident in his 

description of the Church as a field 

hospital which tries to stabilize deeply 

wounded people. 

It is striking and can be disorienting 

when he does one without the other, or 

when certain people or groups emphasize 

one without the other. Here, when 

it comes to his engagement on surrogacy, 

he emphasizes Church teaching 

without referencing mercy — as he 

does in so many other contexts, including 

abortion and irregular relationships. 

SHUTTERSTOCK 

Thus his remarks, though powerful 

and needed, get only two cheers from 

me. 

In a culture like ours, where surrogacy 

is an unquestioned good — especially 

(but not only) in contexts of infertility 

and same-sex marriage — speaking in 

such morally and legally clear terms is 

admirable and even brave. One hopes 

that his allies, including some who 

accept and promote surrogacy, will be 

given the grace to hear what he’s saying. 

The Holy Father is speaking from 

his central moral theological commitment: 

resisting Western-style consumer 

throwaway culture. Instead of seeing 

God’s creation — including human 

beings — as merely products to be used 

and discarded, he wants us to recognize 

their proper value. 

The global surrogacy consumer 

network not only exploits vulnerable 

women, but also treats children as items 

for purchase. Tragically, in most cases 

of IVF, the “excess” human beings are 

often discarded as if they are waste. 

And it is doing so on a growing scale. 

An estimated 18,400 infants were born 

in the U.S. via surrogates from 1999 to 

2013, according to one study. But now, 

with the advances in surrogacy-related 

technology and growing popularity 


in the media, the global industry is 

expected to become worth $129 billion 

in the next decade (up from $14 billion 

in 2022). 

The desire to have a biological child 

is, for many, one of the most powerful 

desires in nature. But that desire cannot 

change the truth — a truth Christians 

like the Holy Father are bound to 

proclaim — that no one has a right to 

a child. Children are gifts from God to 

which we can be open, but can never 

demand. 

If everyone has the right to purchase a 

child on the open market (or even the 

“right to procreate” via the financial 

support of the government), this feeds 

the consumerist throwaway culture 

about which the Holy Father rightly 

warns us. 

But what about mercy and the 

Church as a field hospital? My wife 

and I — along with so many others — 

know firsthand the incredible pain of 

infertility. I wish the Holy Father had 

acknowledged that this pain is in part 

driving the demand for surrogates. 

Those bearing the pain of infertility as 

well as those who have used surrogates 

and are now beginning to question 

what they have done are among 

those who are hurting. They need the 

Church to be a field hospital which 

emphasizes God’s mercy on the way to 

speaking the truth in love. 

And they need a Church which focuses 

on other ways faithful Christians 

can be fruitful. Our spiritual father, St. 

Joseph, certainly provides a primordial 

example in his fatherhood of Jesus. (He 

was a foundational inspiration — and 

remains an ongoing help — for and 

with our three adopted children.) 

But let’s move even beyond adoption. 

The Church must do a much better job 

making space for childless people in 

the Church, both single and married. 

Far too often, one of the first questions 

I hear from Catholics I meet is, “How 

many children do you have?” Can you 

imagine how such a question hits for 

those bearing the pain of infertility? 

Having biological children is a wonderful 

gift to be given by God, and we 

must continue to make cultural space 

for these gifts, especially in a culture 

that is often hostile to children. But let 

us also make space for the wounded 

people in the Church bearing the pain 

of not having been given this gift — 

The global surrogacy consumer network not only 

exploits vulnerable women, but also treats children 

as items for purchase. 

and let us do so in ways which make it 

clear we value the gifts they bring to the 

table just as much. 

Charlie Camosy is professor of medical 

humanities at the Creighton University 

School of Medicine. In addition, he 

holds the Monsignor Curran Fellowship 

in Moral Theology at St. Joseph Seminary 

in New York.

AD REM 

ROBERT BRENNAN 

Why don’t I have a podcast? 

SHUTTERSTOCK 

Remember that bygone era when 

there were only three on-air 

national broadcast networks 

and — here in Los Angeles — another 

four local television stations? Current 

consumers of digital television would 

consider that a primitive state equivalent 

to cave paintings. 

But I actually pine for them every now 

and then. 

It was not a perfect system. Because 

of limited platforms, it was harder to 

find your niche either on the news or 

entertainment side. 

If you were a musician, you worked 

in dingy clubs and high school sock 

hops for years until you got your break. 

An actor may have worked for years 

parking cars or waiting tables and doing 

local theater only to get one guest spot 

on “Bonanza.” Many talented people 

never got a break of any kind, yet some 

of the most talented artists and news 

reporters still managed to burst forth 

from this cauldron. 

Now everyone is a star. And it seems 

I am the last person on the planet who 

does not have a podcast. There are 

literally tens of thousands of podcasts 

on every topic under the sun and many 

topics that do not deserve to see the 

light of day. It does not take much. If 

you have about 40 bucks you can get 

yourself a cool-looking microphone 

at an electronics box store, a little 

lighting from the same store and maybe 

a bookshelf behind you to give you 

gravitas and voila: you are a podcaster 

(obviously, you need a good internet 

connection, too). 

Podcasters have a tendency to take 

themselves very seriously with anchorman 

desks like they were working at 

CNN, but they come off looking more 

like Ron Burgundy. I have watched 

podcasters that are comical, intentional 

and unintentional, but most of the ones 

I have found are trivial and listening to 

them has not proven an effective use of 

time. 

And yet, they are legion. 

I wish I could say the advent of 

technology and its ability to distribute 

information so quickly and cheaply 

would be a boon for the Church and 

her adherents. But when I look at the 

Catholic blogosphere that dream vaporizes 

like when rubidium makes contact 

with water. 

It seems anyone with a microphone, 

free time, and a copy of the Vatican 

II documents, is now an ecclesiastical 

expert who needs to be heard. Before 

26 • ANGELUS • January 26, 2024

Robert Brennan writes from Los Angeles, where 

he has worked in the entertainment industry, 

Catholic journalism, and the nonprofit sector. 

this technology got so far ahead of us, 

before a person with limited income 

could use the internet to have his or her 

very own “channel,” the economics of 

media was a natural roadblock to too 

many people with too many opinions. 

You had to be really good on camera 

and have something positive to 

say — like Bishop Fulton Sheen — to 

be granted paid time on television. 

Now, if you get enough “likes” or your 

subscription numbers on YouTube are 

good enough, you can actually pay 

your utility bills off a podcast dedicated 

solely to how terrible things are in the 

Church today. The more anger, the 

more controversy, the more likes and 

the more clicks. 

It is a feeding frenzy but unfortunately, 

we are eating our own. Taking a random 

sampling of your average Catholic 

blog, you would surmise that the 

Church is on her last legs. It is a world 

of gloom and doom with prophetic 

warnings about the End Times and the 

coming of the AntiChrist. 

The hosts of Catholic-themed podcasts 

run the gamut from laymen and 

laywomen, priests and religious, and 

everything in between. There are good 

ones more interested in lighting candles 

against the night than relishing in 

the darkness, and there are far too many 

podcasts that mislead and all to readily 

rely on anger as their fuel. If you put 

14 of these podcasters in a room you 

will get 14 opinions on what is wrong 

with the Church, what is right with the 

Church, and what needs to be done in 

the Church. 

At the risk of sounding like a podcaster 

myself, I know what needs to be done: 

Stop listening to podcasts. 

If you are troubled by the way things 

are, say a rosary or pray a novena. 

Take solace in the irrefutable fact, not 

opinion, that Jesus promised to be with 

his Church forever. It is not always easy, 

it is not always pretty, but the Church 

traveling in its prison of time and space 

will do remarkable things and not so 

remarkable things. 

And as flawed as his bride may be, the 

consistency of Christ’s promise must be 

our focus, and not how many “likes” 

we can get by yelling fire in a crowded 

cathedral. 


NOW PLAYING POOR THINGS 

BELLA’S BIG ADVENTURE 

Awards season favorite ‘Poor Things’ turns a 

Frankenstein bride into a sorority girl 

Emma Stone and Mark 

Ruffalo in “Poor Things.” 

| IMBD 

BY JOSEPH JOYCE 

Often in the English language 

there are words mistaken for 

synonyms while nestling adjacent 

or even opposed to one another. 

For instance, anyone who has ever had 

their heart broken quickly learns the 

chasm between “affection” and “love.” 

Many more then have their heart’s 

shards snapped further by a waiter 

conflating the merits of Coca-Cola and 

Pepsi. 

But more notable and more relevant 

to this review is the difference between 

“provocative” and “interesting.” It’s 

easy to reach the former, and even easier 

to mistake it for an achievement. 

Thus is the quandary with Yorgos 

Lanthimos’s “Poor Things,” fresh off its 

Golden Globes wins earlier this month 

for Best Comedy and Best Actress in a 

Comedy for Emma Stone. 

Stone plays Bella, a Victorian woman 

resurrected from the dead by mad 

scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter, played by 

Willem Dafoe. Though perhaps resurrection 

is again one of those adjacent 

but conflicting synonyms: When Godwin 

finds her floating under the bridge, 

he places the brain of her unborn child 

into her dead mother’s skull. I’m sure 

the more squeamish have tapped out at 

that alone. But that is what they want, 

and we cannot let them win. Who 

“they” and “we” are, and what indeed 

what “winning” entails, is irrelevant to 

the mission at hand. 

Bella is quite literally a child trapped 

inside an adult woman’s body. She 

staggers about like a marionette at the 

mercy of a drunk puppeteer, and in 

true toddler fashion makes up for her 

limited vocabulary in violence with 

the words she does possess. Unable 

to pronounce his full name, she calls 

her creator “God.” It’s the most blatant 

of the blunt symbolism throughout, 

which I’m sure Lanthimos would 

insist is tongue-in-cheek. But it’s ironic 

turtles all the way down, and at the 

bottom of the stack is still a character 

called God. 


Bella is cared for by Godwin’s kindly 

assistant Max (Ramy Youssef), who 

with Godwin’s permission, bordering 

on insistence, proposes marriage. But 

even childlike Bella recognizes it is 

“God’s” attempt to keep her at home 

away from a wider world which he 

fears and she longs for. 

(While allowing for curiosity, I think 

the film overestimates a child’s mind 

for new experience. Children are 

natural reactionaries; ask them to 

sample new food other than chicken 

fingers and they’ll respond with all the 

liberality of a Russian czar.) 

With his permission she instead 

runs off with Duncan Wedderburn 

(Mark Ruffalo). A caddish lawyer (at 

the risk of sounding redundant) he 

takes advantage of Bella’s naiveté and 

whisks her off on a lover’s holiday. 

Bella’s accelerated mental progression 

now finds her in the thick of adolescence, 

so if Duncan uses her, she is 

an enthusiastic accomplice. 

But we are back again to the great 

divide of provocation and interest. In 

the longest stretch of the film we are 

shown in great detail the particulars 

of Bella’s sexual awakening, sequences 

that most readers of this magazine 

would find lewd and indecent. 

But throughout all this extracurricular 

activity my eyes averted from the 

screen not from prudishness but boredom. 

Sexuality is indeed part of growing 

up, but it isn’t the skeleton key of 

adulthood. Lanthimos takes Bella into 

the wider world, but his focus on this 

one aspect of her person shrinks it. 

She wants to see the pyramids, but she 

must settle for the ceiling. 

It even puts him at odds with his own 

thesis. Bella is an Edenic creature, her 

innocence putting her at odds with 

a fallen society. It would certainly 

explain her comfort with nudity. She 

eats sloppily, dances merrily, and lacks 

the patience for innuendo in polite 

conversation. Most importantly, she 

doesn’t fathom the absurd strictures 

her society places on women, and 

like most children ignores what she 

doesn’t understand. 

But Lanthimos groups her freewheeling 

sexual liberation in with 

her burgeoning feminism, a pairing 

that fell out of fashion somewhere 

between Rocky II and Rocky IV. It’s 

a retrograde feminism, not respecting 

women in all their baffling facets but 

to the extent to which they please the 

drooling patriarchy. 

In fairness, the film recognizes the 

abuses. For all his talk of spurning 

convention, Duncan grows more 

possessive the wider Bella’s perspective 

expands. He says he wants to show 

her the world, but we realize along 

with her that a narcissist thinks the 

world ends at his sightline. He tricks 

her onto a cruise ship where she can’t 

leave him, but that is only prolonging 

the inevitable. Rid of his dead weight, 

she later takes up a brief residency 

in a brothel, a rose-colored vignette 

on sex work where her sex positivity 

goes over like gangbusters. After her 

adventures she finally returns and is 

reconciled to her fiancé and “God,” 

her wild oats sufficiently sown. 

Perhaps as a Catholic I should 

endorse such a tidy resolution, but 

I have never found myself more 

offended at a film coming full circle. 

It meant all its provocations were for 

nothing, even its postures of defiance 

ultimately subjugated to conventional 

mores. What we watched for the last 

two hours was not a young woman 

bucking the absurdities of our society, 

but a sorority girl on a gap year 

abroad. 

In other words, “Poor Things” is 

about controlled rebellion, the cinematic 

equivalent of Woodstock hippies 

who went on to work for weapon 

manufacturers. I have more genuine 

respect for sticking to a principle, even 

in violation of my own, than dabbling 

in revolution only to embrace the cog. 

God can forgive any sins, but I can’t 

forgive you for wasting my time. 

Editor’s note: “Poor Things” is rated R 

for strong and pervasive sexual content, 

graphic nudity, disturbing material, 

gore, and language. 

Joseph Joyce is a screenwriter and freelance 

critic based in Sherman Oaks. 

Willem Dafoe in “Poor Things.” | IMDB

DESIRE LINES 

HEATHER KING 

Large and in charge 

Los Angeles’ Natural History Museum 

is mounting a super-duper 

show in Exposition Park through 

the spring. 

The museum recently unveiled “100 

Carats: Icons of the Gem World,” 

an exhibition of some of the highest 

quality rare gems on earth, including 

the world-famous Jonker I diamond, 

which has not been viewed publicly 

for decades. 

The centerpiece of 

the exhibit, the Jonker 

I Diamond. | AARON 

CELESTIAN/NATURAL 

HISTORY MUSEUM OF 

LA COUNTY 

“Right this way!” you can almost hear 

the carnival barker’s cry. 

Says Lori Bettison-Varga, the museum’s 

president and director: “Gems of 

such magnificent size and quality have 

never been displayed before in this 

quantity in one exhibition.” 

The 125-carat Jonker I, one of the 

largest cut diamonds in the world, is 

the centerpiece of the exhibition. 

The Jonker, found by a South African 

farmer in 1934, was at the time the 

fourth-largest uncut gem ever discovered. 

At 726 carats — a little over 

five ounces — it was later cut into 13 

smaller stones, the Jonker I being the 

largest. 

Far more interesting than the stone’s 

size, to my mind, is the intrigue surrounding 

it. 

From Wikipedia: “In 1949, King Farouk 

of Egypt purchased the Jonker I, 

but after he was deposed and exiled in 

1952, the gem was lost. After a number 

of years, the gem reappeared in the 

ownership of Queen Ratna of Nepal. 

The last known location of the Jonker 

I was in Hong Kong in 1977 when it 

was sold to an anonymous buyer for 

$2,259,000.” 

Lost? Wouldn’t you give anything to 

know how the gem made its way from 

Egypt to Nepal? Whoever the anonymous 

buyer was in 1977, today the 

Jonker I is owned — and on loan to 

the NHS — by Ibrahim Al-Rashid. No 

further details given. 

In its 80 years of existence, the 

diamond has never been on display in 

a museum. Which just goes to show, 

really, what can you do with this exquisite 

jewel except put it in a safe? 

But the exhibition includes way more 

than the Jonker I. Other treasures 

include a 241-carat emerald known 

as “The Crown of Colombia,” a deep 

aquamarine beryl called “The Northern 

Light,” an exquisite blood-red 

rubellite tourmaline, “The Princess 

Pink Sapphire,” and “The Ukrainian 

Flag Topaz.” Every stone in the exhibit 

is at least 100 carats (a carat weighs 

.007 of an ounce), which in the gem 

world is gigantic. 

“Every gem is a minor geologic miracle,” 

the museum notes. 

Think mountains, volcanoes, tectonic 


Heather King is an award-winning 

author, speaker, and workshop leader. 

plates, and mysterious movements 

deep within the earth’s surface. After 

millions of years, these brilliant, sparkling 

gems emerge (helped along by 

master cutters, polishers, and jewelry 

designers like Robert Procop, who 

figures prominently in the exhibit). 

But gems also have a sinister side. 

They’re mostly worn by women. At 

this level, they’re insanely expensive: 

in 2015, a “perfect” 100-carat diamond 

sold at Sotheby’s for $22 million. Put 

the two together and mayhem, at some 

point, is bound to result. 

Having spent most of my own 

unglamorous life reading rather than 

boning up on carats, the phrase “iconic 

gems” evokes any number of juicy 

stories, novels, and films where the lust 

for jewels has led to ruin. 

Anthony Trollope’s 1871 novel “The 

Eustace Diamonds,” for example, in 

which gold digger and pathological liar 

Lizzie Greystock marries the sickly Sir 

Florian Eustace knowing he will soon 

die and leave her a wealthy widow. 

The diamonds are a family heirloom 

that Lizzie coolly refuses to relinquish. 

Romantic hijinks and interminable 

litigation ensue, the upshot being that 

Lizzie, satisfyingly, 

gets just what Stained-glass windows 

she deserves. 

depicting the Parable 

Guy de Maupassant’s 

1884 

of the Hidden Treasure 

(left) and the Parable of 

the Pearl (right) in Scots’ 

short story “The Church, Melbourne. | 

Necklace” is a 

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS 

cautionary tale 

about a woman 

who disdains her loving, faithful 

husband and prefers to live in fantasy. 

When they’re invited to a fancy ball, 

she borrows an expensive diamond 

necklace from a friend, a move that 

results in one night of ecstasy and a 

lifetime of abject misery. 

That’s not even counting the German-born 

film director Max Ophuls’ 

“The Earrings of Madame de…” 

(1953), a romantic drama that ends 

with a duel and an implied suicide. 

But far be it for me to be a wet blanket. 

The once-in-a-lifetime show runs 

through April 21. So go. Ooh and aah 

at these wonders of nature. Gasp at the 

brilliance, the vivid colors, the perfection. 

Ponder the fact that such gems 

occur nowhere else in the solar system. 

Let’s not forget, however, that Jesus 

also knew about jewels. “Again, the 

kingdom of heaven is like a merchant 

seeking beautiful pearls, who, when 

he had found one pearl of great price, 

went and sold all that he had and 

bought it” (Matthew 13:45–46). 

Here’s the distinction: the kingdom of 

heaven is not reducible to a stone. The 

kingdom of heaven, for which we’re 

willing to give up everything we own, 

can’t be bartered, bought, traded, or 

sold. It’s beyond price. 

And you never have to keep it in a 

safe. 


LETTER AND SPIRIT 

SCOTT HAHN 

Scott Hahn is founder of the 

St. Paul Center for Biblical 

Theology; stpaulcenter.com. 

In Crete our faith 

Around this time every year, my mind returns to the 

island of Crete. Around a dozen years ago I led a 

pilgrimage there, in the midst of a cruise “in the 

footsteps of St. Paul.” 

There’s no detailed scriptural account of the apostle’s 

visit there. All we know is that he “left” his disciple Titus 

on Crete (Titus 1:5), 

ordaining him to lead 

the Church there. He 

had surely “laid hands” 

on Titus, as he had on 

Timothy (2 Timothy 1:6). 

Both men had received 

the grace of holy orders, 

and then they lived up to 

it. Thus we honor them 

together on the feast they 

share, January 26. 

In a letter to Titus, Paul 

aims an insult at the people 

of Crete: “Cretans,” 

he says, “are always liars, 

evil beasts, lazy gluttons” 

(Titus 1:12). 

Ouch. That hurts, even 

after 2,000 years. But Paul 

was quoting a Cretan 

poet when he said it. 

The poet’s name is Epimenides 

— a pagan! — 

and Paul actually quotes 

him more than once in 

the New Testament. He 

even refers to him as a 

prophet. 

Epimenides was a 

semi-mythical, semi-historical 

figure who lived on 

Crete in the sixth or seventh 

century before Christ. He was a shepherd who one day, 

according to legend, fell asleep in a cave and awoke 57 years 

later. He emerged transfigured, filled with supernatural gifts. 

His fame spread far, even to Athens, some 214 miles away. 

Athenians, centuries later, remembered Epimenides for 

delivering their city from a curse. They had been suffering 

“St. Paul,” by Hans Baldung Grien, 1484-1545, German. | WIKIMEDIA COMMONS 

from a series of calamities, so they called upon the poet-prophet 

for help. He suggested that perhaps there was a 

god yet unknown to them, who would be willing and able 

to help if appropriate sacrifices were offered. So the people 

of Athens built altars to this nameless deity all over the city, 

and the legacy of Epimenides in Athens was an aggregation 

of altars dedicated “to an 

unknown god.” 

Paul spoke about such 

an altar when he was 

preaching in the city 

(Acts 17:23). 

In the same speech, Paul 

also quoted one of the 

poems of Epimenides. 

The poem said of a certain 

god: “In him we live 

and move and have our 

being” (see Acts 17:28). 

Paul apparently saw this 

line as a prophecy of the 

divine life that Christians 

experience through 

baptism. 

His citation is no 

happenstance. In fact, 

the line comes from the 

same poem from which 

he drew the insult that 

appears in his Letter to 

Titus. He knew the poem 

well. 

And he knew well what 

he was doing when he 

left Titus on Crete. Paul 

gave the island something 

better than the legendary 

Epimenides. He gave the 

Cretans a priest after the 

image of Jesus Christ. He gave them a bishop who would 

lead them away from lying and gluttony — a saint they 

would honor forever. When I visited his church in Crete, I 

saw his relics encased in silver. 

Now his feast is upon us. We’re not in Crete, but we can 

invoke his intercession. Please join me in doing so. 


■ FRIDAY, JANUARY 19 

Praise and Worship Mass and Healing Prayers. St. Frances 

of Rome Church, 501 E. Foothill Blvd., Azusa, 6 p.m. Celebrant: 

Father Parker Sandoval. Music by Clarissa Martinez. 

OneLife LA Holy Hour. St. Teresa of Avila Church, 2216 

Fargo St., Los Angeles, 7-8 p.m. Visit onelifela.org/holy-hour 

for more. 

■ SATURDAY, JANUARY 20 

Embracing the Winter of Life: Aging to Saging. Mary & Joseph 

Retreat Center, 5300 Crest Rd., Rancho Palos Verdes, 

9 a.m.-12 p.m. Workshop will help connect with your inner 

sage to the divine to help you age in comfort and health. 

Areas covered include spirituality, mental, geographical, 

financial wellness, and more. Email MarkMitchellSpeaks@ 

gmail.com. 

100th Celebration. St. Sebastian Church, 1453 Federal 

Ave., Los Angeles, 10 a.m. Mass. Celebrant: Bishop Matthew 

Elshoff. Reception to follow. Email stsebastianoffice@ 

gmail.com. 

OneLife LA. LA State Historic Park, 1245 N. Spring St., Los 

Angeles, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Join Archbishop José H. Gomez on 

a walk for life through downtown Los Angeles, followed by 

a festival with speakers, music, and food. Theme: “10 Years 

Together As One.” For more information, visit onelifela.org. 

Requiem Mass for the Unborn. Cathedral of Our Lady of 

the Angels, 555 W. Temple St., Los Angeles, 5 p.m. Archbishop 

José H. Gomez will celebrate the annual Mass for 

the Unborn to end OneLife LA. 

■ SUNDAY, JANUARY 21 

Feast of Santo Niño Mass. Cathedral of Our Lady of the 

Angels, 555 W. Temple St., Los Angeles, 3 p.m. procession, 

3:30 p.m. Mass. Principal celebrant: Bishop Brian Nunes. 

Hosted by the Santo Niño Cruzada (SNCU) organization. 

Bring statues of Santo Niño for a special blessing. 

■ MONDAY, JANUARY 22 

Mass and Healing Service. St. Rose of Lima Church, 1305 

Royal Ave., Simi Valley, 7 p.m. Celebrant: Father Michael 

Barry, with Deacon Pete Wilson. Call 805-526-1732. 

■ WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24 

LACBA Family Law Clinic. Virtual, 2-5 p.m. Covers child 

support, custody, divorce, and spousal support. Open to LA 

County veterans. Registration required. Call 213-896-6537 

or email inquiries-veterans@lacba.org. 

■ SATURDAY, JANUARY 27 

The Indwelling Wholeness of the Trinity. St. Andrew 

Church, 538 Concord St., El Segundo, 9:30 a.m.-3:45 p.m. 

Retreat focuses on a contemplative experience to prayerfully 

enter the inner sanctum of the heart in the art of attention. 

Cost: $25/offering, includes continental breakfast 

and lunch salad bar. RSVP by Jan. 20. Contact nbstjames@ 

gmail.com. 

■ SUNDAY, JANUARY 28 

Mass Honoring Sisters of Mercy. St. Pius X School, 10855 

S. Pioneer Blvd., Santa Fe Springs, 10 a.m. St. Pius X parish 

and school will celebrate 33 years of service by the Sisters 

of Mercy with a special Mass and dedication. Call 562-234- 

1165. 

Religious Jubilarian Mass. Cathedral of Our Lady of the 

Angels, 555 W. Temple St., Los Angeles, 3:30 p.m. Religious 

sisters, brothers, and priests from the Archdiocese of Los 

Angeles will celebrate jubilee anniversaries. 

■ MONDAY, JANUARY 29 

End of Life Preparation. St. Bruno Church, 15740 Citrustree 

Rd., Whittier, 9-10:30 a.m. or 7-8:30 p.m. RSVP to 

Cathy by Jan. 10 at 562-631-8844. 

■ SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3 

Nun Run, 5K, 1-Mile, and Community Service Fair. La 

Reina High School, 106 W. Janss Rd., Thousand Oaks, 

8 a.m. 10th annual Nun Run, hosted by Sisters of Notre 

Dame, will raise proceeds for local and global outreach. 

Visit nun.run. 

■ SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 4 

Rite of Election. Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, 555 

W. Temple St., Los Angeles, 3 p.m. The Rite of Election 

is the final required step for anyone preparing to receive 

the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and the holy 

Eucharist on the Easter Vigil. Email Leticia Perez at LPerez@ 

la-archdiocese.org. 

■ WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7 

Changing Seasons: Lent to Palm Sunday. Zoom, 7-8:30 

p.m. Class led by Father Felix Just, SJ, will explore Bible 

readings for Lent to Palm Sunday. Visit lacatholics.org/ 

events. 


Valentine’s Dinner. Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, 

23233 Lyons Ave., Newhall, 12 p.m. Hosted by the Italian 

Catholic Club of SCV, includes complimentary glass of 

wine. Cost: $45/person. RSVP to Anna Riggs at 661-645- 

7877 by Feb. 5. 

Malta World Day of the Sick Mass. Cathedral of Our Lady 

of the Angels, 555 W. Temple St., Los Angeles, 12:30 p.m. 

Hosted by the Western Association of the Order of Malta, 

all are welcome, especially those who are suffering in body 

or spirit. Blessing and anointing of the sick will be administered. 

■ TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13 

Memorial Mass. San Fernando Mission, 15151 San 

Fernando Mission Blvd., Mission Hills, 11 a.m. Mass is 

virtual and not open to the public. Livestream available at 

CatholicCM.org or Facebook.com/lacatholics. 

■ THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15 

Youth Day: RECongress. Anaheim Convention Center, 

200 S. Anaheim Blvd., Anaheim, 7:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Young 

people will enjoy a general session, keynote speech, two 

workshops, and Eucharistic liturgy. Speakers include Baby 

Angel, Chris Estrella, and Maggie Craig. Cost: $40/person. 

Register at recongress.org. 

■ FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16 

Religious Education Congress. Anaheim Convention 

Center, 200 S. Anaheim Blvd., Anaheim. Events run Feb. 

16-18, and include speakers, sacraments, films, and 

workshops. Keynote speaker: Jessica Sarowitz, founder of 

Miraflores Films. Cost: $85/person. For more information, 

visit recongress.org. 


Anniversary Mass for Bishop David O’Connell. San Gabriel 

Mission, 429 S. Junipero Serra Dr., 10 a.m. Celebrant: 

Archbishop José H. Gomez. Blessing of memorial exhibit to 

follow after Mass. 

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 | January 26, 2024 | Vol. 9 No. 2

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