Angelus News | September 6, 2024

ANGELUS 

The LA priests 

giving NFL teams 

a spiritual edge 

September 6, 2024 Vol. 9 No. 18

September 6, 2024 

Vol. 9 • No. 18 

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Always Forward - newsletter.angelusnews.com 

ON THE COVER 

LOS ANGELES CHARGERS 

Father Richard Sunwoo, pastor of St. Louise de Marillac in 

Covina, stands on the sidelines of an LA Chargers preseason 

game at SoFi Stadium in August. This year, Sunwoo is one of 

several LA priests with a side gig like no other: celebrating 

Mass for NFL teams before games. On Page 10, associate 

editor Mike Cisneros tells the story of the little-known 

ministry helping teams meet their spiritual needs. 

THIS PAGE 

JACKIE YANEZ 

Auxiliary Bishop Slawomir Szkredka blesses a 

healing garden dedicated to victims of sexual 

abuse on Aug. 17 that was built at Old Mission 

Santa Inés in Solvang. The garden features a 

statue of Jesus, an inlaid cross, and connects with 

the mission’s existing Stations of the Cross and 

Our Lady of Guadalupe shrine.

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 

18 

22 

24 

26 

28 

30 

New initiative offers Catholic high-schoolers a college edge 

For 35 miles, SoCal pilgrims get the St. Junípero Serra experience 

John Allen: Pope’s Asia trip and the ‘Biden moment’ that hasn’t come 

The brilliance of an acclaimed writer’s Huckleberry Finn redux 

Greg Erlandson on America’s gun ownership problem 

New ‘Reagan’ film starring Dennis Quaid is built like a saint story 

Heather King: In praise of the humble notebook 

September 6, 2024 • ANGELUS • 1

POPE WATCH 

An Orthodox appeal 

Though without naming it specifically, 

Pope Francis appeared to 

criticize a new law in Ukraine 

restricting the activities of the Russian 

Orthodox Church, a measure which 

has drawn support from his own Catholic 

flock in the country. 

“In thinking about the laws recently 

adopted in Ukraine, I fear for the 

freedom of those who pray, because 

those who truly pray always pray for 

all,” Francis said during his noontime 

Sunday Angelus address Aug. 25. 

“A person does not commit evil 

because of praying,” the pope said. 

“If someone commits evil against his 

people, he will be guilty for it, but he 

cannot have committed evil because 

he prayed. 

“Let those who want to pray be 

allowed to pray in what they consider 

their church,” Francis said. “Please, 

let no Christian church be abolished 

directly or indirectly. Churches are not 

to be touched!” 

The pope’s remarks came just a day 

after Ukrainian President Volodymyr 

Zelenskyy formally signed Law 8371, 

a measure adopted by the country’s 

parliament which prohibits activities 

by the Russian Orthodox Church in 

Ukraine and bans the activities of any 

associated religious organizations affiliated 

with Moscow. 

First introduced in January 2023, the 

legislation gives parishes and monastic 

communities of the Russian-backed 

church nine months to sever ties with 

Moscow and affiliate with a Ukrainian 

denomination. 

Francis’ comments also came just one 

day after Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, 

head of the Russian Orthodox Church, 

had appealed to the pope and other 

world religious leaders “to raise their 

voices in defense of the persecuted 

believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox 

Church.” 

In appearing sympathetic to Russian 

objections, Francis may risk alienating 

members of his own Catholic 

community in Ukraine. In a recent 

interview, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav 

Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian 

Greek Catholic Church, the largest of 

the 23 Eastern Catholic churches, defended 

the new law as a defense against 

Russia’s use of religion as a “neurotropic 

weapon.” 

Shevchuk said the law offers protection 

against the ideology of the 

“Russian peace,” which involves the 

ideology of the “Russian world.” He 

said that although the law should protect 

religious freedom from manipulation, 

“it is important to monitor how it 

will be implemented in practice.” 

In response to the pope’s criticism 

Sunday, Ukraine’s embassy to the Holy 

See told reporters that his comments 

were off-base because the new law 

does not interfere with anyone’s private 

ability to pray as they wish. 

Retired American lawyer Peter Anderson, 

who tracks issues in the Orthodox 

world, suggested that response is 

incomplete. 

“It is true that the law does not prevent 

persons from praying in their homes. 

However, they will probably not be 

able to pray in their own church,” 

Anderson said, calling the pope’s comments 

“right on” when he insisted that 

churches should not be touched. 

Reporting courtesy of Crux. 

Papal Prayer Intention for September: We pray that each 

one of us will hear and take to heart the cry of the Earth 

and of victims of natural disasters and climactic change, 

and that all will undertake to personally care for the world 

in which we live. 

2 • ANGELUS • September 6, 2024

NEW WORLD OF FAITH 

ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ 

Turning the world upside down 

The national political conventions 

have ended, the parties have 

nominated their candidates for 

president, and the election season is 

entering its final weeks. 

It is a good time for us to pray for our 

country and reflect on our duties as 

citizens and believers. 

The Scriptures teach us that we have 

“no lasting city” here on earth. Our 

citizenship is in heaven and we seek the 

city that is to come. 

But as the prophet Jeremiah reminded 

the Israelites when they were exiled in 

Babylon, we are called to work for the 

good of the earthly city in which we 

live. 

The early Christians prayed for civic 

leaders. They blessed those who rejected 

them, and responded to the evil 

around them by doing good. 

Even in the face of hatred and persecution, 

they never compromised their 

beliefs or Jesus’ teachings. “We must 

obey God rather than men,” they said. 

The Acts of the Apostles is the blueprint 

of the first evangelization. It 

should still be our blueprint. 

In it, we see how the first believers 

refused to be conformed to the spirit of 

the age or the fashions of the culture. 

They preached the word urgently, in 

season and out of season. 

At Ephesus, they challenged the idols 

of the economy and society; at Athens, 

they engaged the ideals of cultural and 

intellectual elites. 

In Acts, the Church’s opponents 

complain that the disciples “have turned 

the world upside down.” 

The early Christians never tried to 

change the world by using power or 

violence, but they turned the world 

upside down by proclaiming and practicing 

values and virtues that the world 

had never seen before. 

They proclaimed that God loves us, 

that he wants us to love others as he 

loves us; they practiced mercy and 

compassion, especially for the weak; 

they loved even their enemies and 

taught that we should care for everyone, 

even those outside our “group.” 

We take these ideas for granted now, 

but they came into the world with Jesus 

and were first spread by his Church. 

The early Church was the first to 

proclaim the sanctity of all human life. 

Athenagoras, a Christian layman, wrote 

this to the emperor Marcus Aurelius 

in the second century: “For we regard 

the very fetus in the womb as a created 

being, and therefore an object of God’s 

care.” 

Those first Christians were willing to 

die for their beliefs, and for their right 

to live by their beliefs. Religious freedom 

was another new idea the Church 

brought into the world. 

Sometimes we can think that our 

world is so complicated now that it’s 

impossible to live our faith with the 

same clarity as those first Christians. 

But our challenges are the same, and 

our mission remains. 

Once again this year, the U.S. bishops 

have given us excellent resources to 

help us reflect on our obligations as 

citizens and followers of Christ. I urge 

you to visit their website (usccb.org). 

I also urge you to reflect on the 

Catechism’s sections on respect for 

human life (nos. 2258–2330), on the 

person and society (nos. 1877–1948), 

and on Catholic social doctrine (nos. 

2419–2449). 

Catholics are not a political party or a 

voting bloc; we have no policy platform. 

But we are called by Jesus, each of us 

by baptism, to continue the mission of 

those early Christians, the mission of 

spreading the Gospel’s values and ideals 

in our society. 

In our day that means we must defend 

Catholics are not a political party or a voting bloc; 

we have no policy platform. 

the dignity of the human person, from 

conception to natural death, and we 

must defend the freedom and equality 

of every person, no matter what their 

race or where they come from. 

We are called to make this world more 

like God created it to be. 

That means being good stewards of 

creation. It means building a society 

where men and women have work that 

enables them to lead a dignified life, to 

get married and have children, and to 

know they will have security if they are 

disabled and when they are sick and 

old. 

There is a beautiful letter from the 

early Church that says: “What the soul 

is to the body, Christians are to the 

world.” 

This is how we need to think about 

our lives. We are the “soul” of the 

world. 

Each of us can bring the love of Christ 

into every element of our lives, spreading 

his joy and peace in all our dealings 

with our neighbors, in our work, 

and in our participation in society. 

That’s how the early Christians lived. 

And that’s how, in our times, we can 

turn the world upside down again. 

Pray for me and I will pray for you. 

And let us entrust these coming weeks 

to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, 

patroness of this great country. 


WORLD 

A bell’s new home — Gold medalist Marileidy Paulino of the Dominican Republic rings the Olympic bell last 

month in Paris. Church officials announced after the games that the bell will be placed inside the newly restored 

Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and ring during every Mass once the cathedral officially reopens in December. | 

OSV NEWS/ALEKSANDRA SZMIGIEL, REUTERS 

■ Scientists confirm 

Shroud of Turin is 

2,000 years old 

A new study has determined that the 

Shroud of Turin dates to the time of 

Jesus Christ, refuting skeptics who 

claim it was a medieval forgery. 

Scientists at Italy’s Institute of 

Crystallography used a method called 

wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS) 

on eight strands of the linen cloth, 

which tradition holds was the burial 

cloth of Christ and bears his image. 

Not only did the analysis determine 

the 2,000-year age of the same, but 

the data closely matched another 

linen sample from Israel in the 1st 

century A.D. 

The Shroud contains an imprinted 

image of a man with marks that 

correspond to the crucifixion wounds 

described in the Gospels. It was 

first displayed in 1350 and has been 

housed at the cathedral in Turin, 

Italy, since 1578. 

■ Vatican office’s new book on 

end-of-life issues causes stir 

A Vatican office appeared to depart from previous 

positions on providing food and hydration 

for patients in a vegetative state. 

The Pontifical Academy for Life’s “Small 

Lexicon on End of Life,” published last month, 

reaffirms prohibitions on euthanasia and assisted 

suicide, but stated doctors are “required to 

respect the will of the patient who refuses [nutrition] 

with a conscious and informed decision, 

even expressed in advance in anticipation of the 

possible loss of the ability to express oneself and 

choose.” 

Past Vatican statements have affirmed the 

moral obligation to provide food and water to 

patients in a vegetative state, even if there’s moral 

certainty that the patient will never recover. 

Father Patrick Pullicino, who was a hospital 

doctor before becoming a priest in the U.K., 

told The Catholic Herald that while “we know 

it is never moral to stop fluids or nutrition … 

hospitals have become experts at delaying fluids 

and nutrition particularly in the elderly. 

“But why do you want to start a dialogue on 

something that is intrinsically evil unless you 

want to bring it in?” he said. 

■ Nicaragua: 25 Catholic groups 

shuttered in new crackdown 

Nicaragua’s government has revoked the legal status of more than 25 

Catholic organizations, including religious orders such as the Franciscans 

and Carmelites. 

The organizations were a portion of 1,500 nongovernmental religious 

and civic organizations shuttered on Aug. 19 by the country’s Interior 

Ministry, which claims the organizations failed to report finances properly 

“for periods of between one and 35 years,” leading to the revoked 

status and state seizure of assets. 

Two days prior, the government exiled two priests — Fathers Leonel 

Balmaceda and Denis Martínez — bringing the total number of Catholic 

religious exiled from the country since 2018 to 245. 

Father Leonel Balmaceda (left) and Father Denis Martínez. | CONFIDENCIAL DIGITAL 


NATION 

■ Supreme Court blocks 

controversial Title IX 

changes for schools 

The Supreme Court temporarily 

blocked a new Biden Administration 

rule that would expand Title IX anti-discrimination 

protections to students who 

identify as transgender. 

Several states sued the Department of 

Education after it released the revised 

regulations in April, arguing that the 

change could defeat the Title IX’s intended 

purposes of protecting women’s sports. 

While the nine justices differed in their 

concerns about the changes — scheduled 

to take effect Aug. 1 — all agreed they 

could remain blocked for now. 

Religious liberty advocates say the 

change would force educational institutions 

that receive federal funding — including 

Catholic ones — to go against 

their beliefs. 

“This administration is ignoring biological 

reality, science, and common sense,” 

Jonathan Scruggs of the Alliance Defending 

Freedom told OSV News. “Female 

athletes, students, and teachers across the 

country are right to stand against the administration’s 

adoption of extreme gender 

ideology, which would have devastating 

consequences for students, teachers, 

administrators, and families.” 

■ Experts confirm Kansas nun’s 

body hasn’t decomposed 

A new scientific investigation of the remains of a Benedictine sister from Kansas 

seems to support claims that she is incorrupt. 

When the remains of Benedictine Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster were transferred 

in April 2023, four years following her death, her body appeared to have 

undergone no decomposition, despite being buried in an unsealed wooden 

casket with no embalming. 

Preliminary investigations found no elements that would have impacted the 

decomposition rate of the sister’s remains, giving credence to initial thoughts 

that the remains may be “incorrupt,” often interpreted as a sign of holiness. 

On Aug. 22, Bishop James Johnston of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph 

released results of an investigation by medical experts who confirmed the body 

“does not appear to have experienced the decomposition that would have normally 

been expected under such previous burial conditions.” 

Bishop Johnston said that no canonization cause for Lancaster has been started, 

and that “incorruptibility is not considered to be an indication of sainthood.” 

The body of Sister Mary Wilhelmina 

Lancaster, foundress of the Benedictines of 

Mary, Queen of Apostles, lies in repose in 

May 2023. | OSV NEWS/MEGAN MARLEY 

■ New Jersey diocese sues over green 

card change affecting priests 

The Diocese of Paterson, New Jersey, is suing the federal 

government over changes to visa rules that are forcing foreign 

priests to leave the U.S. 

The suit challenges changes made by the State Department 

to the Immigration and Nationality Act in April 2023. 

The changes expanded the immigration category that 

oversees religious workers to include some juvenile migrants 

— adding up to 100,000 extra applications to the category, 

despite retaining the annual cap of 10,000 green cards a 

year. 

The result has been a growing backlog of permanent 

residency applications for clergy and religious working in 

U.S. dioceses on R-1 religious visas, which require workers to 

return to their country of origin after five years. 

Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ 

Priests pray with parishioners at St. Mary Church in East Islip, New York, in April 2024 

at a “Keep Our Priests” rosary rally. More than 300 people gathered to pray for changes 

in U.S. immigration procedures forcing priests to leave the country. | OSV NEWS/GREG- 

ORY A. SHEMITZ 

committee on migration, told fellow bishops in June that priests could have to wait 15 years for a green card as a result. 

“This is simply not sustainable for our ministries,” Seitz said, “and it is devastating for parishes that will be left without a 

pastor when he is forced to depart the country at the end of his R-1 visa.” 


LOCAL 

■ Faith groups ask governor to 

support bill aimed at solitary 

confinement 

The Diocese of Oakland is helping lead 

a push by faith-based organizations urging 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other 

state leaders to restrict solitary confinement in 

detention facilities. 

A new bill known as the “California Mandela 

Act” would forbid solitary confinement 

for certain populations and would limit the 

amount of time it could be used. It was passed 

by both the state Assembly and Senate, but 

would need to be enacted by Newsom by 

Sept. 30 to take effect. 

California-based religious organizations first 

sent a letter to Newsom supporting the bill in 

2023. The Diocese of Oakland reissued the 

letter in August with more groups signing on, 

including the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, 

the dioceses of Orange, Fresno, San Jose, and 

Stockton, All Saints Episcopal Church in 

Pasadena, and Temple Sinai in Oakland. 

“Solitary confinement is torture,” the letter 

states. “Solitary confinement contradicts the 

fundamental religious principles of redemption, 

compassion, and the pursuit of justice 

that aims to restore individuals and communities.” 

■ Sisters of St. Louis honored at 

St. Mel for 75th year in California 

The Sisters of St. Louis were honored at St. Mel Church in Woodland 

Hills on Aug. 24 with a special Mass and reception honoring the 75th 

anniversary of their coming to California in 1949. 

The sisters have a particularly strong connection in Woodland Hills, 

having previously had their convent at St. Mel and founding the nearby 

all-girls Louisville High School. 

During the Mass — also attended by Bishop Gerald Wilkerson — Father 

Steve Davoren, pastor at St. Mel, presented a plaque dedicating the 

Sacred Heart Adoration Chapel in the parish’s Spiritual Retreat Center to 

the Sisters of St. Louis. 

“Make no mistake, you laid that foundation,” Davoren said. “As you celebrate 

75 years 

here in this 

archdiocese, 

think about 

the miracle, 

the grace of 

all the people 

— thousands 

upon thousands 

of people 

— where your 

lives have 

crossed. 

“People will 

remember your 

presence.” 

Tomorrow’s leaders today — LA Auxiliary Bishop Brian Nunes smiles with students after celebrating Mass for 

The Association of Catholic Student Councils’ leadership conference at Whittier College on July 26-28. More 

than 300 rising sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders from more than 70 local Catholic schools attended the 

TACSC conferences this summer at Whittier College and Loyola Marymount University. | TACSC 

Father Steve Davoren, pastor at St. Mel Church in Woodland Hills, presents a 

plaque to the Sisters of St. Louis. | CHUCK BUTTITT 

■ LA cathedral to host 

one-day Gospel revival 

experience 

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles, 

along with the nonprofit organization 

ACTS XXIX, is hosting a free one-day 

experience titled “Rescue Live!” at the 

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels 

on Sept. 28. 

The event is aimed at current Catholics, 

those who have left the Church, 

and those who have never experienced 

church before. The conference 

will tackle four main questions in 

pondering the Gospel and Jesus: 

Why is there something rather than 

nothing? Why is everything so obviously 

messed up? What, if anything, 

has God done about it? And if he has 

done anything about it, then how 

should I respond? 

To learn more or register, visit lacatholics.org/rescue-live. 

Y 


V 

IN OTHER WORDS... 

Letters to the Editor 

Wealth, weddings, and sin 

Thanks to Robert Brennan for his Aug. 21 column in AngelusNews. 

com (“This $600 million wedding doesn’t compare to my parents’ 

nuptials”) on the simplicity and sincerity of his parents’ wedding prompted by an 

extravagant wedding of two super-rich persons. 

His references to the opulence portrayed in “The Great Gatsby” were spot on. 

U.S. billionaires do not have a monopoly, in the words of the economist Thorstein 

Veblen, on “conspicuous consumption.” Rulers and oligarchs from Solomon 

through Louis XIV have created spectacles of individual and family wealth, manifesting 

that cardinal sin: pride. 

But there have been rich saints such as St. Louis of France, St. Charles Borromeo 

of Milan, and St. Thomas More of England. Each of us, whatever our 

wealth, should reflect on our resources to identify what more we can do in light of 

Matthew 25:31–46. 

— Phil Argento, Pasadena 

Voting for life 

Regarding “More than a swing vote” by John L. Allen Jr in the Aug. 9 issue: 

When voting this fall, remember that in the spring Vice President Kamala Harris 

traveled to several states in the “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms Tour” to stump 

for legal abortion. 

She visited a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Minnesota and praised the 

staff for its “true leadership” in providing health care. Harris never dropped by a 

pregnancy center to speak with women who chose life. Her values are not Catholic 

values. 

— Sally Carpenter, Moorpark 

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. 

Day for deacons 

Deacons and their wives pose after a special Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on Aug. 10 to celebrate 

the feast day of St. Lawrence, the notable third-century deacon and martyr. | VICTOR ALEMÁN 

View more photos 

from this gallery at 

AngelusNews.com/photos-videos 

Do you have photos or a story from your parish that you’d 

like to share? Please send to editorial @angelusnews.com. 

“Let’s be on every corner 

[in Los Angeles] so that if 

someone is looking for a 

connection with God, we’re 

there.” 

~ Father Joseph Fitzgerald, chaplain for the Paris 

Olympics, in an Aug. 20 OSV News article on 

Catholics getting ready to evangelize at LA’s 2028 

Games. 

“We’re like a tiny fly in their 

soup.” 

~ Sister Barbara McCracken, in an Aug. 23 Zenit 

article on a group of sisters challenging major 

corporations to change their business practices. 

“If there’s one thing the 

monks taught me, it’s to 

move at what I call God 

speed.” 

~ Carlos Whittaker, author and former worship 

pastor, in an Aug. 23 Religion News Service article 

on what happened when he spent seven weeks 

screen-free. 

“People want the 

supernatural, they want 

the strange, they want 

what they don’t get out of a 

Labour Party manifesto.” 

~ British historian Tom Holland in an August cover 

story in The New Statesman on “Why religion is 

thriving in a non-believing age.” 

“Liking someone’s post 

is not the same as sitting 

face-to-face and listening to 

their life’s journey.” 

~ Newt Crenshaw, in an Aug. 23 Relevant Magazine 

commentary on how the Church can help this 

generation’s mental health crisis. 


IN EXILE 

FATHER RONALD ROLHEISER, OMI 

Oblate of Mary Immaculate Father 

Ronald Rolheiser is a spiritual 

writer; ronrolheiser.com 

An invitation to a liturgical prayer 

We are all priests from our baptism, 

and with that comes an 

invitation, namely, to pray for 

the world as a priest through the prayer 

of Christ and the Church. What does 

that mean exactly? 

Everyone who is baptized as a Christian 

is baptized into the priesthood of 

Jesus Christ. The priesthood is given 

to all baptized Christians and is not 

just the prerogative and responsibility 

of those who are officially ordained 

for ministry, and with this comes an 

invitation to all adult Christians. 

This invitation is something very 

concrete. We don’t have to think about 

what we are meant to do or invent 

something. Rather, we are invited to 

join in a practice that began in the 

early apostolic community and has 

come down to us today, that is, the 

practice of daily praying two sets of 

prayers out of a ritual set of prayers 

that are variously called: The Divine 

Office of the Church, The Liturgy of the 

Hours, The Canonical Hours, or The 

Breviary. Since the time of the earliest 

Christian monastics, these prayers have 

been a key element in the prayer of the 

Church, Catholic and non-Catholic 

alike. 

There are eight such sets of prayers, 

each meant to be said at a different 

time of day and linked to the mood 

and light of the hour. The eight sets 

of these prayers are: Lauds (prayed 

as morning prayer); Prime and Terce 

(prayed at various times during the 

morning); Sext (prayed at noon); 

None (prayed mid-afternoon); Vespers 

(prayed as the workday ends); Compline 

(prayed as a night prayer); and 

Vigils (prayed sometime during the 

night). Note the appropriateness of the 

name, The Liturgy of the Hours. 

While there are eight sets of these 

prayers, only monks and nuns inside 

contemplative orders pray all eight 

of these. Priests, deacons, men and 

women in religious orders that are fully 

engaged in ministry, Protestant and 

Evangelical ministers, and laity who 

pray these “hours,” normally pray only 

two of them, Lauds (morning prayer) 

and Vespers (evening prayer). 

And these prayers need to be distinguished 

from our private prayers. 

These are not private meditations, but 

are what is called public prayer, liturgical 

prayer, the Church’s prayer, the 

prayer of Christ for the world. Ideally, 

they are meant to be prayed, indeed 

celebrated communally, but they are 

still the public prayer of the Church 

even when they are prayed alone. The 

intent in praying them is to join the official 

prayer of the Church and pray a 

prayer that is being prayed at that same 

hour by thousands (perhaps millions) 

of Christians around the world who, as 

the body of Christ, are praying Christ’s 

priestly prayer for the world. 

Moreover, since these are the prayers 

of the Church, and not our own 

prayer, we are not free to change them 

or substitute other prayers for them according 

to our temperament, piety, or 

theological taste. These prayers don’t 

have to be personally meaningful to us 

each day. We are praying as priests, offering 

prayer for the world, and that is 

deeply meaningful in itself, independent 

of whether it is affectively meaningful 

to us on a given day or even during 

a whole period of our lives. Fulfilling 

a responsibility isn’t always affectively 

meaningful. In praying these prayers, 

we are assuming one of our responsibilities 

as adult Christians, that is, to pray 

with the Church, through Christ, for 

the world. 

The two hours (Lauds and Vespers) 

that we are invited to pray each day 

follow a simple structure: three psalms, 

a short scriptural reading, an ancient 

Christian hymn (the Benedictus or the 

Magnificat), a short series of petitions, 

the Lord’s Prayer, and a concluding 

prayer. 

So, this is the invitation: as an adult 

Christian, as a priest from your baptism, 

as a woman or man concerned 

for the world and the Church, I invite 

you to join thousands and thousands of 

Christians around the world and each 

day pray the Church’s morning prayer 

(Lauds) and the Church’s evening 

prayer (Vespers). Then, like Christ, as a 

priest, you will be offering sacrifice for 

the world. 

Subsequently, when you watch the 

world news and feel discouraged and 

helpless in the face of all that isn’t 

right in the world and ask yourself, 

what can I do? Well, you will be doing 

something that’s very real, praying with 

Christ and the Church for the world. 

Where do you find these prayers, 

Lauds and Vespers? Books containing 

them can be purchased from almost 

any religious publishing house, Catholic 

or Protestant. Indeed, they need 

not even be purchased. Today they are 

available (free) online. Simply engage 

your search engine and type in The 

Liturgy of the Hours or ibreviary and 

you will find them. 

In praying these prayers each day, 

whether alone or (ideally) with others, 

you will be assuming a special power 

and a responsibility given to you in 

your baptism and will be giving an important 

gift to the world. And you will 

never again have to struggle with the 

question, how should I pray today? 


EXTRA POINT 

Mini-homilies, divided loyalties, and athlete marriage prep: 

Meet the LA priests who minister to NFL teams. 

BY MIKE CISNEROS 

Father Richard Sunwoo, 

right, poses with Niko Rudela, 

the brother of Father 

Marko Rudela, during a 

preseason Chargers game 

on Aug. 17. | LOS ANGELES 

CHARGERS 

Father Richard Sunwoo was never 

a big sports fan. But when a student 

from Loyola High School 

came to him asking for help converting 

to Catholicism, he decided to meet 

with him every Sunday. 

When they would meet, Sunwoo 

thought it was odd that the student was 

always sweaty. 

After his baptism on Easter Sunday, 

Sunwoo asked the student about his 

college plans. 

“He said, ‘I’m going to Stanford. I 

got an offer to play football,’ ” Sunwoo 

said. “I said, ‘I didn’t know you played 

football.’ Because it just never came 

up. 

“But that’s how I started getting 

involved in sports.” 

Sunwoo, now the pastor at St. Louise 

de Marillac Church in Covina, is one 


of a handful of priests in the Archdiocese 

of Los Angeles who regularly 

celebrate Mass for, or minister to, 

professional sports teams. With the 

NFL season kicking off on Sept. 5 and 

five teams having training camps in 

Southern California, those priests have 

had to step up their games. 

Father Jihoon Kim 

Sunwoo is a veteran at this point, 

having started doing Masses for the 

Dodgers nearly a decade ago — which 

he still does to this day — and then 

moving on to the Rams, the Cowboys, 

and other visiting NFL teams. He also 

ministered to USC’s athletes during 

his previous assignment at Our Savior 

Church. 

This year, he will be regularly celebrating 

Mass for the Chargers under 

the supervision of team chaplain 

George Gregory. 

“I can’t describe the joy that I have 

because the athletes there are just really 

good people,” Sunwoo said. “The 

coaches are just really good people. It’s 

regular priest life. It just happens to be 

in the context of professional sports.” 

Sunwoo has an extra reason to be 

excited: This past offseason, the Chargers 

hired Jim Harbaugh as their head 

coach, one of the most outspoken, intense, 

and public Catholics out there. 

“He believes in God and he’s not 

ashamed about it,” Sunwoo said about 

Harbaugh. “He’s also very pro-life. But 

what you see is kind of what you get. 

What you see on TV is how he is in 

Jim Harbaugh, now the coach of the LA Chargers, 

presents Pope Francis with a University of Michigan 

football helmet at the Vatican in 2017. Harbaugh is 

one of the Chargers employees who regularly attends 

Mass. | CNS/L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO 

personal meetings. It’s not a schtick. 

“When you see him excited about 

football, he’s just as excited about his 

faith.” 

That Harbaugh effect has already paid 

off for Sunwoo’s homilies, which, due 

to other coaches’ time constraints, have 

to be extremely concise. But after his 

first Mass with Harbaugh, the coach 

gave Sunwoo permission to be free. 

“He was like, ‘You know, Father, don’t 

be afraid to give it to us,” Sunwoo said. 

“I said, ‘I’m sorry, coach. I’m used to 

working with a very short window of 

time. I just want to be respectful of 

your time.’ ” 

Time also proved to be a challenge 

for Father Jihoon Kim, who previously 

served at St. Kateri Tekakwitha Church 

in Santa Clarita. Celebrating Mass for 

the Rams, Chargers, and visiting NFL 

teams near SoFi Stadium in Inglewood 

often meant long drives. 

But his new assignment this year at St. 


Paul Church near Mid-City Los Angeles 

has allowed him a new opportunity 

this season: becoming the chaplain for 

the LA Rams. 

“The main role is celebration of the 

Mass,” Kim said. “But as I get to know 

them more, there might be more 

opportunities for me to do more things 

with them. Talk over various issues 

they’re dealing with, if they need some 

kind of spiritual guidance. Or perhaps 

there might be players who might be 

planning to get married, I’ll be open to 

help them with marriage prep.” 

Kim believes his age and being a 

relatively new priest will help him with 

players. 

“Players might find me more relatable 

because I’m around their age group,” 

Kim said. “Sometimes that happens at 

a parish level with the young adults or 

youth, they tend to relate more to the 

younger [priests]. So I’m thinking probably 

the same will be for the players.” 

For Father Preston Passos, pastor at St. 

Mary Magdalen Church in Camarillo, 

this is like a rookie season, having celebrated 

his first Mass this summer for 

the Cowboys with Head Coach Mike 

McCarthy at their training camp in 

Oxnard. Passos said he would definitely 

do it again for NFL teams if asked, 

especially if it involved his favorite, the 

Pittsburgh Steelers. 

“When they asked me, I was excited 

about it,” Passos said. “I had no anticipation 

of doing that ever. 

“If there’s any other Masses, especially 

with the Steelers in town, they would 

call me.” 

The force behind the ministry is a 

group called Catholic Athletes for 

It all comes 

back to 

Vin Scully 

Catholic Athletes for Christ (CAC) organizes Masses 

for every Major League Baseball franchise, including 

the Los Angeles Dodgers. Nearly everyone who has 

served or attended Mass at Dodger Stadium revels in the 

moments of seeing — and most importantly — hearing 

Vin Scully proclaim the word of God as a lector. 

“You are nervous because it’s Vin Scully,” Father Richard 

Sunwoo said. “If you’ve grown up listening to the Dodgers, 

it’s just, ‘Oh, there’s a walking legend right there’ and he’s 

telling you he’s going to do the first reading.” 

For Sunwoo, it was an experience like no other. 

“When the opportunity arose for me to help with Masses, 

I was super excited,” he said. “You’re led down that tunnel 

and you’ve got this pass on your neck. I looked like a 

first-grader going to class for the first time, your eyes are big 

and wide. You’re just passing by the Hall of Fame trophies, 

the bats, you’re seeing the jerseys on the wall. Then you’re 

called to celebrate Mass and it’s a surreal experience when 

Vin walks through the door and you just don’t know what 

to say.” 

Ray McKenna, the founder and president of Catholic 

Athletes for Christ, credited Scully with helping his organization 

immensely, capped by the legendary broadcaster 

recording a two-disc CD of him reciting the rosary. The 

recording, which is still available to purchase, is used to 

raise funds for CAC. 

“He sent a thank you note and a contribution to our mission, 

to our ministry, saying, ‘I want to tell you how important 

it is for me to have the Mass at the stadium and how 

much I enjoy being part of this. And I really just want to 

The late Vin Scully during an interview for the baseball documentary “Soul of a Champion: 

The Gil Hodges Story,” produced by Spirit Juice Studios in association with Catholic 

Athletes for Christ | CNS/COURTESY SPIRIT JUICE STUDIOS 

express my thanks.’ That was such an incredible moment.” 

Even visiting players attending Mass at Dodger Stadium 

were blown away, McKenna said. 

“They came back and I don’t really have words to describe 

how elated they were going to a Mass where Vin Scully was 

a lector,” he said. “One of them said, ‘It was amazing, Ray. 

It was like listening to God read the Old Testament.’ ” 

— Mike Cisneros 


Christ, which helps organize Masses, 

reconciliation, and spiritual retreats 

for professional sports teams across the 

country. President and founder Ray 

McKenna said they do so knowing how 

essential the Eucharist should be for a 

Catholic athlete. 

“If you wanted to be a practicing 

Catholic, going to Mass isn’t a nice 

thing to do, it’s not a fun thing to do,” 

McKenna said. “It is those things, but 

more, it’s a mandatory thing to do. 

“The virtues that strengthen you to 

be a better Catholic also help you be a 

better player. And vice versa, the things 

you practice that make you a better 

athlete make you a better Catholic.” 

McKenna said he’s thankful for priests 

such as Sunwoo, Kim, and Passos for 

being able to serve superstar athletes 

and coaches just like everyday Catholics. 

“Not any priest can do it,” McKenna 

said. “The ‘right’ priest is somebody 

who’s conversant with the sport, with 

football and baseball. Enjoys it probably, 

but isn’t like a super fan. Because 

on the one hand, if you don’t understand 

the value at all, you probably are 

lacking a little bit in being able to serve 

the community. On the other hand, if 

you’re all about wins and losses and the 

team you have their jersey on, it kind 

of misses the point of bringing Jesus to 

the team.” 

Each priest said that celebrating Mass 

for NFL teams was no different than 

doing one anywhere else off-site. They 

simply brought 

Father Preston Passos 

their vestments, 

travel Mass kits 

and set up a 

suitable place for 

an altar. The difficult 

part is getting 

those painfully 

short homilies 

to connect with 

coaches and players 

whose jobs 

involve pounding 

into each other 

all day. 

Sunwoo: “You’re 

talking about 

the beauty of 

the game and I 

use all of that for 

my homily. Like 

how do we build trust with Christ and 

maybe God’s relying on you. Maybe 

Jesus is QBing and he’s relying on you 

to do your job. How successful am I 

doing that?” 

Kim: “I reminded the players the 

Magi saw a star and they followed the 

star to come to Christ. You guys are 

literally NFL stars that a lot of kids 

look up to. And you could lead them 

to Christ, or you could pull them away 

from Christ.” 

Passos: “I did tie that into the Eucharist 

and being filled and nurtured, not 

just physically, but spiritually. Football 

is mostly focusing on physical needs 

and strengthening yourself physically. 

But I told them that the Eucharist 

also strengthens us and builds us up 

spiritually, which can help in a life of 

pro football.” 

At the end of the day, for these priests 

celebrating Mass for pro sports teams 

is simply a unique side project. They 

have day jobs. They have parishioners 

to serve. They give to the NFL what 

belongs to the NFL, and to God what 

belongs to God. 

With one caveat for Father Kim. 

“Last year, I celebrated Mass for the 

[Kansas City] Chiefs and they won the 

Super Bowl,” Kim said. “So hopefully 

I’ll celebrate Mass for the Rams and 

they’ll win it this year.” 

Mike Cisneros is the associate editor of 

Angelus. 


Students from St. Paul High School 

and Sacred Heart High School are 

guided through a biology lab experiment 

at Loyola Marymount University 

as part of Early College Network 

coursework. | EDGAR SALMINGO 

LA Catholic high 

schools already pride 

themselves on highachieving 

education, 

but a college program 

is taking them to new 

heights. 

BY GREG HARDESTY 

Ava Ines was apprehensive about 

taking a college class online. 

The summer before her first 

year of high school, she took an online 

course, “Global History to the Year 

1500,” from Arizona State University 

(ASU) as a participant in the Early 

College Network (ECN), a program 

launched by the LA Archdiocese’s 

Department of Catholic Schools. 

After a couple of weeks, Ines got the 

HIGHER LEARNING 

hang of the class. 

“I really enjoyed the lessons and 

discussions,” said Ines, now a sophomore 

at St. Joseph High School in 

Lakewood, whose dream job is to work 

for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 

Pasadena. “I’m truly grateful that there’s 

such a program that allows me to have 

a sneak peek into college. 

“The experience has been so valuable 

to me because it is slowly preparing me 

for my future after high school.” 

Launched in 2020 with initial partner 

ASU — and expanded to include Seton 

Hill, a four-year Catholic university in 

Pennsylvania — the ECN is expected 

to phase in four more high schools this 

academic year, expanding to 15 from 

11 last year. 

Nearly 1,000 students in the archdiocese 

are expected to take part in the 

ECN this year, said Edgar Salmingo Jr., 

director of Early College and Online 

Learning for the Department of Catholic 

Schools. 

The ECN was made possible by a 

grant from the Conrad N. Hilton and 

Dan Murphy foundations — funding 

that covers course fees. In addition, students 

in the ECN taking ASU courses 

also earn an annual high school scholarship 

through the Hilton Foundation. 

Although many public high schools 

and various Catholic high schools have 

entered partnerships to allow students 

to take college classes while still in high 

school, most of them are with community 

colleges and not four-year universities, 

Salmingo said. 

The ECN program is designed to enhance 

high school transcripts, build the 

confidence of high school students to 

take college-level courses, and reduce 

their overall college costs. 

“I’m not aware of any other diocese or 

archdiocese that has a formal, systemwide 

program like this,” Salmingo said. 

Students in the ECN, which targets 

low-income, historically ethnically 

underrepresented, and first-generation 

prospective college students, can earn 

credit in math, science, English, social 


studies, Spanish, and other general 

electives. 

“In a world where competition to get 

into college is so fierce,” Salmingo said, 

“we’re looking to provide every edge we 

can in the admissions process and to 

give these students the opportunity to 

succeed in and complete college.” 

Sofia Medina, a third-year student 

at St. Paul High School in Santa Fe 

Springs, started in the ECN the summer 

of her sophomore year by taking 

an online ASU course, Psychology 101. 

“Because the course was online,” 

Medina said, “I was able to pace myself 

with ease. By taking this and other college 

courses, I’ve learned time management, 

critical thinking, self-motivation, 

and discipline. The ECN program has 

allowed me to better myself academically 

and personally.” 

ASU courses are only available 

online while Seton Hill courses utilize 

teachers from the archdiocese to teach 

its college-level classes during school 

hours. The ECN courses are open to 

all students in good standing. 

One ECN participant, Ashley Suazo, 

is a standout. The 2024 graduate of 

Sacred Heart High School in Lincoln 

Heights completed two ASU certificates 

in one year, in project management 

and applied business data analytics. 

Suazo was awarded a four-year scholarship 

to Rice University through the 

QuestBridge National College Match 

program, which connects high-achieving, 

low-income, first-generation 

students to top universities with full-ride 

scholarships. 

“The ECN program allowed me to 

advance in my studies,” Ashley said. “I 

learned valuable knowledge and skills 

that will help in my career. I enjoyed 

the flexibility of the courses. I’m 

thankful for the support I received from 

the ECN in completing these mastery 

certificates. 

“ECN is an amazing opportunity that 

all students should optimize.” 

In addition to Sacred Heart, St. 

Joseph, and St. Paul high schools, the 

ECN includes Cantwell-Sacred Heart 

of Mary (Montebello), San Gabriel 

Mission (San Gabriel), Santa Clara 

(Oxnard) St. Pius X-St. Matthias Academy 

(Downey), Bishop Mora Salesian 

(Los Angeles), St. Anthony (Long 

Beach), St. Joseph (Santa Maria) and 

St. Bonaventure (Ventura). 

It’s clear that the program is having an 

impact. 

Last year, around 85% of participating 

students in ECN courses were from 

Students from St. Paul High School and Sacred Heart 

High School pose in front of the Hilton Center for 

Business at LMU. The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, 

along with the Dan Murphy Foundation, help fund the 

Early College Network. | EDGAR SALMINGO 

historically underrepresented minority 

groups, Salmingo said. 

In the 2023-2024 school year, 507 

ECN students completed 1,088 courses 

and earned 3,251 college credits. 

Because those courses were taken 

in high school, Salmingo said those 

students saved: 

• $1,040,320, if they took their 

courses at a Cal State university as 

an undergraduate. 


courses at a UC school as an 

undergraduate. 


courses at USC as an undergraduate. 

Ines plans to complete three more 

ECN courses this year. 

“It might be scary at first,” she said, 

“but I would tell students to not be 

intimidated by the amount of work or 

content.” 

Medina, meanwhile, plans to take 

some Seton Hill classes this academic 

year and hopes to major in psychology 

and become a child psychologist. 

“I highly recommend this program,” 

she said. 

Greg Hardesty was a journalist for the 

Orange County Register for 17 years, 

and is a longtime contributing writer to 

the Orange County Catholic newspaper. 

Students at St. Joseph High School in Lakewood take a 

college-level precalculus course on their campus as part 

of the Early College Network collaboration with Seton 

Hill University. | EDGAR SALMINGO 


STARTING 

WITH SMILES 

Catholic schools across 

the archdiocese gave 

students an enthusiastic 

welcome back to school. 

Students at St. Joseph School in La Puente smile behind a “First Day of School” selfie 

frame. | ST. JOSEPH SCHOOL 

Students at Notre Dame High School get playful on their 

first day back at school. | NOTRE DAME HIGH SCHOOL 

Kindergartener Jade Klemack, a new student 

at St. Charles Borromeo School in North 

Hollywood, smiles on her first day of school. | 

ARCHDIOCESE OF LOS ANGELES 

16 • ANGELUS • September 6, 2024 

Incoming fifth-graders at St. Eugene 

School in South Los Angeles hold up 

five fingers on the first day of school. | 

ST. EUGENE SCHOOL

Students, teachers, parents, 

and staff get excited during 

the welcome Mass at St. Mary 

Magdalen School in Camarillo. | 

ST. MARY MAGDALEN SCHOOL 

Students at St. John 

Bosco High School 

in Bellflower play a 

friendly game of tugof-war 

during student 

orientation. | ST. JOHN 

BOSCO HIGH SCHOOL 

Principal Jamison 

Mahar poses with 

students while 

playing games to 

celebrate back to 

school at Our Lady 

of Loretto School 

in Westlake. | 

ARCHDIOCESE OF 

LOS ANGELES 

Students at Providence High School in Burbank hold up signs welcoming 

everyone back for the first day of school. | PROVIDENCE HIGH SCHOOL 


STANDING UP FOR SERRA 

For pilgrims, this year’s 35-mile walk between missions was a way 

to ask for the saint’s help — and continue his mission. 

BY PABLO KAY / PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN RUEDA 

Some 300 walkers from the 

fourth annual St. Junípero 

Serra Walking Pilgrimage 

arrive at Mission Basilica San 

Buenaventura Aug. 11. 

As he walked along Pacific Coast 

Highway near Carpinteria, Greg 

Wood had fallen behind the 

group of 300 people he was supposed 

to be leading on the fourth annual St. 

Junípero Serra Walking Pilgrimage. 

With the group 100 yards ahead, 

Wood found himself almost alone, 

except for the item in his hands: a 

reliquary holding a first-class relic of the 

pilgrimage’s namesake. 

“Here we are,” Wood remembered 

thinking to himself. “We’re walking in 

your footsteps, we’re doing what you 

came to do, and we’re continuing your 

mission.” 

Wood said he felt a “deep connection” 

in that moment with the saint, who 

inspired him to start the pilgrimage 

four years ago in the summer of 2020, 

when a wave of protests against racial 

injustice led some demonstrators in 

California to target and tear down 

statues of Serra. 

But on the weekend of Aug. 10-11, the 

group of parents, nuns, monks, and kids 

who walked the 35 miles from Mission 

Santa Barbara to Mission Basilica San 

Buenaventura drew inspiration from 

the Spanish friar who endured all kinds 

18 • ANGELUS • September 6, 2024

of hardships to bring Christianity to 

California. 

“He’s the apostle of California,” one 

walker told Angelus after arriving 

in Ventura. “We’re living in a crazy 

upside-down distorted world … so you 

have to stand up and do something 

beautiful like have a pilgrimage in the 

honor of Junípero Serra.” 

At the end of this year’s pilgrimage, 

the walkers were greeted by a special 

visitor: Archbishop José H. Gomez, 

who had come to celebrate Sunday 

evening Mass for them at San 

Buenaventura — founded by Serra in 

1782 — before dedicating a symbol of 

Serra with a history of its own. 

The 3,000-pound bronze statue had 

stood in front of Ventura City Hall 

since 1989, until it was removed for 

safety reasons amid the protests in 

2020. But after more than three years 

of exhaustive conversations involving 

tribal leaders, San Buenaventura pastor 

Father Tom Elewaut, and 

city officials, the statue was 

brought out of storage and 

installed in the Ventura 

mission’s gardens last 

February. 

“With so many other 

bad things that happened, 

it just tore my heart in 

half,” said Wood to the 

hundreds who gathered for 

the statue’s blessing after a 

Sunday evening Mass for 

the pilgrims. “We knew we 

had to stand up for what 

we know is true.” 

Walkers shared Wood’s 

view. 

Chick Kenney, a member 

of the “California Mission 

Father Tom Elewaut, pastor of 

Mission Basilica San Buenaventura, 

holds a first-class relic of 

Serra at a Mass for pilgrims with 

Archbishop José H. Gomez. 

Walkers” club, 

came from Santa 

Ana with his 

wife, Christine. 

He was grateful 

to see the Serra 

statue brought 

to the mission, 

“where he can 

be revered as he 

should be.” 

“I don’t get a sense that that’s all 

Pilgrimage founder Greg 

Wood speaks at the 

dedication ceremony 

for the Serra statue in 

the gardens of Mission 

Basilica San Buenaventura. 

The statue stood in 

front of Ventura City Hall 

for more than 30 years 

before being removed 

amid protests in 2020. 

necessarily true,” said Kenney of accusations 

that Serra mistreated natives 

during the founding of the mission. 

“Bad things happen all over the place.” 

The saint’s physical presence inspired 

walkers like Jeffrie and Stephanie 

Garcia, two sisters from Padre Serra 

Church in Camarillo. During their 

Saturday night stop at St. Joseph’s 

Church in Carpinteria — where 

pilgrims slept overnight in tents and 

were fed by local Knights of Columbus 

— one of the pilgrims stopped by with 

the relic of Serra he’d been carrying, 

offering them a few moments to pray 

with it. 

“That was not something that I would 

normally do,” said Stephanie, who 

spent the weekend praying for a friend 

who’d died days earlier. 

Salvatore Martello, a New York City 

native now living in Arizona, appreciated 

the chance to be “surrounded by so 

many other believers. 

“Especially amidst what we see going 

on in the world, and all of us were 


Pilgrims in line 

for Communion 

during Mass at 

San Buenaventura 

Aug. 11. 

focused on the same thing: God.” 

Serra’s example also helped Martello 

endure the walk’s physical challenges. 

As Martello’s feet began to blister, he 

listened to fellow walker and St. John’s 

Seminary faculty member Father Ray 

Marquez talk about how Serra’s zeal to 

share the Gospel proved stronger than 

the painful ulcer on his leg that made 

walking almost impossible during his 

travels across California and Mexico. 

“That was the motivation for me to 

continue on today, and I’m so glad I 

did,” said Martello. 

Eleven-year-old June may have been 

the youngest pilgrim to walk all 35 

miles. Starting out on the journey with 

her older sister, the realization hit her: 

There was no turning back. 

But remembering that the 35 miles 

between missions was a small fraction 

of what Serra walked regularly put 

things in perspective. As the last few 

miles of the walk got especially difficult, 

she drew strength from praying 

the rosary with the rest of the group. 

“Once you were there, you could 

either lay on the streets, or just go on,” 

laughed June, whose family are parishioners 

of St. Mary Magdalene Church 

in Camarillo. 

When they finally arrived at San 

Buenaventura late Sunday afternoon, 

the local Knights of Columbus formed 

an honor guard for the pilgrims as they 

sang the words of Catholic artist Matt 

Maher’s “Lord, I Need You.” Then, 

they followed Archbishop Gomez in 

procession as he entered the Mission 

Basilica with the Blessed Sacrament, 

followed by a few moments of adoration 

as the mission choir chanted 

“Tantum Ergo” before Mass. 

In his homily, Auxiliary Bishop Slawomir 

Szkredka thanked the pilgrims 

for their witness to Serra’s legacy, 

and for the prayer intentions they’d 

brought along. 

Then he quoted a line from a letter 

Serra wrote in 1769 detailing the difficulties 

of his mission in California: 

“But to a willing heart, everything is 

sweet.” 

The nourishment offered by the 

Eucharist, Szkredka explained, leads 

to the kind of interior change that enabled 

Serra to fulfill his mission. 

“We know that when we go out from 

the Eucharistic celebration, we will 

face hardships and difficulties and 

challenges. But we know that we go out 

with a heart of love, that we carry Jesus’ 

heart in us.” 

Looking ahead, the walkers’ summer 

pilgrimage options include the next 

Serra pilgrimage as well as the recently 

announced 2025 National Eucharistic 

Pilgrimage, set to finish in LA in June. 

Martello, who celebrated his 28th 

birthday during the pilgrimage, said he 

can’t wait to bring friends from Arizona 

and New York next year for a piece of 

the real Serra experience — and the 

sense of community it creates. 

“There’s a real spirit of camaraderie, 

like a big family,” said Wood. “It’s kind 

of like a managed chaos. We’re all in it 

together.” 

Pablo Kay is the editor-in-chief of 

Angelus. 



A woman prays 

during Christmas 

Mass at the cathedral 

in Jakarta, Indonesia. 

| CNS/DARREN WHI- 

TESIDE, REUTERS 

EYES TO THE EAST 

BY JOHN L. ALLEN JR. 

Pope Francis is 87. Why is he about to undertake the 

most grueling international trip of his pontificate? 

ROME – Just over a month ago, 81-year-old President 

Joe Biden made the obviously reluctant choice to withdraw 

from the 2024 race over widely held perceptions, 

even among Americans who admire Biden and who supported 

him in 2020, that he no longer possesses the physical and 

even mental capacity to lead. 

In other words, Biden’s main political problem heading into 

2024 wasn’t exactly anything he had done, but rather alarm 

over what he could no longer do. 

In a highly roundabout and indirect fashion, the Biden 

example may help answer an obvious question about the 

87-year-old Pope Francis today as well. 

To wit: Why in the world is this octogenarian pope, by now 

facing multiple health challenges, heading off Sept. 2-13 for 

the longest and most arduous journey of his entire papacy, 

taking him at one point almost 9,000 miles away from Rome? 

Why put himself through the ringer like this, especially since 

a Synod of Bishops that’s supposed to be the capstone of his 

legacy opens just a couple of weeks later? 

Granted, there’s logic for each stop along the way of this 

Asian and Oceanic odyssey, which includes the world’s largest 

Muslim nation in Indonesia, in percentage terms one of 

the most Catholic states on earth in East Timor, a classically 

peripheral missionary venue in Papua New Guinea, and one 

of the world’s financial powerhouses in Singapore. 

Yet those draws would have applied at any stage of the Francis 

papacy. The added factor right now is that the trip also 

affords the pontiff a chance to show that rumors of his demise 

have been greatly exaggerated, and that, despite his increas- 

Pope Francis greets new Cardinal William Goh Seng Chye of Singapore after presenting 

the red biretta to him during a consistory for the creation of 20 new cardinals in St. 

Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican Aug. 27, 2022. | CNS/PAUL HARING 


ing physical limits, he remains very much alert, engaged, and 

on the job. 

Of course, a pope doesn’t have to stand for reelection, and, 

unlike American presidents, the usual understanding is that 

he’s elected for life, the resignation of Benedict XVI notwithstanding. 

Nonetheless, popes do still have to lead, and it’s 

always destabilizing for a papacy when the popular belief 

is that someone else — or, more often, a shadowy cabal of 

someone elses — is actually running the show in the name of 

an ailing and withdrawn figurehead. 

On this outing, Francis will have the chance to make it 

clear to the world, including members of his own flock, that 

at least for right now, nobody’s 

pulling his strings. 

Beyond that obvious motive, 

there are exigencies both political 

and pastoral behind this 45th 

foreign trip of Francis’ papacy, 

which will take him, respectively, 

to the 62nd, 63rd, 64th, and 65th 

nations he will have visited while 

in office. 

The political agenda of the trip 

is bookended at the beginning 

and the end, with Indonesia and 

Singapore, which gives Francis 

the opportunity to polish relations 

with the Islamic world and 

with Asia, including Singapore’s 

most important regional ally and 

trading partner in China. 

From the beginning, the 

overarching geostrategic aim 

of the Francis papacy has been 

to shift the Vatican’s historical 

identity as a Western institution 

and the chaplain of NATO to a 

more globalist and nonaligned 

position. Two-thirds of the 1.3 

billion Catholics in the world 

today live outside the confines of 

Western culture, a share that will 

be three-quarters by mid-century. 

As part of this effort, Francis has 

A woman carries a 

large wooden cross 

during a Palm Sunday 

procession in Dili, East 

Timor, in this 2011 file 

photo. | CNS/LIRIO 

DA FONSECA, REUTERS 

pursued an aggressive program of outreach to Islam, knowing 

that at 1.9 billion global followers it’s inevitably a major 

driver of contemporary history. Yet to date that campaign has 

focused largely on Islam in the Middle East and the Persian 

Gulf, while the reality is that only about one-quarter of the 

Muslims in the world are Arabs and the majority are found in 

settings such as Asia and Africa. 

In Indonesia, Francis will have the chance to road test his 

brand of globalist Vatican diplomacy and statesmanship in 

a Muslim country which, on principle, should prove a good 

market for it, given the national commitment to religious tolerance 

expressed in Sukarno’s famous ideology of Pancasila. 

Singapore, meanwhile, is the classic illustration that big 

things come in small packages. It features the second-highest 

GDP in the world per capita, trailing only Luxembourg, and 

its economy is consistently ranked as among the most open, 

least corrupt, and most business-friendly on the planet. 

Increasingly, Singapore’s long-term economic strategy is 

premised on ever-closer ties with China, symbolized by 

the 2021 Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, 

which Singapore was the first nation to ratify. When Francis 

meets Singapore’s leadership, he’ll also be opening another 

backchannel avenue of communication with China, at a 

time when relations between Rome and Beijing appear to be 

lumbering toward the Vatican’s long-sought goal of normalization. 

Pastoral imperatives, meanwhile, loom largest in the middle 

portion of the trip, which will 

take Francis to East Timor and 

Papua New Guinea. 

Officially speaking, a whopping 

97% of East Timor’s small 

population of 1.34 million is 

Catholic, and Francis faces the 

challenge of reassuring them that 

his campaign to make nice with 

their former masters in Jakarta 

won’t come at their expense. 

He’ll also confront the unfinished 

business of the sexual 

abuse crisis, especially regarding 

Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, the 

Nobel Prize winner who’s still a 

national hero for helping to lead 

the country’s independence, but 

who was also sanctioned by the 

Vatican in 2020 over allegations 

of abusing minor boys in the 

1980s. It remains unclear if a 

canonical investigation of Belo is 

still underway, and whether further 

penalties envisioned by the 

Church’s new anti-abuse norms 

might be imposed. 

In the eyes of critics, such a 

lack of clarity stands at odds with 

the pope’s repeated pledges of 

transparency. 

The stop in Papua New Guinea 

offers the pope a chance to rekindle his dreams as a young 

Jesuit of serving as a missionary himself, and to give a shot 

in the arm to Catholic missionary efforts in far-flung locales 

all over the world. It also affords him a platform to deepen 

his ongoing reflections on the checkered history of relations 

between Christian evangelism and Western colonialism, a 

past he has been laboring to overcome. 

Only time will tell, of course, to what extent Francis succeeds 

in rising to the challenges such a grueling trip presents. 

The mere fact he’s taking a shot, however, would seem to 

suggest that the “Biden moment” of this papacy, the time 

when it becomes inescapably clear the leader simply can’t go 

on, isn’t quite upon us yet. 

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


The secret 

life of Jim 

Illustration of Huckleberry 

Finn and Jim. | 

SHUTTERSTOCK 

A prize-winning author’s reimagining of 

‘Huckleberry Finn’ is the kind of imaginative 

fiction Pope Francis thinks we need more of. 

BY MSGR. RICHARD ANTALL 

In his new letter on the importance 

of reading fiction and poetry for the 

formation of priests, Pope Francis 

makes a bold argument: that reading 

not only expands the horizons of the 

mind, but is also good for the soul. 

Francis, who taught literature in 

his younger days as a priest, quotes 

C. S. Lewis, who said that in immersive 

reading, “as in worship, in love, 

in moral action, and in knowing, I 

transcend myself; and am never more 

myself than when I do.” 

The pope sees that personal transcendence 

in terms of evangelization 

and the understanding of other persons 

and other cultures. He quotes his 

fellow Argentinian, Jorge Luis Borges, 

as saying literature was “listening to 

another person’s voice.” 

My latest reading experience certainly 

proves the pope’s point. 

Acclaimed writer Percival Everett 

released a novel this year based on a 

character in Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry 

Finn.” That book, although controversial 

in some parts, was described by 

Ernest Hemingway as the “best book 

we’ve had. All American writing comes 

from that. There was nothing before. 

There has been nothing as good 

since.” 

Many would beg to differ with 

such a sweeping judgment. After all, 

Nathanael Hawthorne and Herman 

Melville produced their classics before 

Twain published “Huckleberry Finn,” 

but it is true that the book is practically 

American myth. It is our homegrown 

“Don Quixote” — which it resembles 

in more ways than one — and has an 

iconic value that extends beyond those 

who have read the book. 

Years later, T.S. Eliot would write 

about the poetry he found in “Huckleberry 

Finn,” and identified the two 

themes that explained Twain’s creativity: 

“the Boy and the River.” 

Eliot said that Huck was Mark 

Twain himself, the careful, ironic and 


humorous observer of men and events. 

Jim, the runaway slave who shares the 

adventures of the outcast boy, was “the 

submissive sufferer from them; and 

they are equal in dignity.” 

I don’t know if Everett had Eliot’s 

words in mind when he wrote his 

novel “James,” but his work brilliantly 

turns that perception of Jim, the slave, 

inside out. In Twain’s book, Jim is a 

noble soul who suffers from the cruelty 

of slavery and its enormous injustice as 

a kind of holy innocent, wise but also 

superstitious and vulnerable. 

In Everett’s book, the slightly renamed 

“James” is a Voltairean atheist 

who disguises his intelligence for fear 

of white punishment, even speaking 

a dialect only in the presence of the 

“massas,” but capable of commenting 

on both proleptic and dramatic irony. 

Everett relies on these ironies to craft 

a novel that shadows some of Twain’s 

original plot but also fearlessly changes 

its direction in many respects. 

Like Eliot, I had never read “Tom 

Sawyer” or “Huckleberry Finn” as 

a child. So, when I first read that 

“James” had been nominated for 

Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize, I decided 

to read the two originals before 

trying Everett. I found James a very 

creative sequel to Twain’s books. 

Everett makes the slave Jim a 

clandestine intellectual, iconoclastic 

and even atheistic. It is Jim as Twain 

AMAZON 

himself, who styled himself an atheist. 

Jim has secretly taught himself to read 

and write and speaks perfect grammar 

except when he talks to white people. 

He teaches his children how to 

speak “slave” to their masters. He has 

dreamlike encounters with Voltaire, 

whose “Candide” he read, and with 

John Locke the philosopher. The irony 

in the novel flows like the mighty Mississippi 

River, which is the constant 

backdrop to the two main characters as 

they fight for their survival in a world 

that conspires against justice and truth. 

The book’s presentation of the white 

culture is heavy-going sometimes. “After 

being cruel, the most notable white 

attribute was gullibility,” Jim comments 

at one point. But at another, he 

says: “Bad as whites were, they had no 

monopoly on duplicity, dishonestly 

or perfidy,” something not readily 

apparent from the novel, except for the 

boy Huck, whom the author makes 

exceptional in another way I will not 

spoil for you. 

I was also taken aback by James’ 

dismissal of Christianity in the book 

and his rejection of the Bible. Everett 

is obviously an unbeliever, like Twain 

himself, but some of his theological 

commentary reminded me of the 

Marcusian wannabe Marxist radicals 

of the ’60s. Ironically, while I was 

reading and disapproving of some of 

the ideas of the book, I came across 

an article about Archbishop Augustine 

Akubeze of Benin City in Nigeria, and 

his criticism of the presentation of “the 

white man’s God” that some missionaries 

had given to Christianity. Such 

portrayals underscore the modern 

need to be introduced to true Christianity, 

free of some cultural accretions 

that contradicted its message, like the 

justification of slavery by people who 

claimed to be Christians. 

The ending of the original “Huckleberry 

Finn” has disappointed critics in 

the past. Tom Sawyer appears suddenly 

to insist on rescuing Jim from his captivity 

with tropes from the great escapes 

of adventure literature, especially inspired 

by Dumas’ “The Count of Monte 

Cristo.” Everett’s ending is not as 

“I hope that I have written the novel that Twain 

did not and also could not have written,” said Percival 

Everett in an interview with the Booker Prize 

Foundation. 

tedious but is also problematic for me: 

We know that Huck has the money to 

buy Jim and his family freedom, but 

somehow that is completely overlooked 

and not regarded as a possibility. 

Still, for me the experience of reading 

“James” was an example of what Francis 

means by the value of “imaginative 

fiction.” In my seminary library we had 

a painting on the ceiling that included 

an oval with the words Litteratura, 

Speculum Vitae (“Literature, Mirror 

of Life” in Latin). In his letter, Francis 

takes the visual metaphor a step further 

by quoting French writer Marcel 

Proust, who said literature is not a mirror 

but more like a telescope, making 

what is far away seem close by. 

That is not a bad description of what 

Everett does in presenting a different 

view of the world that Twain had 

painted before him. “James’ ” subtlety 

in some sections is a marvel of creative 

writing (which reading Twain’s 

originals made me appreciate more). I 

will never think the same again about 

Twain’s achievement in “Huckleberry 

Finn” or about the dark reality of 

slavery that was its background. 

T. S. Eliot said Twain never grew up 

and remained a boy his whole life. 

Because of the intensity of his writing, 

and its anger, I wonder if Everett was 

ever just a boy. Both writers stretch 

us and can make us grow. Which is 

always, as the Holy Father insists in his 

letter, a grace. 

Msgr. Richard Antall is pastor of 

Holy Name Church in Cleveland, 

Ohio, and the author of several books, 

including the novel “The X-mas Files” 

(Atmosphere Press, $17.99). He served 

as a missionary priest in El Salvador for 

more than 20 years. 


INTERSECTIONS 

GREG ERLANDSON 

The monsters in our own nightmare 

Imagine yourself in your house. A 

neighbor is banging on the front 

door and yelling. Or there are 

noises outside, a car window being 

smashed. What do you reach for? 

Susan Lorincz reached for a gun. 

Embroiled in a dispute with her 

neighbor, Lorincz, standing behind a 

locked and bolted metal door, fired a 

bullet through the door, killing Ajika 

Owens, a single mother of four. 

Jason Lewis reached for a gun and 

went out at 3 a.m. to investigate when 

SHUTTERSTOCK 

he heard noises on his street. Three 

teens were breaking into cars. When 

he yelled at the kids, he thought one 

of them was running toward him. 

He fired, killing 13-year-old Karon 

Desean Blake. 

Lorincz is white. Lewis is black. Both 

victims were black. Lorincz lives in 

Florida, Lewis in Washington, D.C. 

Both were convicted in August of 

manslaughter and face years in prison. 

The two stories are exhibits A and 

B in the madness that has overtaken 

a country in which there are more 

guns than people, a country which is 

unique among advanced countries for 

the number of deaths caused by guns, 

a country where lethal violence is considered 

option No.1 for self-protection 

of life and property. 

Lorincz was 59 years old and lived 

alone. She most likely bought her 

.380 handgun because it is marketed 

as being good for self-defense with 

little recoil when fired. She didn’t 

like Owens’ children playing near her 

house and often yelled at them. On 

that fateful day, she had thrown roller 

skates and an umbrella at the children, 

who told their mother. Owens 

was angry, and went over and banged 

on Lorincz’s door while yelling at 

her. Lorincz said she was scared, and 

blindly fired a shot through the metal 

door, striking Owens and killing her. 

Lewis, 41, was a parks and rec employee 

in Washington, D.C. His work 

involved helping at-risk youth. He has 

four kids. He lives in a neighborhood 

sociologists might call transitioning. 

D.C. has tough gun control, but 

Lewis was licensed to have a gun. 

When he heard the noises outside in 

the middle of the night, he got up to 

see what was going on. Lewis brought 

a gun with him. He saw what turned 

out to be a stolen Kia with two kids in 

it and a third kid, Karon Blake, breaking 

into a car. He yelled. Police think 

Blake was running after the Kia, but 

Lewis said he thought he was running 

toward him, and he fired multiple 

shots. A porch camera caught Blake’s 

final words: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m 

sorry. I’m just a kid.” When police 

arrived, Lewis was trying to resuscitate 

the youth. 

If guns weren’t involved, if fear wasn’t 

a factor, if the nightmare threat scripts 


Greg Erlandson is the former president and 

editor-in-chief of Catholic News Service. 

that run in our minds hadn’t kicked 

in, Owens and Blake would be alive 

today. Instead of a gun, Lewis might 

have picked up a phone. Instead of a 

gun, Lorincz might have called 911. 

The truth is that we’ve become the 

monsters in our own nightmares. We 

buy guns for security, yet feel ever 

more insecure. We buy guns because 

we feel threatened, yet we become 

the threats, not just to others, but 

to ourselves. More than half of all 

gun deaths in the United States are 

suicides. Guns are highly efficient at 

one thing: projecting a bullet into a 

neighbor, into a kid, into one’s own 

head. 

No one feels secure: not us, not our 

neighbors, not our police. So, we buy 

still more guns. We play out Hollywood 

tropes, cop show scenarios in 

our minds. And every now and then, 

innocents die. 

Lorincz and Lewis never planned 

to kill. They never planned to spend 

a decade or two in prison for taking 

someone else’s life. But the gun 

became the crutch, the protection that 

they leaned on instead of calling the 

police or relying on one’s neighbors. 

The gun is one more symbol of our 

isolation masquerading as self-reliance. 

Stories like the murders of Owens 

and Blake rarely get national press. 

Mass shootings do, but they are only 

1% of more than 42,000 gun deaths a 

year. Sixty percent are suicides, while 

37% are homicides. All of them are 

life-destroying. 

While the rest of the world looks 

on our slaughter with disbelief, U.S. 

bishops regularly call for “reasonable 

gun control measures.” They issue 

weary press releases whenever the next 

massacre happens, making the same 

points about background checks and 

red-flag laws, but knowing they will be 

ignored. 

Insanity is doing the same thing 

over and over and expecting different 

results. Maybe one of the life issues 

we can be discussing as a Church is 

the morality of gun ownership. When 

does it become a near occasion of sin? 

When do we end the nightmare we 

are living in?

NOW PLAYING REAGAN 

AMERICA’S 

MIRACLE 

MAN? 

Dennis Quaid as Ronald 

Reagan riding his horse 

at his ranch, Rancho del 

Cielo, in the film “Reagan.” 

| ROB BATZDORFF 

In some ways, ‘Reagan’ 

frames the legendary 

president’s life like a 

saint’s. Regardless of 

your views, that’s not a 

bad thing. 

BY JOSEPH JOYCE 

It’s said there is more than one way 

to skin a cat. But what they neglect 

to mention is that no matter what 

method you deploy, you’re still stuck 

with a skinned cat. 

That is how I feel about presidential 

biopics, even the ones that are wellmade 

and feature our more potent 

POTUSes: Is it not enough to have 

our tax dollars and a library? Must we 

also give you a screen at the multiplex 

that could have gone to Russell Crowe 

playing an exorcist for the third time? 

The traditional box office success of 

such films, and the recent release of 

“Reagan” aspiring to join those ranks, 

suggests I’m alone on this one. 

The film stars Dennis Quaid as the 

titular Gipper, with David Henrie playing 

young Reagan when the flashbacks 

wind back past the capabilities of Hollywood 

makeup. Recent presidential 

biopics, such as “Lincoln” and “Southside 

With You,” dial in to a single 

moment of a president’s life. “Reagan” 

has grander ambitions, covering the 

whole of the president’s 93-year-long 

life and showing no respect for the 

viewer’s bladder. 

Even Reagan’s detractors will concede 

the man lived a life stranger than 

any of his B-movies. We’re taken on 

a whirlwind journey from Kinkadian 

childhood Illinois through Golden Age 

Hollywood to Vegas, Iceland, Moscow, 

even as far as Burbank. In this span 

Reagan runs for president three times, 

wins twice, marries twice, escalates and 

deescalates the Cold War, survives an 

assassination attempt, and accidentally 

pulls one off against a goldfish. 

Most novel is the film’s focus on Reagan 

as president of the Screen Actors 

Guild, a neglected chapter in his life 

story. There is divine synchronicity in 

the Great Communicator sharing a 

vocation with the vocally boisterous 

Fran Drescher. 

The narrative is framed by a former 

KGB agent (Jon Voight) attempting to 

explain to a fellow agent why Reagan 

succeeded despite their efforts. The 

film is fittingly structured in a Russian 

nesting doll fashion, with the agent 

having to venture deeper and deeper 

into Reagan lore to explain just what 

made the man tick. 

It will hardly be a shock to hear that 

the KGB agents walk away with hardearned 

respect for Reagan. The film is 

a hagiography, and to its credit doesn’t 

hide it: Ending your movie with the 

main character riding his horse off into 

the sunset is as open a declaration of 

love one can manage without shouting. 

I’ve seen marriages built on less. 


I don’t use hagiography in the pejorative 

sense, of blinkered reverence and 

dubious citation. Rather, “Reagan” is 

hagiographic in the classical definition, 

structured like the biography of a saint. 

In the early snippets of childhood we 

see foreshadowing of his later deeds, 

digestible morales for the youngest 

Republicans. 

The film runs like a highlight reel of 

his quasi-miracles; of economic resurrections 

and the slayings of Soviet goliaths 

and walking away from Iran-Contra 

with nary a scratch. In its boldest 

play it even hints at a real miracle, with 

a Protestant minister prophesying that 

Reagan will become president one day. 

This had to have happened, if only 

because Pat Boone is in that scene as a 

witness and that’s a preposterous detail 

to make up otherwise. 

Reagan is made a saint even through 

ersatz Vatican procedure. The narrating 

KGB agents are quite literally 

devil’s advocates, poking and prodding 

through a life to see if it’s up to snuff. 

Their resigned concession to a worthy 

opponent is the closest a Russian gets 

to a compliment. 

I was lucky enough to attend the 

premiere at the TCL Chinese Theatre, 

the shadowy Catholic cabal of Hollywood 

coming in clutch for this humble 

critic. 

But even as I watched, my eyes kept 

getting dragged from the screen to the 

crowd below. I was distracted not only 

by the beautiful celebrities but by the 

ripples of adulation 

through 

the crowd below. 

They laughed, 

they cried, they 

anticipated 

every historical 

one-liner; spontaneous 

applause 

even broke out 

after one homily 

against taxation. 

It struck me as a 

genuine popular 

cult following. If 

I were a betting 

man, I’d wager 

Jon Voight as 

Viktor Petrovich 

walking at the 

Kremlin in the 

film “Reagan.” | 

COOPER ROSS 

Dennis Quaid and Penelope 

Ann Miller as Ronald and 

Nancy Reagan sharing a 

moment together aboard 

Air Force One in the film 

“Reagan.” | ROB BATZDORFF 

half the thousand in the audience had 

made the pilgrimage to Simi Valley to 

visit his library. 

Catholics are a plurality and not a 

majority of this country, though we 

remain safe from a wider Protestant 

coalition due to their infighting over 

casseroles. America remains numerically 

Protestant, which is why we make 

so many of these presidential hagiographies, 

and likely won’t stop soon. 

The human soul is drawn not just to 

larger-than-life figures, but to the ones 

we could someday become. 

That’s the difference from a folk hero: 

as much as we admire Paul Bunyan, 

deep down we know we’ll never ride a 

great blue ox. Both saints and presidents 

thrive off the idea, however 

tenuous, that we can achieve it too. 

Presidents are the saints for the Protestants, 

a safe canon of heroes and a way 

to channel their secret Catholic desire 

for statues. 

I’ll end with one final comparison 

to saints and their biographies. My favorite 

of these is not any of the Golden 

Legends with their miracles and martyrdoms 

but Augustine’s “Confessions,” 

where the written record is less about 

his greatness but rather how many 

times he messed up. Growing up I 

could never fully relate to the miracles 

of saints: I could barely make it to one 

location on time, let alone bilocate. I 

was, however, an intimate friend with 

failure, which is why I chose Augustine 

as my confirmation name. 

Human frailty is what keeps saints 

from floating off into that Paul Bunyan 

sphere. Likewise, the strongest moments 

of “Reagan” are when the president 

is at his weakest: the montage of 

humiliation as he’s reduced to hocking 

products when his acting career fails, a 

career most famously spent opposite a 

monkey. The way he is dumped on a 

gurney rather than placed when rushed 

to the emergency room following his 

shooting. 

But most touching of all is the scene 

where the reality of his Alzheimer’s 

finally sinks in, a glint peeking through 

the layers of his own confusion and a 

brave front. Here Reagan is allowed to 

be Ronald, his greatness not insisted 

upon, but risen to the challenge. 

Joseph Joyce is a screenwriter and freelance 

critic based in Sherman Oaks. 


DESIRE LINES 

HEATHER KING 

All hail the humble notebook 

A blank Moleskine notebook. | SHUTTERSTOCK 

Increasingly we live in a digital 

world: e-cards, Google calendars, 

the Contacts phone app. 

“The Notebook” (Profile Books, $31), 

by Roland Allen, subtitled “A History 

of Thinking on Paper,” celebrates 

the age-old practice of writing things 

down — numbers, images, thoughts, 

dreams — and charts the evolution 

of this handy, humble little item that 

many of us consider indispensable but 

to which I, for one, had never given 

much thought. 

Allen begins by recounting the 

surprisingly absorbing history of the 

Moleskine, forever romantically associated 

with Hemingway, Matisse, and the 

nomadic English travel writer Bruce 

(“The Songlines”) Chatwin. 

Maria Sebregondi, the creator of the 

modern classic Moleskine, suggests that 

the notebook’s minimal form — black 

clothbound covers, thread binding, 

elastic closure, an internal bellowed 

pocket for maps, dried flowers, insect 

specimens — makes it the perfect creative 

tool: a “simple object” generating 

a “sense of extraordinary possibility 

born of small things.” 

The notebook’s “practical effectiveness” 

has been noted by many. Far 

more interesting, to my mind, is Allen’s 

conviction that the very incarnate, kinesthetic 

act of writing something down 

has a kind of larger, (he doesn’t use the 

word, but I will) spiritual value. 

“The laptop, the BlackBerry, the 

iPhone, and the iPad all seemed to 

offer greater functionality than their 

paper antecedent,” he writes, “but a 

stubborn constituency of users refused 

to move over into the digital sphere, 

and numerous peer-reviewed studies 

soon showed that their obduracy made 

sense. Something about the act of 

writing by hand, and the production of 

a physical object, makes the older technology 

more effective than the new. 

Sebregondi had, unwittingly, prompted 

serious inquiry into the workings of the 

human brain.” 

From the contemporary Moleskine, 

Allen goes back to the beginning: 

cuneiform on clay tablets, long scrolls 

of papyrus. Then things jumped ahead: 

a small hinged writing tablet of wood 

and ivory, palm-sized when folded, that 

was found in the Ulu Burum shipwreck 

off Turkey’s southern coast. Recesses 

were cut into the two leaves, filled 

with wax (that could be smoothed over 

and used again), and written on with 

a stylus. The ship went down in 1305 

B.C. and archaeologists estimate that 

similar tablets constituted Europe’s 

“notebooks” for 2,000 years. 

The Romans adapted the Ulu 

Burun-style tablets, made them more 

capacious, and called them pugillares 

(hand-helds) or tabellae (table). 

Then they started using parchment, 

adapted from the Greeks and again, 


Heather King is an award-winning 

author, speaker, and workshop leader. 

improved: the Codex Sinaiticus, its 

694 pages made of calf- and sheepskin 

parchment, was the pinnacle of 

fourth-century bookbinding. 

Meanwhile, a Han dynasty eunuch 

had discovered how to make paper 

from pulp vegetable fibers. 

While the codex spread across the 

Roman Mediterranean and Near East, 

paper eventually moved west from China 

to the Islamic world. East and West 

met in Spain in the early 1200s when 

paper ledgers appeared, accounting 

was invented and, in Allen’s telling, the 

entire world was pretty much transformed. 

“Business as we know it dates from 

this era,” Allen observes, quoting historian 

Jacob Soll: “Without double-entry 

accounting, neither modern capitalism 

nor the modern state could exist.” 

Italy — with its love for handmade 

goods and fine craftsmanship that 

continues to this day — pushed the 

progression yet further. In the mid-13th 

century, the papermakers of Fabriano, a 

town 200 km east of Florence, developed 

the watermark, the water-powered 

multiple hammer mill, and a finish that 

consisted of coating vegetable fibers 

with gelatin from stewed animal bones. 

The resulting sheets were easier to 

write on with a scratchy nib and the 

Fabrianese dominated paper production 

in Italy for 50 years. New trades 

sprang up: cartolai (stationery shops) 

and librai (bookshops). 

Wandering around the Tuscan countryside, 

Allen asserts, the early Renaissance 

painter Cimabue developed the 

sketchbook. Giotto, his contemporary, 

followed suit. From 1300 to 1500, medieval 

artists in Florence and beyond 

could draw life from everyday people 

and objects with a new immediacy and 

freshness; were also able to plan, revise, 

and prepare before executing the final 

subject on canvas. 

As Leonardo da Vinci observed: “And 

take a note … with slight strokes in a 

little book that you should always carry 

with you … preserved with great care; 

for the forms, and positions of objects 

are so infinite that the memory is 

incapable of retaining them, wherefore 

keep these sketches are your guides and 

masters.” 

Humans being what we are, it wasn’t 

long before we figured out other uses 

for the notebook; namely, writing down 

our own daily activities, thoughts, desires, 

plans, complaints, and obsessions. 

From 1300 to 1500, notebooks were 

increasingly used in the home: not just 

for personal accounts, but for recording 

gambling winnings and losses, the 

births and deaths of children, family 

histories, conversations, poems, prayers, 

songs, recipes, and puzzles. 

On it goes: Venetian scholar Antonio 

Pigafetta’s illustrated chronicle of Magellan’s 

expedition to the Spice Islands; 

a celebrated 410-page “fish book” 

(1580) by Adriaen Coenen (available 

digitally at the Library of Congress); 

tattered notebooks of song passed hand 

to hand for centuries in Franciscan 

monasteries; more recently, informal 

“patient diaries,” kept as a labor of love 

by Danish ICU nurses for those who 

are unconscious or unaware in order 

to “recover lost time” when and if the 

patient heals. 

I like to save my old notebooks and 

stack them on my bookshelves: mementoes 

of trips I’ve taken, books I’ve 

read, to-do lists I’ve long ago checked 

off. Now I know I’m in good company. 

The more things change, as the French 

say, the more they remain the same. 


LETTER AND SPIRIT 

SCOTT HAHN 

Scott Hahn is founder of the 

St. Paul Center for Biblical 

Theology; stpaulcenter.com. 

All together now 

comes from the Greek word meaning 

universal. St. Ignatius of Antioch gives us our 

“Catholic” 

earliest surviving witness to the common use of 

the term. He wrote to the Christians 

of Smyrna: “wherever Jesus 

Christ is, there is the Catholic 

Church.” 

Ignatius wrote those words in 

A.D. 107, not terribly long after 

the first Christian Pentecost. If 

you read the passage in context, 

you’ll see that Ignatius simply 

drops the phrase without fanfare 

or explanation. It is quite likely 

it was already well established by 

that time. 

The Church celebrated its 

unity and universality from the 

day of its birth. In the Acts of the 

Apostles we find that all manner 

of people were in Jerusalem 

when the Church received the 

Spirit: “Parthians and Medes 

and Elamites and residents 

of Mesopotamia, Judea and 

Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 

Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt 

and the parts of Libya belonging 

to Cyrene, and visitors from 

Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 

Cretans and Arabians” (Acts 

2:9–11). 

The Church was universal from 

that beginning, and the apostles 

spent their lives and shed their 

blood in order to preserve that 

original unity and catholicity. 

Why? Because it was a distinguishing mark of Christianity. 

A little more than half a century after Ignatius, a North African 

named Tertullian said that his neighbors in Carthage 

marveled at the indiscriminate kindness of Christians. They 

remarked that Christians wore charity like a brand or tattoo 

on their bodies. 

The world had never seen anything like this before. Every 

other cultural current was tribal. Every other movement, 

“Christ and Mary Enthroned in Heaven with Saints,” miniature from 

Book of Hours of Simon de Varie, anonymous, Master of Jean Rolin II. | 

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS 

even among the Jews, was intended to divide — my people 

from your people. And the only way to unify was to conquer 

by brute force, as Rome did, as Persia did, as Macedon had 

done. 

Where everyone else divided, 

Christians unified by means 

of charity, understanding, and 

a hermeneutic of generosity. 

Don’t get me wrong: They made 

important distinctions; and they 

certainly called out evil when 

they saw it; and they were willing 

to die for their witness. But they 

managed, by grace, to transcend 

the political bitterness and corruption 

of their times. 

And they managed to convert 

their neighbors to a better way. 

At this time, in my country, 

we are living through a time of 

bitter division. I hope we have 

seen the worst of it, but I fear we 

haven’t, and I find my prayers 

sounding more urgent as we 

enter the final month before our 

general election. 

The weeks ahead call us to take 

great care in our witness. People 

will judge Christianity by what 

they see of Christians. When 

we speak and act with charity, 

we’ll witness to Christ. When we 

don’t, we won’t. 

Some people are calling this 

election a referendum on the 

future of the country. I’m begging 

them to look at the coming 

weeks and days as a referendum on our personal sanctity, 

yours and mine. When we’re more holy, we unify — and we 

make the world more Catholic. 

Consider, too, that our universality, our unity, includes the 

heavenly Church, the “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 

12:1). They are our older siblings already inhabiting our 

heavenly home. They are souls at rest, at peace, and their 

peace is contagious. Stay close to them. 


■ SATURDAY, AUGUST 31 

Centennial Celebration of the Sisters of Notre Dame in 

California. St. Paschal Baylon Church, 155 E. Janss Rd., 

Thousand Oaks, 11:30 a.m. Mass celebrated by Archbishop 

José H. Gomez, followed by a reception in the parish 

hall. Learn more at sndusa.org/ca100. 

■ TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3 

Pilgrimage of Mercy. Vilnius, Lithuania. Pilgrimage runs 

Sept. 3-14. Participants will visit the mission house of St. 

Faustina and the original image of the Divine Mercy, as 

well as several shrines and religious sites. For details and 

reservations, call the St. Casimir Church office at 323- 

664-4660. 

■ WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 

Music, Movement, and Meditation. Holy Spirit Retreat 

Center, 4316 Lanai Rd., Encino, 10 a.m.-12 p.m. With Bola 

Shasanmi. Visit hsrcenter.com or call 818-815-4480. 

Good Grief Bereavement Support Group. St. Bede 

the Venerable Church, 215 Foothill Blvd., La Cañada 

Flintridge, 6:30-8 p.m. Free six-week support group for 

those who have lost a loved one runs weekly from Sept. 

4 to Oct. 9. Series includes information on the grieving 

process and an opportunity to share with others in a small 

group. Call 818-949-4300. 

■ THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 

St. Padre Pio Mass. St. Anne Church, 340 10th St., Seal 

Beach, 1 p.m. Celebrant: Father Al Baca. For more information, 

call 562-537-4526. 

■ SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7 

Mass for Intention and Prayer of Father Aloysius’ 

Beatification and Canonization. Chapel of the Annunciation, 

429 S. Junipero Serra, San Gabriel, 7:30 a.m. rosary, 

followed by Mass at 8 a.m. 

Centering Prayer Introductory Workshop. Holy Spirit 

Retreat Center, 4316 Lanai Rd., Encino, 9 a.m.-12:30 p.m. 

With Marilyn Nobori and the contemplative outreach 

team. Visit hsrcenter.com or call 818-815-4480. 

Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations: A Catholic 

Ministry Certification Course. Church of the Good 

Shepherd, 504 N. Roxbury Dr., Beverly Hills, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. 

Nine-session course runs on the first Saturday of every 

month through May 3. Provider: Rt. Rev. Alexei Smith, ecumenical 

and interreligious officer of the Archdiocese of 

Los Angeles. Certification course is for anyone interested 

in learning about ecumenical and interreligious relations 

from the Catholic perspective, especially laypeople. Cost: 

$400/person with certification, $300 without. Visit store. 

la-archdiocese.org/eia. 

“One Mother, Many Peoples” Marian Rosary and Mass. 

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, 555 W. Temple St., 

Los Angeles, 10 a.m. procession and bilingual rosary, 11 

a.m. Mass celebrated by Archbishop José H. Gomez. 

Mass of Remembrance: Healing After Suicide Loss. 

St. Agnes Church, 2625 Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, 10 

a.m.-12 p.m. All are welcome for a special bilingual Mass 

in memory of loved ones lost to suicide. Small reception to 

follow. Call St. Agnes Church at 323-731-2464. 

A Healing Journey. St. Anthony of Padua Church, 1050 

W. 163rd St., Gardena, 10:15 a.m. With Father Michael 

Barry, Dr. Elizabeth Kim, and Dominic Berardino. Healing 

of Emotional and Psychological Wounds, Removing 

Blockages to God’s Healing Power, Healing Prayer Service, 

and more. Cost: $20/person through Sept. 3, $25/person 

at the door. Register at events.scrc.org. 

Catholic Singles Network Rotational Luncheon. Odyssey 

Restaurant, 15600 Odyssey Dr., Granada Hills, 12-4 

p.m. Come meet new people. Mingling will be maximized 

at the luncheon by having diners rotate to different tables. 

Call Celeste at 661-916-2727 or visit CatholicSinglesNetwork.com. 

■ MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 

Catechesis for Youth and Adults. St. John the Evangelist 

Church, 6028 S. Victoria Ave, Los Angeles, 7:30 p.m. 

every Monday and Thursday in Our Lady of Guadalupe 

Chapel (Entrance through parking lot on 60th Street). 

Catechesis of the Neocatechumenal Way in English. Are 

you looking for an answer to suffering? Or want to deepen 

your faith? For more information call 310-531-0635. 

Restoring Relationships with Compassionate Communication. 

Holy Spirit Retreat Center, 4316 Lanai Rd., 

Encino, 6:30-8:30 p.m. With Sage Knight, NVC Trainer. 

Visit hsrcenter.com or call 818-815-4480. 

■ TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 

Career Fair. Calvary Cemetery, 4201 Whittier Blvd., 9 

a.m.-2 p.m. Open positions for receptionist, support staff, 

funeral service assistants, and more. Bring a résumé for 

on-the-spot interviews. Visit lacatholics.org/events. 

Memorial Mass. San Fernando Mission, 15151 San 

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

open to the public. Limited seating. RSVP to outreach@ 

catholiccm.org or call 213-637-7810. Livestream available 

at CatholicCM.org or Facebook.com/lacatholics. 

■ WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 

Music, Movement, and Meditation. Holy Spirit Retreat 

Center, 4316 Lanai Rd., Encino, 10 a.m.-12 p.m. With Bola 

Shasanmi. Visit hsrcenter.com or call 818-815-4480. 

Pro Bono Estate Planning Clinic for Veterans: Wills for 

Heroes. Bet Tzedek Law Offices, 3250 Wilshire Blvd., 

13th Floor, Los Angeles, 11:30 a.m. Call 323-939-0506. 

■ FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 

Rosary Crusade. Morgan Park, 4100 Baldwin Park Blvd., 

Baldwin Park, 6:30 p.m. Monthly meeting to pray the 

rosary. 

■ SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 

United Together: Homeless Ministry Resource Fair. 

Our Mother of Good Counsel Church, 2060 N. Vermont 

Ave., Los Angeles, 9 a.m.-12 p.m. Panel discussion, Q&A, 

networking, and resources. Contact Esmeralda Sosa at 

213-637-7477 or email esosa@la-archdiocese.org. 

Autumn Silent Saturday Centering Prayer. Holy Spirit 

Retreat Center, 4316 Lanai Rd., Encino, 9 a.m.-12 p.m. 

With Marilyn Nobori and the contemplative outreach 

team. Visit hsrcenter.com or call 818-815-4480. 

Jazz on the Green Fundraiser. St. Agatha Church, 2646 S. 

Mansfield Ave., Los Angeles, 3-7 p.m. Sponsored by the 

St. Agatha Black Historian Committee. New Orleans Style: 

wear white and bring your lawn chair. Includes entertainment, 

various southern cuisine and drinks for sale. Cost: 

$20/person. Call 323-251-2888 or 323-935-8127. 

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 | September 6, 2024 | Vol. 9 No. 18

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