Angelus News | January 10, 2025 | Vol. 10 No. 1

ANGELUS
FRASSATI’S
NEW FRIEND
The inside story of
the LA miracle felt
around the world
January 10, 2025 Vol. 10 No. 1

January 10, 2025
Vol. 10 • No. 1
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ON THE COVER
JOHN RUEDA/ARCHDIOCESE OF LA
When LA seminarian Juan Gutierrez invoked the intercession of Italy’s
Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati for help with a gruesome ankle injury, he
had no clue how far the consequences would reach. Seven years later,
Gutierrez is a priest, and thanks to one fateful novena, Frassati is ready
to be declared a saint. Starting on Page 10, Angelus has the exclusive full
story behind the healing that confounded doctors and introduced the
City of Angels to a new friend in heaven.
THIS PAGE
VICTOR ALEMÁN
A choir of more than 20 Filipino
priests serving in the Archdiocese
of Los Angeles helped out with the
music at the Cathedral of Our Lady
of the Angels’ annual Simbang Gabi
Mass Dec. 15.

CONTENTS
Pope Watch............................................... 2
Archbishop Gomez................................. 3
World, Nation, and Local News...... 4-6
In Other Words........................................ 7
Father Rolheiser....................................... 8
Scott Hahn.............................................. 32
Events Calendar..................................... 33
18
22
24
26
28
30
LA parishes answer the early wake-up call for Simbang Gabi Masses
John Allen ranks the most important Vatican stories of 2024
How the humility of Christmas can unite a divided Church
Greg Erlandson on saints to follow into the New Year
A millennial critic breaks down the Boomer spirituality of ‘Yacht Rock’
Heather King on the damaging language tricks behind the culture wars
January 10, 2025 • ANGELUS • 1

POPE WATCH
A ban on badmouthing
The cardinals, bishops, priests, religious,
and laypeople who work
in the Roman Curia are called
to spread the blessings of God, but they
cannot do that if they habitually speak
ill of one another, Pope Francis said.
“With our daily work, especially the
most hidden work, each of us can
contribute to bringing the blessing of
God to the world,” he told cardinals and
top Curia officials Dec. 21 during his
traditional pre-Christmas meeting with
them. “But in this we must be consistent.
We cannot write a blessing and
then speak ill of our brother or sister. It
ruins the blessing.”
Before reading his prepared text to the
Curia officials, the pope told them that
Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin
patriarch of Jerusalem, had not been
allowed the day before to enter Gaza as
he’d been promised.
“And yesterday, children were
bombed. This is cruelty. This is not
war.”
While previous popes used the
pre-Christmas meeting to review the
past year, Francis has taken it as an
opportunity for a reflection on attitudes
that help or hinder the Curia’s mission
of sharing the Gospel.
“Speaking well of others and not
speaking badly about them,” he said, “is
something that concerns us all, even the
pope, bishops, consecrated people, laity.
In that respect, we are all equal. Why?
Because it’s part of our humanity.”
The best way to avoid the temptation
of speaking ill of others, the pope said,
is by focusing on God’s humility. And
to be humble, he said, one must take
responsibility for his or her actions. As
an example, he said that when one is
criticized, a humble person looks for
what is true in the criticism, tries to
remedy it, and does not lash out or try to
make excuses.
Taking responsibility is “the basic
attitude in which the choice to say no to
individualism and yes to the community,
ecclesial spirit can take root,” he said.
It is also the best way to set one’s ego
aside “and leave room for God’s action.”
Francis also told the Curia officials that
they should go to confession regularly,
make a retreat at least once a year “to
immerse yourself in God’s grace,” and
make sure they engage in direct pastoral
activity, which is especially important
for young priests working in the Curia.
“In the Church, the sign and instrument
of God’s blessing for humanity,
we are all called to become artisans of
blessing,” the pope said. “Not just blessing
others, but being artisans of this:
teaching, living as artisans to bless.”
Meeting afterward with the employees,
including cleaners, carpenters,
gardeners, and artists, Francis told them
that “by your daily work, in the hidden
Nazareths of your particular tasks, you
help bring all of humanity to Christ
and spread his kingdom throughout the
world.”
But, he said, “without prayer one
cannot move forward, including in your
families. Teach your children to pray.”
And, at Christmastime, the pope said,
“try to find some moment to gather
around the Nativity scene to give thanks
to God for his gifts, to ask his help for
the future and to renew your affection
for each other in front of the baby
Jesus.”
Reporting courtesy of Catholic News
Service Rome bureau chief Cindy
Wooden.
Papal Prayer Intention for January: Let us pray for migrants,
refugees, and those affected by war, that their right to an
education, which is necessary to build a better world, might
always be respected.
2 • ANGELUS • January 10, 2025

NEW WORLD OF FAITH
ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ
Our God is a God of miracles
The week before Christmas I
had the rare privilege to share
an amazing story with the
world: how the Lord had worked a
miracle in the life of one of our new
priests.
I ordained Father Juan Gutierrez just
two years ago, and he serves now as
associate pastor at St. John the Baptist
Church in Baldwin Park.
In 2017, when he was a seminarian
at our St. John’s Seminary, he suffered
a serious leg injury while playing basketball
with some other seminarians.
Facing a painful surgery, Gutierrez
prayed to Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati,
asking for his intercession. And he
was healed.
His healing was a miracle. His
doctors could not explain it. There
are MRIs documenting what his leg
looked like before his prayer and after
his prayer.
Of course, “miracle” is a word that
gets overused in our culture and is not
well understood.
But the Scriptures tell us that Jesus
worked miracles on earth: He gave
eyesight to a blind man, made a lame
man walk, and raised a young girl
from the dead, to recall just a few.
And we believe that Jesus continues
to work miracles from heaven, often
through the intercession of the saints
who are close to him in glory there.
We don’t pray to the saints, but we
do ask the saints to pray for us. We
believe that Jesus hears our prayers,
but we also believe that he hears the
prayers that the saints make for us.
We believe this because it’s true. The
Book of Revelation gives us a glimpse
of heaven and shows us the prayers of
the saints burning like incense in golden
bowls before the throne of God.
Gutierrez notified officials in the
Vatican that he had received a great
favor through the intercessory prayers
of Frassati.
The Vatican investigated his claim,
interviewed the doctors, studied the
medical evidence, and concluded
that indeed, his healing was a miracle.
Pope Francis has now decided that,
on account of this miracle, he will declare
Frassati a saint in August 2025,
during the Jubilee of Youth.
I encourage you to read all about the
details in this issue of Angelus and
watch our full press conference on
our website.
Our God is a God of miracles. This
story reminds us of that.
The Lord is still working in your life
and mine. He created us, he loves us,
and he will see us through. He hears
our prayers and he goes with us in the
journey of our life. And we are surrounded
by a great cloud of witnesses,
by the saints and angels in heaven,
including our guardian angels, who
watch over and guide us.
At our press conference, Gutierrez
said something I found moving: “To
be part of this miracle has been like
being on a roller coaster. ... But at the
end of the day, I am left with a heart
filled with gratitude and awe at what
God does in our lives.”
We have been truly blessed here in
Los Angeles that God has raised up
for us so many saints, just to name a
few: Venerable Alfonso Gallegos, a
priest and bishop, Venerable Maria
Luisa Josefa of the Blessed Sacrament,
Blessed María Inés Teresa
Arias, and the great missionary St.
Junípero Serra, founder of the
Church in Los Angeles.
We have also been blessed with visits
from many saints from across the
We believe that Jesus hears our prayers, but we
also believe that he hears the prayers that the
saints make for us.
universal Church, from St. Frances
Xavier Cabrini to St. Pope John
Paul II, St. Mother Teresa, and St.
Dulce Lopes Pontes, known as “Irmã
Dulce.”
Los Angeles is truly a city of the
angels and also a city of saints. Now,
we have a new saint who is watching
over us from heaven.
And Blessed Pier Frassati truly is a
saint for our times, a model for all
of us, but especially for our young
people.
He was a young man who loved life
and enjoyed it to the full. He was a
good friend to others, a good son, and
a good brother. And he was a man
of deep prayer who taught us to find
Jesus in the holy Eucharist and in the
face of the poor.
Some of his last words were these:
“I will wait for them all in heaven.”
And I am confident that through his
prayers, Our Lord will lead many to
follow him there.
Pray for me, and I will pray for you.
And let us ask our Blessed Mother
Mary to help us to live in this new
year, the Jubilee of Hope, with a greater
sense of wonder at all God’s gifts
and blessings.
January 10, 2025 • ANGELUS • 3

WORLD
■ More than a century later,
Austrian nuns find pope’s lost shoe
How did a shoe from a 19th-century pope end up in the attic of a
20th-century monastery?
The nuns of a Redemptorist convent in Lauterach, Austria, didn’t
have an easy answer when the community’s superior discovered a red
shoe and skull cap from Pope Pius IX in the convent’s attic.
“I was speechless,” said the superior. “How these things got here
remains a mystery.”
Blessed Pope Pius IX was the longest reigning pope in Church history,
whose 1846 to
1878 pontificate
involved the
proclamation of
the Immaculate
Conception as
dogma as well as
the First Vatican
Council.
The relics are
believed to have
been brought
to the convent
by missionaries.
They are currently
on display as
part of a 120th-anniversary
exhibit.
The red shoe and zucchetto (skull cap) belonging to Blessed Pius IX. |
REINHARD MOHR/RELIGION.ORF.AT
■ Iraq: Two papal assassination
attempts foiled in 2021
Pope Francis revealed that he was targeted by
two would-be assassins during his March 2021 trip
to Iraq.
According to the pope’s account, British intelligence
had alerted Iraqi police that a young
woman loaded with explosives was on her way to
Mosul to blow herself up during the pope’s visit
to the city, and that “a truck had also left at full
speed with the same intent,” Francis wrote.
“When I asked the gendarmes the following day
what was known about the two bombers, the commander
replied succinctly, ‘They’re gone.’ The
Iraqi police had intercepted them and detonated
them. That, too, struck me deeply. This, too, was
the poisoned fruit of war,” he wrote.
However, a former Iraqi official involved with the
visit denied the pope’s life was ever threatened.
“We never heard of or saw any evidence of this
alleged attempt, and it is surprising that such
claims are being made now, especially since we in
Iraq were unaware of these rumors,” said former
Nineveh Gov. Najm Al-Jubouri to Iraqi news
media
The pope’s comments came from “Hope: The
Autobiography,” which will be released in 80
countries Jan. 14.
■ After 100 years, Lourdes
miracle officially recognized
The 1923 healing of a British soldier at
Lourdes was officially declared a miracle, the
71st officially recognized miracle from the
site.
John Traynor, a member of the British Royal
Navy during World War I, was left paralyzed
on his right side and susceptible to epileptic
seizures after being hit by machine-gun fire
in 1915.
Eight years later, and ahead of plans to be
admitted to a hospital for incurables, Traynor
joined a pilgrimage to Lourdes with his parish.
He was bathed nine times in the miraculous
waters at the Lourdes Grotto, healing
both his seizures and restoring full function to
his right arm and the ability to walk.
In a Dec. 8 statement, Archbishop Malcom
McMahon of Liverpool acknowledged “the
weight of medical evidence, the testimony to
the faith of John Traynor, and his devotion to
Our Blessed Lady” in officially recognizing
the miracle.
A kingly gesture — Britain’s King Charles III greets a man after attending a Catholic Advent service
at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in London Dec. 17. Co-hosted by Aid to the Church in
Need, the service marked the 10th anniversary of terrorist group ISIS’ invasion of northern Iraq and
celebrated the strength and courage of faith communities, including Christian minorities. The visit by
Charles, the senior figure of the Anglican Church, to a Catholic church is considered rare. | OSV NEWS/
ARTHUR EDWARDS VIA REUTERS
4 • ANGELUS • January 10, 2025

NATION
Mourning in Madison — A young woman prays at Blackhawk Church in Madison, Wisconsin, Dec. 16 as
people gathered to pray for victims and survivors of a mass shooting that day at Abundant Life Christian School
in Madison. The shooter, a 15-year-old girl, shot and killed a teacher and a fellow student before turning the gun
on herself. Six others were injured. | OSV NEWS/CULLEN GRANZEN, REUTERS
■ Catholic Christmas
carol adaptation tops
podcast charts
A Catholic-produced audio drama
of Charles Dicken’s famous
“A Christmas Carol” hit the top of
Apple’s fiction podcast charts this
holiday season.
“A Christmas Carol: An Audio
Advent Calendar” breaks the famous
story into 25 short episodes released
daily in December. First released in
2021 by The Merry Beggars, a Catholic
entertainment company owned
by Relevant Radio, the program has
found success this year with more
than 1 million downloads.
“My hope is that the audiences
listening to this production will be
filled with the same joy and hope
and beauty that I experience every
time that I’ve listened to it,” Peter
Atkinson, founder and executive
producer of the Merry Beggars, said.
“There’s something about the story of
‘A Christmas Carol’ that makes you
want to listen to it every single year.”
■ Massachusetts scholar
looks to fund Nagasaki
cathedral project
An American expert on the aftermath of
the atomic bombing of Nagasaki is leading
an effort to have U.S. Catholics purchase
a new bell for the Urakami Cathedral.
James L. Nolan Jr. of Williams College
in Massachusetts heads the Nagasaki Bell
Project. Inspired by a parishioner at the
cathedral, the project seeks $125,000 to
recast the bell, ship, and install a cathedral
bell that was destroyed in the 1945 atomic
bombing of the Japanese city. A foundry
in St. Louis has been selected to cast the
bell.
Nolan hopes the project, which has
raised $52,000 as of November 2024, will
be completed by August 2025 to mark the
80th anniversary of the bombing.
“It will be incredibly meaningful,” he
said. “I want to join with the parishioner
who asked me and said that he wants to
hear that. I do, too.”
■ Trump names head
of CatholicVote as
Vatican envoy
President-elect Donald Trump
announced his intention to appoint
Brian Burch, the president of
Catholic advocacy group Catholic-
Vote, as the next U.S. ambassador
to the Holy See.
If confirmed by the U.S. Senate,
Burch, a father of nine, will represent
the United States in diplomatic
relations with the Vatican.
CatholicVote is a right-leaning CatholicVote president Brian Burch. | CATHOLICVOTE
lay advocacy group that endorsed
Trump’s presidential bid and spent more than $10 million on the 2024 elections.
Although it uses the word “Catholic,” it is not officially associated with
any diocese or official Church entity.
In his Dec. 20 announcement, Trump said Burch “represented me well
during the last election, having garnered more Catholic votes than any presidential
candidate in history!”
In a series of social media posts, Burch thanked Trump and said, “I am
committed to working with leaders inside the Vatican and the new administration
to promote the dignity of all people and the common good.”
January 10, 2025 • ANGELUS • 5

LOCAL
A new beginning — Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Marc Trudeau and Msgr. David Sork, pastor at St. John Fisher
Church in Rancho Palos Verdes, helped bless the groundbreaking on Dec. 8 for the parish’s new Msgr. Eugene
Gilb Welcome Center. The building is expected to be completed in mid-2026 and is named for St. John Fisher’s
former pastor, who died in 2019. | ST. JOHN FISHER
■ LA Archdiocese,
LAUSD settle over funding
for students in need
The Los Angeles Unified School District will
pay $3 million toward services for struggling
students in LA Catholic schools after multiple
investigations found the district had violated federal
law in ways that slashed assistance for Title
I-eligible students in the LA Archdiocese.
As part of a settlement announced Dec. 11,
LAUSD also agreed to increased flexibility in
how federal funding for needy students is calculated
and distributed.
The settlement comes after years of complaints,
lawsuits, and court rulings. The dispute
was appealed to both the California and U.S.
Departments of Education before a Superior
Court judge ruled in favor of the archdiocese in
July 2024.
The archdiocese will likely use the increased
services beginning in the 2025-26 school year,
officials said.
“There should be every attempt made to
maximize support to the most impoverished
students,” said Robert Tagorda, chief academic
officer for the archdiocese’s Department of
Catholic Schools.
■ LA’s homeless dead remembered by
faith, civic leaders at cathedral vigil
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass joined local faith and civic leaders at the
Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels Dec. 21 to honor the 1,137 homeless
people who died in Los Angeles County during the past year.
The 3rd annual Homeless Persons’ Interreligious Memorial Service takes
place on Dec. 21, the first day of winter and the longest night of the year.
Speakers included Debra Boudreaux with the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation,
Umar Hakim-Dey with the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and Duncan
Sachdeva with the Hollywood Sikh Temple.
In his remarks, Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez said the issue
of homelessness can
seem hopeless, but just
as God is merciful,
so should we be with
others.
“Sometimes, it just
gets overwhelming,
we can find ourselves
getting tired of being
helpful and generous,”
Archbishop Gomez
said. “But love has
no limit, Jesus tells us
tonight. And mercy
Catholic school students bring candles representing those who died
on LA’s streets in 2024 to the cathedral sanctuary. | VICTOR ALEMÁN
■ ‘Miracle’ occurs
after Guadalupe statue
unharmed in fire
A San Diego homeowner with
an altar dedicated to Our Lady of
Guadalupe called it a “miracle” when
the Virgin Mary statues at the shrine
weren’t damaged in a fire set by an
arsonist.
In the early morning hours of Dec.
13, surveillance footage showed a
masked man dousing the altar with
some kind of liquid before lighting the
structure on fire. The blaze burned
wood, vases, and flowers, but several
statues of Our Lady of Guadalupe
were not damaged.
The homeowner, Leticia Salcedo,
said the altar was built 20 years ago
and no one has ever tried to vandalize
it before.
“I’m sad. I don’t know why people do
that,” Salcedo told ABC/10 News San
Diego before saying, “It’s a miracle, a
Virgin miracle.”
is the measure of our
love.”
Y
6 • ANGELUS • January 10, 2025

V
IN OTHER WORDS...
Letters to the Editor
Thanks for the (Christmas) memories
Thank you to the editors of Angelus for coming up with the “Christmas
Memories” feature in the Dec. 27 issue. Some of the winning essays
were quite moving.
I’ve always been skeptical of people who reduce Christmas to warm, fuzzy feelings.
Christianity is much more serious than that. But reading those memories, I
was reminded that it doesn’t have to always be about dramatic conversion stories;
sometimes, a little nostalgia can speak to the heart in mysterious ways.
— David Johnson, Amarillo, Texas
The biggest Angelus online hits of 2024
As 2024 ends, here are the five most-read articles on AngelusNews.com from the
past year:
— “Anti-Catholic bias aside, ‘Conclave’ is just plain bad,” Stefano Rebeggiani,
Oct. 22
— “A guide to the Vatican figures on the rise in 2024,” John L. Allen Jr., Jan. 23
— “The untold LA story of the miracle that will make Pier Giorgio Frassati a
saint,” Pablo Kay, Dec. 15
— “A week walking in Venice,” Heather King, Oct. 25
— “Is that really what Jesus looked like? Experts weigh in on sensational AI image,”
Pablo Kay, Aug. 23
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.
Higher calling
“No child is ever a mistake.”
~ Pope Francis, in his Dec. 22 Angelus video
address, the last before Christmas Day.
“I’m aware of the
boundaries, and I have no
problem discussing them,
but it just doesn’t come up.”
~ Bishop David O’Connell of Trenton, New Jersey,
to the National Catholic Register on the frequency
of requests for nonliturgical blessings for same-sex
couples since the publication of Fiducia Supplicans
(“Supplicating Trust”) a year ago.
“I think that the path to that
is absolute surrender to a
higher power.”
~ Actor Jonathan Roumie, asked by The New York
Times how he went from struggling actor to playing
Jesus in one of the most-watched shows in the
world.
“TV has become as
ephemeral as the last five
videos you swiped on
TikTok, or the last bag
of chips you forgot you
already ate.”
~ Gabrielle Bondi, in a Dec. 9 Bustle commentary on
how we’ve entered the era of “Junk Food TV.”
Micaela Patajo, a senior at St. Monica Preparatory in Santa Monica, is a speed climber who’s represented the United
States at the Youth World Championships in China. Patajo describes how speed climbing has helped her slow down
and be thankful for God’s graces. Watch Patajo’s and all #LACatholicsStory videos at lacatholics.org/stories. | ARCHDI-
OCESE OF LOS ANGELES
To view this video
and others, visit
AngelusNews.com/photos-videos
Do you have photos or a story from your parish that you’d
like to share? Please send to editorial @angelusnews.com.
“For every Shakespeare,
hundreds of other
playwrights lived, wrote,
and died.”
~ S.E. Smith, in a Dec. 18 The Verge commentary on
what happens to our culture when websites start
to vanish.
January 10, 2025 • ANGELUS • 7

IN EXILE
FATHER RONALD ROLHEISER, OMI
Oblate of Mary Immaculate Father
Ronald Rolheiser is a spiritual
writer; ronrolheiser.com
Searching for a womb to birth a messiah
are always impatient,
but God is never in a hurry!”
“People
Nikos Kazantzakis wrote those
words and they highlight an important
truth. We need to be patient, infinitely
patient, with God. We need to let
things unfold in their proper time,
God’s time.
Looking at religious history through
the centuries, we cannot help but be
struck by the fact that God seemingly
takes his time in the face of our
impatience. Our Scriptures are often
a record of frustrated desire, of nonfulfillment,
and of human impatience.
It is more the exception when God
intervenes directly and decisively to
resolve a particular human tension. We
are always longing for a messiah to take
away our pain and to avenge oppression,
but mostly those prayers seem to
fall on deaf ears.
Thus, we see in Scripture the constant,
painful cry: Come, Lord, come!
Save us! How much longer must we
wait? When, Lord, when?
We are forever impatient, but God
refuses to be hurried. Why? Why is
God, seemingly, so slow to act? Is God
callous to our suffering? Why is God
so patient, so slow-moving, when we
are suffering so deeply? Why is God so
excruciatingly slow to act in the face of
human impatience?
There’s a line in Jewish apocrypha
literature, which metaphorically helps
answer this question: Every tear brings
the Messiah closer! There is, it would
seem, an intrinsic connection between
frustration and the possibility of a
messiah being born. Messiahs can only
be born after a long period of human
yearning. Why?
Human birth already sheds some light
on that. Gestation cannot be hurried
and there is an organic connection
between the pain a mother experiences
in childbirth and the delivery of a new
life. That’s also true of Jesus’ birth. It
presupposes a gestation process that
cannot be rushed.
Tears, pain, and a long season of
prayer are needed to create the conditions
for the kind of pregnancy that
births a messiah into our world. Why?
Because a certain kind of love and life
can be born only after a long-suffering
patience has created the correct space,
a virginal womb, within which the
sublime can be born. The sublime is
invariably predicated on a previous
sublimation.
A couple of metaphors can help us
understand this.
St. John of the Cross, in trying to
explicate how a person can come to be
inflamed with altruistic love, uses the
image of a log bursting into flame in a
fireplace. When a green log is placed
in a fire, it doesn’t start to burn immediately.
It first needs to dry out. Thus, for
a long time, it just sizzles in the fire, its
greenness and dampness slowly drying
out. Only when it reaches kindling
temperature can it ignite and burst into
flame.
Speaking metaphorically, before a log
can burst into flame, it needs to pass
through a certain advent, a certain
drying out, a period of frustration and
yearning. So too, the dynamics of how a
special kind of love is born in our lives.
We can ignite into this kind of love only
when we, separate, green, damp logs,
have sizzled sufficiently in the fire of
unfulfilled desire.
Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
offers a second metaphor: He speaks of
something he calls “the raising of our
psychic temperature.” In a chemistry
laboratory you can place two elements
in the same test tube and not get fusion.
The elements remain separate, refusing
to unite. It is only after they are heated
to a higher temperature that they unite.
We’re no different. Often, it’s only when
our psychic temperature has been
raised sufficiently that there’s fusion,
that is, it’s only when unrequited longing
has raised our soul’s temperature
that we can move toward reconciliation
and union.
In brief, sometimes we must be
brought to a psychic fever through frustration
and pain before we are willing to
let go of our selfishness and let ourselves
be drawn into community.
Father Thomas Halik once suggested
that an atheist is simply another word
for someone who doesn’t have enough
patience with God. He’s right. God is
never in a hurry, and for good reason.
Messiahs can only be gestated inside a
particular kind of womb, namely, one
within which there’s enough patience
and willingness to wait, so as to let
things happen on God’s terms, not ours.
Every tear brings the Messiah closer.
This isn’t an unfathomable mystery.
Ideally, every frustration should make
us more ready to love. Ideally, every tear
should make us more ready to forgive.
Ideally, every heartache should make
us more ready to let go of some of our
separateness. Ideally, every unfulfilled
longing should lead us into a deeper
and more sincere prayer. And ideally,
all of our pained impatience for a
consummation that forever eludes us
should make us feverish enough to
burst into love’s flame.
As another aphorism in Jewish apocrypha
literature poetically states: It is with
much groaning of the flesh that the life
of the spirit is brought forth!
8 • ANGELUS • January 10, 2025

A NEW FRIEND ‘UP THERE’
LA seminarian
Juan Gutierrez
turned to Italian
Blessed Pier Giorgio
Frassati for help
with a scary injury.
The consequences
helped make a saint.
BY PABLO KAY
Father Juan Gutierrez, associate pastor at St. John the Baptist
Church in Baldwin Park, holds an image of Blessed Pier Giorgio
Frassati, whose intercession is credited with the miraculous healing
of Gutierrez’s ankle. | JOHN RUEDA/ARCHDIOCESE OF LA
10 • ANGELUS • January 10, 2025

For those who knew the strange
story of Juan Gutierrez’s ankle, or
even parts of it, the word “miracle”
was hard not to think of.
A fluke basketball injury. Faulty medical
advice. Unexpected inspirations
during prayer. A sudden healing. The
surprising involvement of the Vatican.
While the news of Gutierrez’s unexplained
recovery from a torn Achilles
tendon got out, it didn’t really get
around, at least not far beyond where
the story started: St. John’s Seminary in
Camarillo, California, where Gutierrez
and other future priests for the Archdiocese
of Los Angeles and other Catholic
dioceses in the western U.S. are trained.
The event was remarkable enough
to be noticed by just enough people,
while Gutierrez’s modest, shy demeanor
seemed to divert any further
attention from it.
A portrait of Blessed Pier
Giorgio Frassati. | OSV
NEWS/CATHOLIC PRESS
PHOTO
But this odd combination of circumstances
would eventually prove
providential, confounding medical
authorities, changing the life of this
anonymous seminarian, and forever
tying him to another young man who
had been dead for almost 100 years:
Pier Giorgio Frassati, who in August
will be declared a saint of the Catholic
Church on account of the miracle of
Juan Gutierrez’s ankle.
This odd tale begins in Texcoco,
a city on the peripheries of
Mexico City, where Juan Manuel
Gutierrez was born in 1986. His
parents separated when he was 2, but at
19 he immigrated to the U.S. to join his
father in Omaha.
It was there that, after being invited to
a weekend retreat, he returned to the
Catholic faith of his youth that he’d
fallen away from. Soon, he found himself
unable to shake the feeling that he
was being called to the priesthood, and
eventually wound up applying to enter
the seminary in Los Angeles.
In 2013, he began college studies at
the archdiocese’s Juan Diego House of
Formation in Gardena. Graduating in
2017, he and his classmates moved to
St. John’s Seminary to continue their
studies.
Every Monday, Gutierrez soon
learned, St. John’s seminarians went
to play basketball at a nearby gym
in Camarillo. While not exactly an
athlete, he’d always enjoyed sports as a
youth, especially basketball and soccer,
and the chance to compete again was a
perk of seminary life for Gutierrez.
On Sept. 25, 2017, Gutierrez stepped
onto the court: “I didn’t really warm
up” that day, he remembered.
A few minutes into the game, Gutierrez
had a feeling like someone had
bumped into his right ankle, followed
by a sound: “Pop!”
“When I heard the pop, I turned
around and nobody was there,” Gutierrez
recalled. “Like, absolutely nobody.”
What he did notice was that he
couldn’t walk normally anymore. He
headed for the bench and got a ride
back to St. John’s.
Gutierrez remembered thinking that
the injury “wasn’t that bad.” But the
pain he began to feel didn’t let him
sleep much that night. For a few days,
he pushed himself to go to class and
follow the seminary prayer schedule.
But when another seminarian decided
to go to the hospital to get an injury
looked at, Gutierrez realized he had
better join him.
At the hospital, the X-ray didn’t show
any broken bones. A doctor prescribed
painkillers, telling Gutierrez he had
most likely pulled a muscle.
Back at the seminary, one of Gutierrez’s
classmates had noticed him limping:
Rene Haarpaintner was a widower
in his 50s who’d left his medical practice
to enter the seminary. He was still
a licensed chiropractor, and suggested
that Gutierrez walk with crutches to
allow the pulled muscle to heal.
“It was bad,” remembered Haarpaintner,
who was ordained a priest in 2023,
a year after Gutierrez. “It was swollen
everywhere and I could not really
January 10, 2025 • ANGELUS • 11

Gutierrez as a seminarian, pictured with two friends
who would prove to be key witnesses in the Vatican
investigation into his healing: Franciscan Brother
Artie Vasquez (left) and seminarian Jorge Moncada
(second from right). | FATHER JUAN GUTIERREZ
palpate [touch] much of it because
the swelling was so big, everything was
blue.”
When Gutierrez’s pain worsened over
the next few weeks, Haarpaintner gave
Gutierrez some stretching exercises to
try.
Gutierrez dutifully complied, even
though the stretches proved painful —
really painful.
As Gutierrez’s pain got worse,
Haarpaintner guessed he had suffered
ligament damage. But that would take
an MRI to confirm and the earliest
appointment available was Oct. 31,
which was almost three weeks away at
that point.
In the meantime, Haarpaintner
suggested that Gutierrez stay off his foot
completely. He got through the month
with a borrowed air cast and a makeshift
brace. On Halloween morning, he
drove himself to the radiology lab for
the MRI.
Hours later, as Gutierrez was opening
the gate to the seminary, his phone
rang. It was the doctor.
Gutierrez (center) wears an air cast during the Rite of Admission to Candidacy to Holy Orders at St. John’s Seminary on
Oct. 20, 2017, days before an MRI revealed he had a torn Achilles tendon. | FATHER JUAN GUTIERREZ
When he saw the caller ID, “I knew
that something was really wrong,”
Gutierrez said. “I didn’t even say hello
to him. I just picked up and said, ‘It’s
bad, huh?’ ”
He had guessed correctly: “You have a
tear in your Achilles.”
The doctor told Gutierrez to make
an appointment with an orthopedic
surgeon, and that surgery would be his
best option.
A sense of dread came over the seminarian.
Surgery would mean a long,
painful road to recovery. His schoolwork
would no doubt suffer, and how
was he going to pay for the procedure?
He still hadn’t told his family in Nebraska
or in Mexico about the injury.
Gutierrez spent that night in his room
Googling “Achilles injuries.” The pictures
of blood and stories of infections
associated with tendon surgery only
made him feel more anxious.
The next day, Nov. 1, was the day
the Catholic Church celebrates
“All Saints’ Day,” remembering
all the holy men and women in heaven.
After Mass in the seminary chapel,
Gutierrez stayed behind. His heart was
heavy from the latest news.
“I was there, I was praying, and then
at the end, I was like, you know, I think
I need help from above,” he recalled.
“I was having this conversation with
myself in my head.”
At some point, the thought entered:
“Well, why don’t you make a novena?”
It wasn’t a strange idea. Growing up,
Gutierrez had prayed plenty of the
nine-day devotions to different saints.
Novenas aren’t “magic,” he’d come
to believe, but “a journey of faith and
prayer.”
For Gutierrez, the question was: who
do I pray to? Then the conversation did
take an odd turn.
“I had this whisper in my head that
tells me: ‘Why don’t you make it to
Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati?’ I just
12 • ANGELUS • January 10, 2025

remember thinking, ‘Oh yeah, that’s a
good idea.’ ”
It was a peculiar thought, given that
Gutierrez didn’t exactly have any personal
devotion to Frassati. He’d been
introduced to him in the same way he’d
learned about so many other saints:
watching YouTube videos.
Frassati had been born in Turin, Italy,
in 1901 to Alfredo Frassati, a journalist
(and later, a politician and diplomat)
who founded the major Italian newspaper
La Stampa.
His father was an agnostic, but Frassati
early on developed a deep devotion
to the Eucharist, attending daily Mass
and spending long hours of prayer in
the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.
An avid outdoorsman and mountain
climber, he would eventually spend
much of his own fortune to help the
local poor.
Blessed Frassati was an avid
outdoorsman who enjoyed skiing,
hiking, and mountain climbing.
He died in 1925, a few days after
falling ill with polio, which he probably
contracted while visiting sick people
in a slum area of Turin. He was just 24
years old.
Hundreds of the city’s poor followed
his coffin during his funeral procession,
and within a few years a movement
began to have him declared a saint.
Frassati became associated with the
phrase “verso l’alto” (meaning “to the
heights” in Italian), which he wrote on
a photograph of his last climb.
Among his admirers was St. Pope John
Paul II.
John Paul, a skier, a hiker, and an
outdoorsman himself, found a kindred
spirit in the idealistic and energetic
young Frassati.
He held him up often as a role model
for how young Catholics can follow
Jesus in a complicated and changing
world.
“He was a modern youth,” the pope
told a gathering of young people in
1983, “open to the problems of culture,
sports, to social questions, to the true
values of life, and at the same time a
profoundly believing man, nourished
by the Gospel message, deeply interested
in serving his brothers and sisters,
and consumed in an ardor of charity
that drew him close to the poor and the
sick. He lived the Gospel beatitudes.”
When Frassati’s remains were moved
to the Cathedral of Turin in 1981,
his body was found incorrupt, that is,
showing none of the ordinary signs of
decay after death.
In 1990, John Paul declared him
“Blessed,” beatifying him after the
Vatican recognized the healing of a
man from tuberculosis who prayed to
Frassati as a miracle attributed to his
intercession.
And so it was on that fateful All Saints’
day in 2017 that Gutierrez came back
to the chapel to start the novena to
Frassati, praying it during the time set
aside for seminarians to pray before the
Blessed Sacrament.
At no point during the novena did he
ask to be healed, he stressed.
“My prayer was, ‘Lord, through the
intercession of Blessed Pier Giorgio
Frassati, I ask you to help me in my
injury.’ ”
“I had this whisper in my head that tells me: ‘Why
don’t you make [the novena] to Blessed Pier Giorgio
Frassati?’ I just remember thinking, ‘Oh yeah,
that’s a good idea.’ ”
Gutierrez said he would have ended
the prayer there, before praying the
usual rosary to accompany the novena.
But at that moment on that first day,
he had what he calls another “inspiration,”
to follow up that prayer with a
declaration: “…and I promise that, if
anything unusual happens, I will report
it to whomever I need to report it to.”
“That part did surprise me,” recalled
Gutierrez. “I’m like, where did that
come from?”
It would prove to be a thought worth
holding. Because unusual things were
about to happen.
A
few days later, Gutierrez entered
the chapel to pray his novena. It
wasn’t during the usual 5 p.m.
Holy Hour, he remembered, because
nobody else was there this time.
He recalled feeling “a warmth around
the area of my injury” as he knelt and
was praying.
“It was gentle,” Gutierrez said. “But
it would increase little by little, and at
some point I thought that an outlet of
the electrical was catching fire. And
I was looking for the fire. And there
was no fire there. So I just remember
looking at my ankle and thinking,
‘That’s so strange’ because I could feel
the warmth.”
Gutierrez knew from his past experiences
with the Charismatic Renewal
movement that heat is sometimes
associated with God’s healing. Gutierrez
looked up toward the tabernacle
holding the Blessed Sacrament. He
began to cry.
“I told the Lord in my heart, ‘It cannot
be. Not because you don’t have the
power to heal me, but because I know
January 10, 2025 • ANGELUS • 13

that I don’t have the faith for something
like this.’ And that moved me.”
His tears having dried and his prayers
finished, Gutierrez left the chapel. He
doesn’t remember exactly what day the
mysterious experience took place, only
that there were a few days left before
Nov. 9, when his novena was set to
conclude.
He does remember that after that day,
he stopped wearing the brace used to
keep his right foot immobilized: “I just
didn’t need it anymore.”
Gutierrez had an appointment scheduled
for Nov. 15 with an orthopedic
surgeon. At some point, he realized
that he was not even thinking about his
injury anymore.
On Nov. 15, inside his downtown
LA office, the orthopedic
surgeon asked his new patient
what he did for a living.
“I’m a seminarian, which means
I’m studying to be a priest,” Gutierrez
explained.
To confirm the diagnosis of a torn
Achilles indicated by the MRI images,
the surgeon conducted something
called the Thompson test, which
involved squeezing the patient’s calf as
he laid face-down on the hospital bed.
If the foot moved when he squeezed,
that would mean the tendon was
connected. If it didn’t, it would confirm
the tear.
“Hmm,” Gutierrez heard the surgeon
mutter after squeezing. Then the
surgeon pressed his thumb on the place
where the MRI showed the tear.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
Gutierrez felt a slight sensation of
muscle soreness, but no pain. The
doctor asked if he could press harder,
and then harder again. Still Gutierrez
felt no pain.
Sitting back up, he noticed a puzzled
look on the surgeon’s face. Pressing
directly on the area of the tear, he’d
expected to feel the gap with his
thumb, something Gutierrez had felt
the couple of times he had dared to
examine his ankle.
“You have no gap,” the surgeon said.
“You must have somebody up there
looking after you.”
A chill went down Gutierrez’s spine.
He remembered the novena. Then
he began to pepper the doctor with
14 • ANGELUS • January 10, 2025
questions.
Could the gap have closed on its own?
No, the doctor replied, in fact, they
tend to open even more over time.
What if the MRI was wrong? No way.
“This is the most advanced piece of
technology we have for something like
this.”
Pointing to the screen, the surgeon
told the seminarian, “As of Oct. 31, you
had a tear in your Achilles, but now I
can’t find it.”
At the time, Gutierrez wanted to
tell everybody about this strange
development. But he was afraid
of drawing too much attention to
himself. He resolved to only tell a few
of those close to him.
At St. John’s, his fellow students
noticed that he was no longer limping
and no longer wearing the brace.
When they asked him about it, he kept
his answers simple, saying only that
a doctor had told him he didn’t need
surgery after all. The fact that he hadn’t
made a big deal about his injury in
the first place helped tamp down on
further questions
“Juan’s a pretty low-key guy,” said
Father Tommy Green, a classmate of
Gutierrez’s who was ordained a priest
in 2024. “It kind of just fell off the
radar.”
Within a few weeks, Gutierrez was
jogging, and ready to move on with
seminary studies and normal life. He
only confided about the healing to
his spiritual director and a few close
friends. As far as he was concerned, the
story was over.
Then he got a reminder about the
second part of his novena prayer.
Gutierrez was wandering the exhibit
hall at a youth conference a few
months later when he came across a
booth featuring a life-size photo cutout
of Frassati. The booth was unattended.
Taking some Frassati prayer cards, he
noticed on the back an email address
A pilgrim wears a U.S. flag at an
exhibit on Frassati at St. Mary’s
Cathedral in Sydney, Australia,
during World Youth Day in
2008. | CNS/PAUL HARING

Father Gutierrez was joined at the Dec. 16
press conference by Archbishop José H.
Gomez and fellow priests at St. John the
Baptist Church. | VICTOR ALEMÁN
where people could send stories of
favors they had received through Frassati’s
intercession.
He remembered his promise: “If anything
unusual happens, I will report it
to whomever I need to report it to.”
He put it off for a few months, but
eventually sat down to type his testimony
and email it.
“To me, that day was the end of it: I
fulfilled my promise to Pier Giorgio
that I would report it,” recalled Gutierrez.
He never received a reply to his email.
Once again, he thought the story was
over.
Two years passed, it was now the fall
of 2020, and he found himself sitting
at St. John’s in a class being taught by
Msgr. Robert Sarno, an American priest
who had recently retired after nearly 40
years at the Vatican’s Dicastery of the
Causes of the Saints.
The subject of the course? The diocesan
phase of canonization causes.
“I was like, ‘Oh snap,’ maybe there’s
something here that will make me tell
my testimony about my experience
with Pier Giorgio to somebody, ” Gutierrez
thought.
When the class turned to the subject
of how the Church investigates claims
of miraculous healings, the thought
of approaching Sarno with his story
only made Gutierrez more nervous.
He could picture the straight-talking
Brooklyn priest brusquely dismissing his
tale as a “nice story.”
“Jesus, give me courage to say something
about this because I personally
don’t want to,” Gutierrez prayed.
One day after breakfast, Gutierrez
worked up the courage to
approach Sarno and tell him
his story.
Sarno looked at him and asked, “Why
did you wait this long to tell me this
story?’
“Because you’re very intimidating,”
the seminarian replied.
“Yeah, I’ve been told that before”
Sarno said.
At dinnertime the same day, Sarno
approached Gutierrez to tell him that
Rome was “very interested” in his story.
In an interview with Angelus, Sarno
said, “It was the last thing that I had
expected, that in this course that I was
teaching in the Archdiocese of Los
Angeles, there could be a potential
miracle for the canonization of Blessed
Pier Giorgio Frassati.”
After talking to Silvia Correale,
J.C.D., the Argentine-born lawyer who
was heading up Frassati’s canonization
cause in Rome, Sarno suggested to
Gutierrez that it would be “prudent”
not to speak about his experience to
anyone else.
The reason was that Sarno had been
given the “green light” to initiate a
diocesan-level canonical investigation
into Gutierrez’s case. Sarno worked on
the sainthood causes of such legendary
figures as Sts. Mother Teresa of Calcutta
and Damien of Molokai, among
others.
Explaining the caution he gave to
Gutierrez, Sarno told Angelus: “You
don’t want to prejudice the witnesses of
a potential investigation. You want to
keep all the witnesses completely free
to be examined without any restrictions
or coloring or, bias, if you will, in the
case.”
From there, the process began to
move. Los Angeles Archbishop José
H. Gomez authorized Sarno to head
up the archdiocese’s investigation of
Gutierrez’s story.
Two LA priests, Father Joseph Fox,
OP, and Msgr. Michael Carcerano,
were appointed to help with the judicial
process, and in the fall of 2023, Sarno
returned to St. John’s to interview witnesses
and gather evidence, including
doctor’s notes, the initial MRI scan, and
other documents.
January 10, 2025 • ANGELUS • 15

Among the seminarians interviewed
was the chiropractor, Haarpaintner.
Because the doctors who examined
Gutierrez at the hospital had missed
that it was a torn tendon, Haarpaintner
testified, it is likely that his recommended
stretching exercises had
actually made that tear worse. This,
he believed, made a sudden recovery
even more improbable from a medical
standpoint.
Haarpaintner said it was a lesson in
humility when he was also asked to
speak over Zoom to a Vatican medical
panel investigating the possible
miracle.
He said a surgeon on the call told
him, “You screwed up, you aggravated
the injury by putting his foot in
plantar flexion.”
“Yes, I did, sorry, I did!” Haarpaintner
remembered answering.
“Can you imagine what that was
like for my vanity? Not good,” joked
Haarpaintner, whose hometown in
Switzerland is a few hours’ drive from
Frassati’s native Turin.
“This is the best case of malpractice
in the eyes of God, that’s for sure.”
By the time Sarno submitted his findings
to the Dicastery for the Causes
of the Saints, he felt confident that he
had stumbled upon the miracle that
everyone was waiting for in the case.
“I believe in Divine Providence,”
Sarno said, “And there are just too
many accidents in this case.”
On Nov. 20, the Vatican announced
that Frassati would be canonized next
Aug. 3 during the 2025 Jubilee Year
celebration for young people, following
the canonization of Blessed Carlo
Acutis, another Italian youth known
for his deep love for the Eucharist and
the poor. Five days later, Pope Francis
formally approved the second miracle
attributed to Frassati’s intercession.
While the canonization of Acutis was
widely expected for next year’s jubilee,
the Frassati news came as “a great and
happy surprise” to those familiar with
his cause, including Sarno.
“As of Oct. 31, you had a tear in your Achilles,”
the surgeon told Gutierrez. “But now I can’t find
it.”
“The fact that Pier Giorgio’s canonization
will happen during the 100th
anniversary of his death, plus during
the holy year of 2025, plus the fact
Members of the Young Knights of Frassati
from St. Louise de Marillac School in
Covina showed up at the Dec. 16 press
conference. | VICTOR ALEMÁN
that Carlo Acutis will be canonized
during the jubilee weekend for teenagers,
Pier Giorgio during the one
for young adults … you can’t say that
that’s not Divine Providence either,”
said Sarno.
With the strange story of Gutierrez’s
ankle now officially
recognized as a miracle and
the secrecy surrounding his healing
gone, the 38-year-old priest is ready
to introduce his saintly friend to new
generations.
Since his ordination in 2022, Father
Gutierrez has served as associate
pastor at St. John the Baptist Church,
a suburb east of Los Angeles. In
another curious coincidence, the
cathedral where Frassati is entombed
is also named for St. John the Baptist.
The parish has a heavy Hispanic and
Filipino presence, with multiple ministries
for young people and at least a
dozen Masses every weekend.
“I think Pier Giorgio was a great role
model for what it is to be a young
Catholic in the world,” said Gutierrez.
“Someone who takes ownership of
our Catholic identity, someone who
is involved in the lived experience of
the faith, not only in the walls of your
church, but even beyond that.”
The experience has shown Gutierrez
that when it comes to heavenly intercession,
“we don’t choose the saints,
the saints choose us.”
So why did Frassati choose him, of
all people? The priest hasn’t really
figured it out, since he certainly
doesn’t share the Italian’s wealthy
background, or his athleticism. “To
this day, I’m still trying to receive
the miracle of becoming a hiker,” he
joked.
That said, Gutierrez sees at least one
clear connection that might explain
the workings of Providence.
“He was known to have a heart for
the needy and the poor,” said the
priest. “Maybe it wasn’t a big deal at
the moment, but in my time of need,
he drew near to me and he helped
me. And there are a lot of people who
have received graces from him. I’m
not the only one.”
Pablo Kay is the editor-in-chief of
Angelus.
16 • ANGELUS • January 10, 2025

A future saint’s niece finds
LA miracle ‘exhilarating’
Frassati’s niece, 97-year-old Wanda
Gawronksa, spoke exclusively to
Angelus about the Vatican recognition
of the LA miracle paving the way for
Frassati’s canonization next August
2025. | LA CATHOLICS
No one was more excited to hear
the news of the second miracle
needed for Blessed Pier Giorgio
Frassati’s canonization than his
niece, Wanda Gawronska.
Now 97 years old, Gawronska has
lived through the course of his cause
for sainthood from its very beginnings.
“I think it is all very exhilarating,”
said Gawronska of the recognition of
the miracle of Father Juan Gutierrez’s
ankle. “I think it’s wonderful that it’s
linked to a young priest, a seminarian.”
Gawronska’s mother, Luciana, was
Blessed Frassati’s sister, married to
Polish diplomat Jan Gawronski. Luciana
spearheaded Frassati’s cause from
its official start in 1933, and persisted
even after the cause was closed for
several years due to allegations about
Frassati that were later found to be
false.
“If we have Pier Giorgio as a saint
and friend in heaven … it’s thanks to
my mother, who did not accept that
the case was closed due to fake testimonies,”
said Gawronska via Zoom
at the Dec. 16 press conference at
Gutierrez’s parish.
Luciana eventually got Gawronska,
then a prominent photographer,
more involved in Frassati’s cause in
the 1970s, as Frassati’s life was getting
renewed attention.
“I got fascinated with him,” said
Gawronska. “I think he really was
the personification of charity, of the
love of Jesus through helping your
neighbor. Whether the neighbor was
rich, poor, sick, amusing … he always
thought of Christ.”
Gawronska credits St. Pope John Paul
II with championing Frassati’s cause
since his days as a cardinal in Poland,
when he first described him as a “man
of the beatitudes.”
For decades, Gawronska has traveled
around the world promoting devotion
to her uncle’s cause and hearing stories
of his influence on young Catholics.
She found it appropriate that the
recipient of his most consequential
miracle was a future priest.
“The thing which surprises me most
of all, is how Pier Giorgio is loved and
appreciated by priests, by seminarians,”
said Gawronska. “How many
have become priests because of Pier
Giorgio?”
In her remarks at the press conference,
Gawronska thanked Archbishop
José H. Gomez and those involved in
obtaining the Vatican’s approval of the
miracle, noting it came a century after
Frassati’s death in 1925. She also took
the opportunity to read from a letter
that Frassati had written exactly 100
years to the day earlier.
“I hope with the grace of God to continue
along the path of Catholic ideas
and to be able one day, in whatever
state God wills, to defend and propagate
these rare and true things,” wrote
Frassati to a friend Dec. 16, 1924.
Gawronska noted that Frassati’s
openness to “whatever state God wills”
included death.
“In this way he could propagate the
‘true things’ from heaven to the whole
world,” she said.
— Pablo Kay
January 10, 2025 • ANGELUS • 17

Parish volunteers Mila Villanueva,
Helen Limbo, Yvonne
Gandhi, and Carlito Rafanan
pose after the early-morning
Simbang Gabi novena at Holy
Family Church in Artesia. |
KIMMY CHACÓN
BRIGHT AND EARLY
For many Filipino Catholics in LA, preparing for Christmas starts
with an early-morning Simbang Gabi wake-up call.
BY KIMMY CHACÓN
At Holy Family Church in Artesia,
Simbang Gabi was celebrated
before dawn, the Misa de
Gallo (Mass of the Rooster) starting at
5 a.m. Every church pew was occupied
by mostly Filipino families who
anticipated the preparation of Christmas.
Some women wore traditional white
clothing from their homeland, while
the Knights of Columbus choir wore
a Salakót — a traditional Filipino hat
— (at least a portrayal of one) hanging
from their backs and a colorful bandanna
wrapped around their necks as
they sang throughout the Mass.
For Kirk Bravo, a young adult attending
Holy Family, it was a sacrifice to
wake up at 4 a.m. for the early-morning
Mass, but it was worth it.
“The sacrifice comes from the love
of God and the love for Mass and the
Eucharist, where I just need to do it. I
am not required to do this,” Bravo said.
“It doesn’t feel like Christmas unless
you begin with Simbang Gabi.”
Simbang Gabi is a Filipino tradition
of a nine-day novena Mass in
preparation for Christmas. Before the
17th century, Spanish missionaries
introduced Christianity to the Philippines.
The Masses were scheduled for
farmworkers, leading to the tradition
18 • ANGELUS • January 10, 2025

The Filipino choir at St. John of God
Church in Norwalk sang mostly songs in
Tagalog during the parish’s Simbang Gabi
festivities. | KIMMY CHACÓN
of Misa de Gallo, as the Mass was held
before dawn.
Today, most Filipino Catholics in
the archdiocese celebrate the evening
version of Simbang Gabi, which takes
place from Dec. 15 or 16 to Dec. 23
or 24.
But at Holy Family, a parish with a
large contingent of Filipino descent,
the pastor, Father John Cordero,
opted for the early-morning festivities
thanks to the devotion of his church’s
parishioners.
“You need a pool of committed volunteers
to help and serve with a nineday
Misa de Gallo,” Cordero said.
The Masses were conducted in
English to foster inclusivity, ensuring
the message resonates with a broader
audience and strengthens the spirit of
unity. After Mass, everyone gathered
for fellowship, and traditional Filipino
foods like rice cake, soup, and tea.
Some carried a petition for God to
answer their deepest prayer requests,
while others celebrated attending Mass
and thanking God.
“I still have pain [in my back], but I
rejoice that I am here,” said Mafalda
Canlas, an elderly parishioner at Holy
Family who was happy to attend a
Misa de Gallo with her family and
friends after being unable to attend a
Simbang Gabi Mass since 2018.
Over at St. John of God Church in
Norwalk, Christine Cayetano, a choir
director at the parish, helped celebrate
Simbang Gabi by bringing a musical
focus.
“When I was a child, my grandma
brought me to church and asked me
to play the piano. Then I joined a
choir, and that’s where it all started,”
she said.
Since then, Cayetano has
been actively playing at
Sunday Masses, especially
during Simbang Gabi. She
helps connect Filipinos with
their faith through liturgical
music while having her singers
perform in Tagalog.
At the end of a Simbang
Gabi Mass, a girl approached
Cayetano.
“She came from the
Philippines, and she was
in a choir there,” Cayetano
said. “I was the same. When
I came here [to the U.S.], I
looked for a choir that sang
Tagalog.”
The familiar sounds of
Filipino hymns during the
Mass evoked deep nostalgia and joy
for many parishioners, songs like “Ang
Pasko Ay Sumapit,” which translates to
“Christmas Has Arrived,” and “Halina
Hesus, Halina,” which translates to
“Come, Jesus, Come.”
“I look forward to listening to the
St. Philomena Church in Carson is one of several
LA-area parishes that held early morning Simbang
Gabi Masses in Dec. 2024. | KIMMY CHACÓN
January 10, 2025 • ANGELUS • 19

choir during the Filipino Mass,”
Michelle Gomez, a Filipina Catholic,
said. “I hear songs sung in Tagalog,
and I enjoy it here.”
“I can also sing along with them,”
added Beatriz Gomez, Michelle’s
mother, who sat next to her daughter
and granddaughter. The family enjoys
celebrating Mass at St. John of God
because the service and choir remind
them of their home in Manila.
For both women, the importance of
continuing the tradition of Simbang
Gabi resonated deeply.
“She was born here, and I want my
daughter to continue the tradition,”
said Michelle, on the importance for
her daughter to connect and understand
her Filipino Catholic roots.
Similar to Father John Cordero, Father
Francis Ilano, pastor at St. Philomena
Church in Carson, was born in
the Philippines and they have fond
memories of parols — a Christmas lantern.
Some parishes have star lanterns
displayed near the altar or have them
as decorations around the church.
“In the old days, in the absence
of streetlights, people would hang
lanterns on the house to light the way
to the church for the people attending
the novena,” Ilano said, “which
became the symbol of the Star of
Bethlehem.”
“Now, the star parol has become one
of the symbols of Simbang Gabi, the
Filipino Catholics process
during the Parade of Parols
to kick off Simbang Gabi
festivities at the Cathedral of
Our Lady of the Angels on
Dec. 15. | VICTOR ALEMÁN
Christmas season for Filipinos all over
the world.”
Kimmy Chacón is a freelance journalist
and graduate of the Columbia
University Graduate School of Journalism.
She lives in Los Angeles.
20 • ANGELUS • January 10, 2025

January 10, 2025 • ANGELUS • 21

YEAR OF
PLENTY
A look back at the top five
Vatican storylines of 2024.
BY JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Pope Francis and members
of the Synod of Bishops on
Synodality attend the synod’s
final working session Oct.
26 in the Paul VI Audience
Hall at the Vatican. | CNS/
VATICAN MEDIA
ROME — Looking back over the
last 12 months on the Vatican
beat, it’s tempting to call 2024
“tumultuous” — tempting, that is, but
also superfluous. Since he ascended to
the Throne of Peter in 2013, absolutely
every year in the Pope Francis era has
been tumultuous, so why should 2024
be any different?
In thinking about the year we’ve just
witnessed, what follows is a run-down
of my own choices for top five Vatican
stories of 2024.
5. A tale of one city, seen twice
Over the summer, Paris became a
focus for Catholic outrage when a July
26 opening ceremony for the Olympics
featured a segment with drag queens
allegedly designed to celebrate diversity,
but which many saw as an offensive
parody of the Last Supper. The French
bishops called the spectacle “a derision
and mockery of Christianity,” and
were quickly joined by other bishops,
global Catholic leaders, and even other
religious groups as well. The Vatican
waited a full week to speak out, but
eventually condemned “the offense
done to many Christians and believers
of other religions.”
Yet five months later, the bad taste left
by the Olympics controversy seemed
washed away by a remarkable ceremony
on Dec. 7 to reopen the famed Cathedral
of Notre-Dame de Paris, which
had been devastated by a massive fire
in 2019.
Presided over by Archbishop Laurent
Ulrich of Paris, the ceremony was
attended by French President Emanuel
Macron, President-elect Donald
Trump, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
of Ukraine, and other dignitaries from
across the globe.
“Notre Dame, model of faith, open
your doors to gather in joy the scattered
children of God,” Ulrich cried out
before striking the cathedral’s central
door three times with his pastoral staff,
which was made from a wooden beam
of the cathedral that survived the fire.
In 2024, Paris was twice the center of
the Catholic world — and, for many, its
second act largely redeemed the first.
4. Asian odyssey
Pope Francis, at the age of 87, undertook
the longest and most demanding
overseas trip of his pontificate on Sept.
2-13.
The trip allowed Francis to move the
ball of multiple pastoral and geopolitical
concerns. In Indonesia, the world’s
largest Muslim nation, he deepened
his outreach to Islam; in Papua New
Guinea, he solidified his reputation as
the “Pope of the Peripheries,” visiting
one of the most rural nations on earth
where small, isolated tribal communities
speak 840 separate languages; in
East Timor, he celebrated the faith in
22 • ANGELUS • January 10, 2025

one of the most pervasively Catholic
societies on the planet; and finally,
Singapore gave the pope a platform to
address neighboring China too.
The trip also helped reframe impressions
of the octogenarian pontiff’s
health and resilience. Prior to the Asian
outing, many commentators were
focusing on his various ailments and
occasional need to withdraw from certain
events to suggest the end might be
near; afterward, the consensus seemed
Francis might be good to go for a while
yet.
3. Election season
2024 brought two high-stake elections,
first the race for the European
Parliament in June and then the U.S.
presidential race in November. Though
the Vatican obviously took no formal
position in either contest, it’s fair to say
that Pope Francis and his team likely
weren’t entirely satisfied with either
result.
In Europe, the main center-right
faction, the European People’s Party of
Ursula von der Leyen, won the most
seats. Yet far-right populist parties made
significant gains, while leftist, social
democratic, and green parties took a
drubbing.
Of course, Trump, whom Francis
once famously described as “not a
Christian” for his positions on immigration,
also triumphed in the U.S., along
with his running mate J.D. Vance, a
convert to Catholicism, though not
quite to the “social gospel” embodied
by Francis.
In the American election, Trump and
Vance won the Catholic vote overall by
roughly 56% to 41%, and they did even
better among white Catholics. Meanwhile
in Europe, seven nations now
have far-right parties in their governing
coalitions, and five of the seven are
majority Catholic countries, meaning
those parties had to have attracted significant
Catholic support.
2024 confirmed, in other words,
that Francis can lead, but that doesn’t
always mean his flock will follow.
2. The fracas over Fiducia
While the issuance of Fiducia Supplicans
(“Supplicating Trust”), the Vatican
document authorizing blessings of
persons involved in same-sex unions,
technically occurred at the end of 2023,
the firestorm it set off unfolded in 2024.
As a few weeks went by with one bishop
or bishops’ conference praising Fiducia
while another lamented it, things
reached a sort of crescendo on Jan. 11,
when the bishops of the Symposium of
Episcopal Conferences of African and
Madagascar (SECAM) released a joint
statement.
“We African bishops do not consider it
appropriate for Africa to bless homosexual
unions or same-sex couples,
because this would cause confusion,”
they said. The bottom line was that
there will be “no blessings for same-sex
couples in the African churches.”
It was the first time that the bishops
of an entire continent had ever flatly
rejected a papally approved decree.
Even more remarkable, Pope Francis
basically countenanced the dissent,
giving his consent to Cardinal Fridolin
Ambongo Besunga to publish the
SECAM statement when he presented
it to the pontiff in a private audience.
The significance appears to be twofold.
First, the controversy over Fiducia
suggests that if a significant enough
cohort of bishops rises up and says no,
the Vatican eventually will be forced to
accept that dissent, effectively making
the implementation of such decrees a
matter of local option.
Second, the contretemps created
a new papabile, or candidate to be
pope, in Congo’s
64-year-old
Ambongo. His
deft handling
of the situation,
firmly asserting
the position of the
African episcopate
but also
showing deference
to the pope
by receiving his
blessing before
rolling it out, won
admirers on both
the Catholic right
and left, and left
some observers
wondering if he
might be able to
bridge divides in a
future conclave.
1. The sound of (synod) silence
The grand experiment of the Synod
of Bishops on Synodality, which came
to a close in October after three years
of consultations, listening sessions,
surveys, roundtables, and debates of all
sorts, produced what one might term
a negative result on its most hot-button
topics. None of the revolutionary
changes which some Catholics had
ardently desired (and others dreaded)
on issues like the ordination of
women deacons, married priests, a
direct election of bishops, or teaching
on marriage and sexuality, actually
happened.
Officially, the explanation is that the
synod was always about process, not
outcomes, and that its main fruit was to
give rise to a new way of being church,
one in which all constituencies have
a place at the (round) table. Others
might credit stronger than expected
conservative resistance, or suggest that
Pope Francis himself put on the brakes,
shaken in part by the example of the
Germany “synodal path” and its open
defiance of Vatican pleas to slow down.
However one explains it, what didn’t
happen as a result of the 2024 synod
rates as the year’s biggest Catholic
story. The question now is whether that
negative outcome will have the positive
results Francis obviously desires going
forward.
John L. Allen Jr. is the editor of Crux.
A worshipper holds a crucifix as Pope Francis celebrates Mass at Taci Tolu Park in
Dili, East Timor, or Timor-Leste, Sept. 10. | OSV NEWS/DITA ALANGKARA, POOL VIA
REUTERS
January 10, 2025 • ANGELUS • 23

THE UNITY MIRACLE
BY DR. MICHEL THERRIEN
Serious divisions among Catholics are hurting
the Church. This new year, here’s how we can
start reconciling our differences.
Prelates attend a Mass celebrated by Pope Francis
in St. Peter’s Basilica Oct. 11, 2022, to mark the
60th anniversary of the opening of the Second
Vatican Council. | CNS/VATICAN MEDIA
I
recently spoke at a small gathering
that presented the four primary
documents of the Second Vatican
Council. During the question-and-answer
session, a woman spent several
minutes expressing her deep grievances
about Pope Francis, the Second Vatican
Council, and the post-Conciliar Eucharistic
liturgy known as the “Novus
Ordo.”
Nothing in what she said was unfamiliar
to me. What was striking,
however, was how laden she was with
fear, but also anger, speaking as though
she thinks Jesus has lost control of the
Church. Where, I thought to myself,
is her faith in Jesus’ promises and
Lordship?
St. Paul tells us in his Letter to the Colossians,
“For it was the Father’s good
pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in
Him, and through Him to reconcile all
things to Himself, having made peace
through the blood of His cross (vv.
19–20).”
Christmas reminds us of that great
mystery of reconciliation and peace
entering history. But peace on earth
is only possible through the unity of
hearts in love.
Even if we were, by some miracle, to
all be of the same mind, it wouldn’t be
enough. Unity requires a single focal
point — which for God is the human
heart of his Son, Jesus. The blue and
red rays emanating from the Divine
Mercy image proceed from Jesus’ heart,
not his eyes. That’s because the unity of
mind comes through the unity of love,
and not the other way around.
Never in my lifetime have I seen
Americans so polarized. At the same
time, it’s telling that in this present
moment of the Church, we are divided
over the essential means of our communion.
It reminds me of what Paul observed
in Corinth, when he wished that Christians
there “all agree and that there be
no divisions among you, but that you be
made complete in the same mind and
in the same judgment. For I have been
informed concerning you . . . that there
are quarrels among you (1 Corinthians
1:10–11).” Judging minds will simply
quarrel and politicize if they are not
united in charity.
Although the woman at that gathering
was merely repeating things she had
heard from her sources, it was evident
to me that a deep anxiety and catastrophizing
mindset drove her to a set of
rather disparaging conclusions. Her
mind was made up, and yet she was so
divided within her own heart over all
of it.
The single greatest motive of credibility
for the Faith, besides miracles, is the
unity that appears among Jesus’ disci-
24 • ANGELUS • January 10, 2025

ples, which is truly the greatest miracle
of all. Ecclesial division is an ancient
problem, and it’s still a challenge today.
This explains why Jesus put so much
attention on unity at the Last Supper.
Today, the challenge manifests itself in
tribalism, especially in the competing
theological paradigms that have beset
the Church since Vatican II. So how
can we reconcile our differences?
I believe it starts with fidelity to that
little child in the manger, returning to
the source of our reconciliation and
peace. These paradigms have conditioned
our responses to one another
and have closed our ear to the legitimate
concerns that different groups and
theological generations have raised over
the decades since Vatican II.
That’s more or less the topic of my
recent book, “Wounded Witness:
Reclaiming the Church’s Unity in a
Time of Crisis”, which looks at those
competing paradigms through which
we have become a divided Church. In
it, I tell the story of how I believe these
divisions came about and how they can
be resolved.
In Jesus’ high priestly prayer, he
reveals that the world will listen to his
followers only insofar as we share in the
unity of his love with the Father (John
17:20–22). The mission that follows his
prayer is simple: If we are one in the
love of God, then the world will see
that love and be drawn to our unity. It’s
A Nativity scene donated by the Catholic University
of St. Teresa of Ávila in Spain on display at the
Vatican in 2023. | CNS/LOLA GOMEZ
a simple chain of causality. This is why
he gives us the “new” commandment
to love one another “as” he has loved
us. The “how” of Christ’s love makes all
the difference in the world, however.
That is why at Christmas we are reminded
by the Christ child to lay aside
condemnation in favor of the love that
does not incriminate, size up or keep
score, but communicates the generosity
of the Father’s mercy into the world.
Human division is the norm — so we
must be the exception, without exception.
But we aren’t, which is a tragedy
for which we do not repent enough.
Sadly, the Church is a wounded
witness today because we have been
caught up in our own version of identity
politics. Ecclesial brand identities
polarize us along ideological lines and
create a scandalous contention within
the heart of Christ’s body.
By telling us not to judge one another,
Jesus teaches that we are never permitted
to ascribe motives or culpability
(Matthew 7:1–5). While we must
always judge the objective character of
our actions, we may never condemn
another in our hearts or assess their
motives unless it is in our official capacity
to do so. To judge in this manner
leads down the path of suspicion and
incrimination where “the other” or
“those people” are seen only to be
conspiring against us and our beliefs.
Nothing is more unbecoming of Jesus’
disciples than conspiracy
theories that attempt
to describe events by
ascribing hidden motives,
especially when
these are leveled at the
pope, our bishops, or
an ecumenical council.
Instead, Jesus instructs
us to remove the log
from our own eye,
so that we can see
how best to remove
the splinter from our
neighbor’s eye. The
unity of love is born of
humility and self-awareness.
We will love our
brothers and sisters only
to the degree to which
we become little in our
own estimation, and
poor in Spirit — as the
Lord says of himself, meek and humble
of heart (Matthew 11:29). That kind
of unity of love was born in a manger,
after all.
That’s why this new year is a perfect
time to renew our commitment to the
witness of our unity. We all have blind
spots. Our own biases often filter our
understanding of what matters most
to God, like lenses that condition our
optics and perceptions of people and
their motives. We easily forget that the
measure with which we measure, in
the words of Christ himself, will be
measured out to us.
As Catholics, we are often prone to
construct narratives that justify our
fears and lead us to assume the worst
of one another, whether they are about
the Church leaders, the reforms of
Vatican II, or the liturgy. Whatever
the narrative, and in whatever ways we
believe they justify the polemics, they
must all be purified by the story we
tell at Christmas: that God reconciled
all things through Jesus and brought
peace through his birth in a manger
under the adoring gaze of angels and
the humble shepherds who had simply
been minding their own flocks.
Dr. Michel Therrien, S.T.L., S.T.D.,
is author of the new book “Wounded
Witness: Reclaiming the Church’s Unity
in a Time of Crisis” (Three Keys Publishing,
$18.50), and the host of “The
Wise Guys” podcast. He is president of
Preambula Group, a ministry that offers
guided spiritual experiences.
January 10, 2025 • ANGELUS • 25

INTERSECTIONS
GREG ERLANDSON
A saintly new year’s resolution
The image of Hungarian Bishop Vilmos Apor hangs
from the central facade of St. Peter’s Basilica during his
beatification at the Vatican in 1997. | CNS VIA REUTERS
If you are still looking for a good New Year’s resolution this
January, I’d suggest spending some time with a few saints
… 365, to be exact. If your first thought is, “That sounds
boring,” then you don’t know saints.
For the last few years, I’ve been reading a short life of a saint
each day of the year. It has been a practice that has had me
traversing all the centuries of the Church’s history, an adventure
that has been almost always inspiring and occasionally
shocking.
Of course, we all know the stories of a few saints — St. Patrick
and St. Nicholas, perhaps — though much of what we
think we know may be more legend and pious tradition than
fact. Knowing only the holy card version is a disservice to the
very real flesh and blood women and men who preceded us
and from whom we can learn so much.
The real stories of the saints are a reminder that history is
always messy. The past is no over-simplified
golden age disconnected from
what we are experiencing today.
At a time when the Church challenges
our own rulers on abortion, immigration,
and the death penalty, there are
endless examples of the saints resisting
the authorities. Take St. Ambrose. In
the 4th century, both Church and
state were divided by the Arian heresy,
pitting would-be emperors against one
another. St. Ambrose was an esteemed
defender of orthodoxy, but also a
beloved leader negotiating a maelstrom
of competing interests. At one point, his
people had to fill a church to protect
him from being seized by imperial
troops. Exemplifying grace under fire,
he taught the people hymns as they
outwaited the soldiers.
Church-state relations figure prominently
in many stories. The Church
calendar pays tribute to the many brave
priests and laity in Great Britain who
were killed for refusing to renounce
their Catholicism during the reigns of
Queen Elizabeth and King James. The tortures were cruel
and executions drawn out and painful.
Saints often goaded the consciences of the powerful. St. Peter
Claver was a Spanish Jesuit in the 17th century who went
to Colombia, where he ministered to the Africans that Spanish
slave traders were bringing at the rate of 10,000 a year. St.
Peter called himself Slave of the Africans and tried to care for
those who survived the brutal conditions on the boats.
In the 20th century, many saints were martyred by fascists or
Communists. Blessed Vilmos Apor, who lived in the first half
of the 20th century, was born in Romania. He was a bishop
who understood early the evil of Nazi ideology. “One cannot
tolerate antisemitism,” he wrote to a fellow bishop. “What
Jews are undergoing is genocide.” When Russia occupied
Romania after World War II, he sought to help the many
refugees. On Good Friday, 1945, he was defending a young
26 • ANGELUS • January 10, 2025

Greg Erlandson is the former president and
editor-in-chief of Catholic News Service.
woman from harassment by drunken soldiers, and they shot
him.
Blessed Maria Stella Mardosewicz and 10 other religious
women in Poland were executed by the Nazis after they
sought to save the life of a priest. Ukraine’s many martyrs, remembered
on March 5, were killed over a period of 38 years
by both Nazis and Communists.
In the saints’ lives we see examples of strong women who
were not afraid to speak truth to power. Take, for example,
Blessed Mary MacKillop, who lived in 19th-century Australia.
Her commitment to education, care for the sick, the
homeless, and unmarried women at times meant she locked
horns with Church authorities. She is “an obstinate and ambitious
woman,” one bishop said of her. She “battled lifelong
opposition to her work,” a biographer wrote, and was even
excommunicated for a short while.
Our own St. Katherine Drexel, who grew up in Philadelphia
into a family of bankers, lived from 1858 to 1955.
Despite her wealth, she was tremendously dedicated from an
early age to the care for Native Americans and, later, African
Americans. Inheriting her family’s great wealth, she traveled
throughout the country, using her money to start schools,
missions, and orphanages, including what was to become
Xavier University in New Orleans.
What characterized many saints was their charity and concern
for the poor. What we now might call the social Gospel
was alive and well from the earliest days of the Church.
Unlike the rich young man in the Gospel, many saints were
willing to sell everything and even to beg in order to support
those in need.
In our cynical and depleted age, 2025 may be a good year to
be inspired daily by men and women who met the challenges
of their age and bore witness to the faith.
Where to start? Two resources I use are “Butler’s Saint for
the Day,” by Paul Burns (Liturgical Press, $34.95) and “Voices
of the Saints,” by Bert Ghezzi (Loyola Press, $19.95). Most
recently Bishop Robert Barron’s Word on Fire Press has published
“Voices of the Saints: A 365-Day Journey” ($34.95).

NOW PLAYING YACHT ROCK: A DOCKUMENTARY
THE ANATOMY OF YACHT ROCK
HBO’s new documentary profiles a nebulous musical genre
rooted in Boomer spirituality — and that’s not a bad thing.
BY JOSEPH JOYCE
Michael McDonald in a
scene from HBO’s “Yacht
Rock: A Dockumentary.”
| IMDB
I
sail a sea comprised solely of
sailors. To my port and starboard
stand 200 other swaying souls in
the concert venue, all sporting captain
hats and with fake mustaches plastered
above lips murmuring along to
“Lido Shuffle.”
My own faux stache, awkwardly
draped over my real mustache, has
peeled itself off somewhere in the
journey between “Baker Street” and
“Africa.” The hat stays on, and I cling
to it for dear life as the chorus and
crowd ascend to that barbaric yawp
of “whoaOhOhOhOoOo.” It is at
that moment I finally understand the
charismatics.
Forgive the poetry, but then how
can you not be romantic about Yacht
Rock? This is the genre of Mustache
Harbor, the cover band my family
took in last month in San Francisco.
Yacht Rock is the colloquial catchall
for the late ’70s early ’80s Los Angeles
soft rock scene, throwing diverse acts
like Steely Dan, The Doobie Brothers,
Toto, and Kenny Loggins under
the same beach umbrella. It’s less a
genre than vibe, the type of music
you want in the background as you’re
three sheets to the wind in either
capacity.
HBO released a documentary on the
subject the day I returned from that
trip, playfully titled “Yacht Rock: A
Dockumentary.” As a Catholic, I don’t
believe in coincidence, preferring to
take the universe and its indifference
personally. The flipside of that coin
is I must accept the positive portents
as well, which means I’ll have to dig
through Yacht Rock and take you with
me.
The first rule of Yacht Club is that
Yacht Rock doesn’t exist. The name
was foisted upon a loose fraternity
of Los Angeles-based musicians in
the 1970s by a loose fraternity of Los
Angeles-based comedians in the early
2000s, who pieced together the family
tree of how Steely Dan session players
went on to start bands of their own
with similar Smooth Jazz stylings. The
comedians started their own popular
YouTube sketch series on their invented
genre, which soon absorbed the
acts themselves as they woke up part
of a movement.
The musicians interviewed for
the film have a range of responses.
28 • ANGELUS • January 10, 2025

Michael McDonald finds some
amusement in it, while Donad Fagen
of Steely Dan finds four letters. The
only thing they agree upon is that they
didn’t see themselves as Yacht Rockers
in the moment. In “The Last Days of
Disco,” Whit Stillman’s film about a
concurrent genre, a yuppie protests
his classification by saying since no
one personally identifies as a yuppie,
the group can’t possibly exist. By such
a litmus Yacht Rock is post hoc, for
what union can exist without due-paying
members?
Part of their hesitation
lies in wondering if they’re
the butt of the joke. Between
interviews with the
musicians are talking head
segments with critics and
cultural commentators,
who are all well-meaning
Los Feliz types who have
long lost track of the line
between irony and sincerity.
I am on the brink of
my 20s but still cower in
fear when high-schoolers
laugh in my vicinity; I
suspect the same dynamic
is at play. When a man in
a Ninja Turtles T-shirt insists
you’re cool, you can’t
help but speculate what
curve he’s grading on.
Somewhere in the goofy
name and ironic appreciation
and fake mustaches,
their actual artistry is lost
in the shuffle. The documentary
does them justice
there, demonstrating their
chops and how much hard
work it takes to create soft
rock, how much effort
goes into sounding easygoing.
The band Toto, for
example, was so proficient
at it that they became the
session house band for
hundreds of albums by other artists,
releasing just 14 under their own
name (Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”
is largely their doing). When a fellow
songwriter asked Michael McDonald
how he wrote so many hits, McDonald
told him he studied Bach’s chord
progressions, insisting it was really all
right there.
If there is a connective tissue in
Yacht Rock, or perhaps even a guardian
angel, it’s McDonald. He was
generous with his time and talent, his
dulcet tones haunting the background
of Steely Dan, Christopher Cross,
and Kenny Loggins songs. Moreover,
McDonald is a sort of avatar for the
whole scene’s cheery professionalism.
The men here are LA survivors:
The film poster for HBO’s “Yacht
Rock: A Dockumentary.” | IMDB
They took nothing personal and just
kept showing up to work, and seem
surprised they’re even remembered.
McDonald’s midwestern ethos set
the tone more than any yacht-riding,
champagne-popping lifestyle. He’s
from Missouri: paddle steamers seem
more his speed anyway.
There is a spiritual undercurrent
in Yacht Rock, which may be the
source of this buoyancy. McDonald
is essentially a Gospel singer with
Top 40 aspirations: His work with
The Doobie Brothers (like “Takin’ It
to the Streets”) is a more rousing call
to action than “Onward Christian
Soldiers.” One of my own personal
favorite Yacht Rock songs is his
duet with James Ingram, “Yah Mo B
There,” the best argument
that you of course can talk
about God in pop music
— just so long as you spell
his name creatively.
It should also be noted
that Yacht Rock duo Seals
& Croft, with session
work by Toto, released the
only pro-life rock album
on record, 1974’s “Unborn
Child,” the merits
of which I cannot attest
to out of professional
laziness. Seals & Croft and
some members of Toto
were practicing members
of the Bahá’í Faith, the
pan monotheistic religion.
In an industry where
Catholics are few and
accomplish less, I find myself
amiable to the Bahá’í
conspiracy. For those looking
for it, perhaps they are
the light side of the Force
to counter Scientology.
Two days after watching
the documentary, about
four days since arriving
home, and perhaps a full
week since the Mustache
Harbor concert, I found
my missing mustache. It
had attached itself to the
left elbow of my flannel,
a groovy little caterpillar
who I was surprised to find had never
left me at all.
Joseph Joyce is a screenwriter and freelance
critic based in Sherman Oaks.
January 10, 2025 • ANGELUS • 29

DESIRE LINES
HEATHER KING
The perils of linguistic subterfuge
One of the more disturbing
aspects of contemporary life is
the co-opting of language by
political and cultural ideologues.
For those of us who subscribe to the
Church’s teachings on marriage and
family, for example, the twisting of
certain concepts, words, and phrases
land like chalk going the wrong way
up a blackboard.
One glaring example would be the
use of “they” as a singular pronoun,
which is a corruption of reality and an
egregious offense against those of us
who love language, words, and clarity.
“Reproductive rights” is another such
tortured phrase. The right to have a
child — as many children as you want,
in fact — is not in question nor under
fire and in the U.S. (so far, praise God)
never has been.
“Reproductive rights” would be
the appropriate phrase in, say, China,
which from 1979 to 2015 had a
one-child policy under which many
women were forced to abort (having
observed the policy’s catastrophic effect,
the Chinese government in 2021
switched over to a three-child policy).
In the U.S., “reproductive rights”
means the exact opposite: not the right
to reproduce, but the “right” to contracept
and abort.
If that’s your desire, OK, but why the
subterfuge? Why not call the underlying
movement by its proper name?
You can’t make a doctor’s appointment
anymore without being forced
Protesters gather outside the U.S. Supreme
Court in Washington, D.C., Dec. 4, as the
justices heard arguments over an appeal by U.S.
President Joe Biden’s administration of a lower
court’s decision upholding a ban in Tennessee
on so-called “gender-affirming medical care” for
minors. | OSV NEWS/LEAH MILLIS, REUTERS
to check the nonsensical “sex assigned
at birth” box. Assigned by whom?
The God no one believes in? Because
anyone who believes in God would
know that who we are, down to the last
cell, is ordained by God, not randomly
doled out like a costume we can put
on or off at whim.
But perhaps the most outrageous,
stomach-churning term of all is “gender-affirming.”
Chemical and surgical
castration, the removal of healthy
30 • ANGELUS • January 10, 2025

Heather King is an award-winning
author, speaker, and workshop leader.
breasts, the blocking of puberty —
arguably the most mysterious, glorious,
essential transformation that occurs
in a human life — all constitute a
dreadful denial of creation, not an
affirmation.
Woe to those who use such language,
and urge such procedures upon prepubescent
children. “Whoever causes
one of these little ones who believe in
me to sin, it would be better for him to
have a great millstone hung around his
neck and to be drowned in the depths
of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).
This is not mindless kvetching. Language
goes to the very heart of who we
are, as human beings, as neighbors,
as citizens, and as members of the
Mystical Body.
“Abuse of Language, Abuse of
Power,” a 1974 essay by Josef Pieper, is
directly on point.
Pieper begins by describing Plato’s
lifelong battle with the sophists, clever,
learned men who were trained in,
and paid to promulgate, gaslighting
rhetoric: “applauded experts in the
art of twisting words, who were able
to sweet-talk something bad into
something good and to turn white into
black.”
Sound familiar?
Plato presciently recognized that
such sophistry represented “a danger
and a threat besetting the pursuits of
the human mind and the life of society
in any era.”
The sophists were successful,
“strangely handsome” men who had
learned how to market and capitalize
on the achievements of the mind.
Such efforts, when used to broadcast
lies, have a profoundly deleterious
effect. Because word and language
are not a particular discipline or field,
Pieper continues.
“No, word and language form the
medium that sustains the common
existence of the human spirit as such.
… And so, if the word becomes corrupted,
human existence itself will not
remain unaffected and untainted.”
Words convey reality: “In the be-
ginning was the Word.” And they are
meant to convey reality to someone
else, Pieper observes: thus, human
speech has a built-in interpersonal
character.
A lie is therefore the opposite of communication.
And if you’re uninterested
in reality, you’re also unable to converse.
“You can give fine speeches, but
you simply cannot join in a conversation;
you are incapable of dialogue!”
Again, does this ring a bell?
Here’s the rub: Such sophisticated
language, divorced from reality and
the roots of truth, “invariably turns into
an instrument of power, something it
has been, by its very nature, right from
the start.”
That is where we find ourselves today.
It’s as if Satan, the Prince of Lies,
is insatiable. Feed him a small lie; he
instantly demands a bigger one.
Consent to humor someone (that is,
to participate in the person’s lie) by
calling him or her by a pronoun that’s
the opposite of the person’s sex, and
next thing you know it’s a hate crime
to fail to do so.
Voice the common sense, our-eyesdon’t-deceive-us
fact that men are
stronger and bigger than women and
have no place in women’s restrooms,
locker rooms, jails, or sports, and you
will be bullied, hounded, called a
transphobe, and canceled.
What is this kind of power for? Who
promotes it? Who stands to benefit
from it? What essential part of our
souls do we lose by bowing to it?
In the beginning was the Word, and
in the end the Word will remain:
“Amen, I say to you, this generation
will not pass away until all these things
have taken place. Heaven and earth
will pass away, but my words will not
pass away” (Luke 21:32–33).
January 10, 2025 • ANGELUS • 31

LETTER AND SPIRIT
SCOTT HAHN
Scott Hahn is founder of the
St. Paul Center for Biblical
Theology; stpaulcenter.com.
Anthony, the Mass, and the Scriptures
Few stories in the ancient world circulated as widely
and as rapidly as St. Athanasius’ telling of the life of
St. Anthony.
Anthony was the great fourth-century hermit of the Egyptian
desert, and his biographer had known him personally.
Within a generation of Anthony’s death, the book had
motivated countless Christians to take up the contemplative
life in seclusion. The drama in Athanasius’ narrative turned
on a single moment in Anthony’s youth.
“Not six months after
the death of his parents,
he went according to
custom to the Lord’s
house. … He entered the
church, and it happened
the Gospel was being
read, and he heard the
Lord saying to the rich
man, ‘If you would be
perfect, go, sell what you
possess and give to the
poor, and you will have
treasure in heaven’ (Matthew
19:21). Anthony, . . .
as if the passage had been
read on his account, went
out immediately from the
church, and gave the possessions
of his forefathers
to the villagers. … All
the rest that was movable
he sold, and having got
together much money he
gave it to the poor, reserving
a little, however, for
his sister’s sake. … And
again he went into the
church, and he heard the
Lord say in the Gospel,
‘do not be anxious about
your life’ (Matthew 6:25),
he could stay no longer,
but went out and gave
those things also to the
poor. . .”
“St. Anthony the Abbot in the Wilderness,” Master of the Osservanza Triptych, 1436-1444. |
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
In a simple story Athanasius shows us that, for the early
Christians, the ordinary place of scriptural interpretation
was the Church, and the ordinary time was the Mass.
This had been true also of the assembly of ancient Israel,
which proclaimed the Scriptures in its liturgies of synagogue,
temple, and home. Biblical religion was liturgical
religion, and its sacred texts were primarily liturgical texts.
For both Jews and Christians, the scriptural texts, though
historical in character, were not just records of past events.
The Scriptures were
intended to sweep the
worshiper into their
action — “as if the
passage had been read on
his account.” More than
two centuries after Jesus
spoke his words to the
rich young man, Anthony
assumed that the words
were addressed directly to
himself.
Anthony heard the
Word of God in the liturgy,
and it changed him
— and then he changed
the world.
We must not underestimate
the power of
the Scriptures when we
encounter them in their
natural and supernatural
habitat: when we
hear them proclaimed
at Mass. The feast of St.
Anthony of Egypt is upon
us, Jan. 17, so we should
take to heart the great
lesson of his life. Very
few of us will be called
to make a lifelong retreat
to the desert. But all of
us are called to be saints,
and God calls to us in the
reading of the Scriptures
when we go to Mass.
32 • ANGELUS • January 10, 2025

■ SUNDAY, JANUARY 5
Catholic Singles Network New Year Dinner Party. Marie
Callender Restaurant, 1560 Albatross Rd., Industry, 4-7
p.m. Mingling will be maximized at the dinner by having
attendees rotate to different tables. Call Celeste at 661-
916-2727 or visit CatholicSinglesNetwork.com.
■ MONDAY, JANUARY 6
Catholic Singles Network Meet and Greet Dinner for
Singles Ages 23-45. Tom’s Restaurant, 42741 30th St.
West, Lancaster, 6:30-8:30 p.m. Call Celeste at 661-916-
2727 or visit CatholicSinglesNetwork.com.
■ THURSDAY, JANUARY 9
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, JANUARY 11
New Year 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.
Visit hsrcenter.com or call 818-815-4480.
Cancer Support Ministry Meeting. St. Euphrasia Church,
11779 Shoshone Ave., Granada Hills, 10 a.m. Group gathers
to honor the gift of life and encourage cancer patients,
survivors, and caregivers, in honor of late pastor Msgr.
James Gehl. For more information, email Lisa Barona at
lbaloha@gmail.com.
Epiphany: Feast of Lights. St. Andrew Russian Greek
Church, 538 Concord St., El Segundo, 2-4:30 p.m. Hosted
by ACTheals and led by Father Alexei Smith, event will
delve into the relevance of Christ’s manifestation of light
in our time. Includes teaching, sharing, prayer, and inquiry.
Call Bernadette St. James, PsyD., at 310-991-2256 or visit
ACTheals.org.
“Rebel Hearts” film screening. Our Mother of Good
Counsel Church, 2060 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, 2
p.m. Movie will be shown in the Augustine Center Jan. 11
and 12 as part of the parish’s ongoing centennial celebration
and acknowledgement of IHMs’ contributions to
education and the parish school. Call OMGC centennial
office at 323-664-2111 or visit omgcla.org.
■ SUNDAY, JANUARY 12
Diaconate Virtual Information Day. Zoom, 2-4 p.m. Open
to anyone interested in becoming a deacon. Register or request
more information by sending your name, parish, and
pastor’s name to Deacon Melecio Zamora at dmz2011@
la-archdiocese.org.
■ MONDAY, JANUARY 13
Catholic Singles Network Meet and Greet Dinner for
Singles Ages 31-54. Tom’s Restaurant, 42741 30th St.
West, Lancaster, 6:30-8:30 p.m. Call Celeste at 661-916-
2727 or visit CatholicSinglesNetwork.com.
Understanding the Process of Declaration of Marriage
Nullity. Zoom, 7-8:30 p.m. Hosted by the Office of
Marriage Tribunal, Office of Marriage and Family Life, and
Separated and Divorced Ministry. Free presentation on the
annulment process. Presenters: Father Reynaldo Matunog,
JCL, Judicial Vicar, Father Paul Velazquez, JCL, and Sister
Angelica Orozco, EFMS. Register at https://familylife.
lacatholics.org/separated-divorced. Contact Julie Auzenne
at jmonell@la-archdiocese.org or 213-637-7249.
■ TUESDAY, JANUARY 14
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.
■ SATURDAY, JANUARY 18
OneLife LA. La Placita, Olvera St., Los Angeles, 12 p.m.
Theme for the 11th annual OneLife “Let Us Stand Up
Together.” Visit onelifela.org.
Faith and Healing Bereavement Retreat. Holy Spirit
Retreat Center, 4316 Lanai Rd., Encino, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Led
by Cathy Narvaez. Call 818-784-4515.
Fearfully and Wonderfully Made. Holy Spirit Retreat
Center, 4316 Lanai Rd., Encino, 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. With
Bryanna Benedetti-Coomber. Visit hsrcenter.com or call
818-815-4480.
Requiem Mass for the Unborn. Cathedral of Our Lady
of the Angels, 555 W. Temple St., Los Angeles, 5 p.m.
Presider: Archbishop José H. Gomez. Special Mass concludes
OneLife LA 2025. Livestream available through LA
Catholics Facebook, OneLife LA webpage, and OneLife
LA Facebook.
■ SUNDAY, JANUARY 19
Feast of Santo Niño. Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels,
555 W. Temple St., Los Angeles, 2 p.m. dance performances,
3 p.m. procession, 3:30 p.m. Mass. Celebrant: Auxiliary
Bishop Matthew Elshoff. A dance performance of various
Sinulog groups will kick off the celebration at the Cathedral
Plaza. Contact Romy and Tess Esturas at 213-219-
0590.
■ MONDAY, JANUARY 20
Catholic Singles Network Meet and Greet Dinner for
Singles Ages 55+. Tom’s Restaurant, 42741 30th St. West,
Lancaster, 6:30-8:30 p.m. Call Celeste at 661-916-2727 or
visit CatholicSinglesNetwork.com.
■ SATURDAY, JANUARY 25
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.
The Life Beyond the Veil of Death. St. John the Baptist
Church, 3883 Baldwin Park Blvd., Baldwin Park, 10 a.m.-4
p.m. With Dominic Berardino. Topics include: What
Happens When We Die? and Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell:
What Can We Know of Them? Cost: $20/person pre-registered,
$25/person at door. Call SCRC at 818-771-1361 or
visit events.scrc.org.
■ WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29
Ethical Leadership Luncheon. Cathedral of Our Lady of
the Angels, 555 W. Temple St., Los Angeles, 11 a.m.-2 p.m.
Panelists include Alex Jones, co-founder of Hallow and
Anne Sweeney, board of directors for Netflix and Lego.
Visit ellunch.org.
■ SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1
Catholic Singles Network St. Valentine Breakfast. Hilton
Garden Inn, 1309 West Rancho Vista Blvd., Palmdale,
8:45-10:15 a.m. Mingling will be maximized at the breakfast
by having attendees rotate to different tables. Call
Celeste at 661-916-2727 or visit CatholicSinglesNetwork.
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.
January 10, 2025 • ANGELUS • 33