Angelus News | September 27, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 32

ANGELUS 

SOURCES 

OF 

SURPRISE 

Why we need 

the witness of 

religious sisters 

September 27, 2019 Vol. 4 No. 32

Contents 

Archbishop Gomez 3 

World, Nation and Local News 4-6 

LA Catholic Events 7 

Scott Hahn on Scripture 8 

Father Rolheiser 9 

Compensation program for priest abuse victims launched 20 

John Allen: A ‘Tale of Two Synods’ 22 

Robert Brennan’s biased take on religious sisters 24 

‘Downton Abbey’ film is pleasant, but is it profound? 26 

Heather King: A dusty box gets its own museum exhibit 28

IMAGE: 

ON THE COVER 

A religious sister of the Trinitarians of Mary smiles for the 

camera before Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the 

Angels. On Page 10 of this issue, Angelus contributor Elise 

Ureneck asks what a renewed attraction to religious life 

from millennial women says about our world — and our 

faith. On Page 16, Maria Scaperlanda tells the story of a 

simple African nun who says her work saving countless 

children from abduction is simply about “doing small 

things with great love.” 

VICTOR ALEMÁN 

As he stepped onto Ford Field on Sunday, Sept. 15, to face 

the Detroit Lions, Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Philip 

Rivers ran to greet some old friends: the Dominican Sisters 

of Mary, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, whose order Rivers 

and his wife have supported for several years. The Rivers 

recently welcomed their ninth child and are known for their 

openness about their Catholic faith. 

LOS ANGELES CHARGERS 

September 27, 2019 • ANGELUS • 1

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September 27, 2019 | Vol. 4 • No. 32 

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Publisher 

ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ 

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POPE WATCH 

No longer cowards 

Faced with the prohibition of the 

Jews to teach in Christ’s name, Peter 

and the apostles responded with courage, 

saying they could obey those who 

wish to stop the gospel’s journey in the 

world. 

The Twelve thus show that they possess 

that “obedience of faith” that they 

will then wish to stir up in all men 

(cf. Romans 1:5). Since Pentecost, in 

fact, they are no longer men who are 

“alone.” They experience that special 

synergy which makes them shift their 

focus from themselves. 

Strengthened by this covenant, the 

apostles do not let themselves be 

intimidated by anyone. They had an 

impressive courage! We think that 

these men were cowards: They all fled, 

they fled when Jesus was arrested. But, 

from being cowards, they became so 

brave. Why? Because the Holy Spirit 

was with them. 

The same happens to us: If we have 

the Holy Spirit within us, we will have 

the courage to go ahead, the courage 

to win so many struggles, not for ourselves 

but for the Spirit who is with us. 

The apostles are the “megaphones” of 

the Holy Spirit, sent by the Risen One 

to spread promptly and without hesitation 

the word that gives salvation. 

This determination makes the Jewish 

“religious system” tremble — it feels 

threatened and responds with violence 

and death sentences. The persecution 

of Christians is always the same: 

People who do not want Christianity 

feel threatened and thus bring death to 

Christians. 

But, in the midst of the Sanhedrin, a 

different voice rose up, that of a Pharisee 

who chooses to stem the reaction 

of his own: His name was Gamaliel, 

a prudent man, “doctor of the Law, 

esteemed by all the people.” Gamaliel 

takes the floor and shows his brothers 

how to practice the art of discernment 

in the face of situations that go beyond 

the usual frameworks. 

He shows ... that every human 

project can first be approved and then 

shipwrecked, while everything that 

comes from above and bears God’s 

“signature” is destined to last. Human 

projects always fail; they have a time 

limit, like we do. 

Think of so many political projects, 

and how they change from one side to 

the other. Think of the great empires, 

think of the dictatorships of the last 

century: They believed they were very 

powerful, they thought they dominated 

the world. And then they all 

collapsed. 

Think also today of today’s empires: 

They will collapse, if God is not with 

them, because the strength that men 

have in themselves is not enduring. 

Only God’s strength lasts. 

Think of the history of Christians, 

and also of the history of the Church, 

with so many sins, with so many scandals, 

with so many bad things in these 

two millennia. And why has it not 

collapsed? Because God is there. We 

are sinners, and we also often cause 

scandal. But God is with us. And God 

first saves us, and then them; but the 

Lord always saves. 

Adapted from the Holy Father’s catechesis 

on the Acts of the Apostles, given 

during his weekly General Audience 

with pilgrims and visitors in St. Peter’s 

Square, Wednesday, Sept. 18. 

Papal Prayer Intention for September: That politicians, scientists, and 

economists work together to protect the world’s seas and oceans. 

2 • ANGELUS • September 27, 2019

NEW WORLD 

OF FAITH 

BY ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ 

The witness of our sisters 

Jesus described his Church as a great 

and flourishing tree planted from the 

tiniest seeds of his Gospel and spreading 

to the ends of the earth. 

From the beginning, the branches of 

this great tree have included women 

who have chosen to consecrate their 

lives to following Jesus and imitating 

his manner of life, living as he chose 

to live — in poverty, chastity, and 

obedience, totally dedicated to the will 

of God. 

The family of God here in the 

Archdiocese of Los Angeles is blessed 

to have more than 1,150 women 

religious, representing more than 100 

religious institutes. And they are essential 

co-workers in the Church’s mission 

of mercy and redemption here. 

The first sisters began coming to 

Southern California in the 1850s, with 

the Daughters of Charity opening 

hospitals for the poor and the Sisters 

of St. Joseph of Carondelet and the 

Dominican Sisters of Mission San José 

coming to open schools. 

We have sisters who belong to 

religious families founded in the 16th 

century, like the Sisters of the Company 

of Mary, the Daughters of Charity 

of St. Vincent de Paul, and the Sisters 

of the Good Shepherd. 

Our sisters include venerable orders 

that we are all familiar with — like the 

Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, 

Carmelites, Poor Clares, the 

Missionaries of Charity. But we also 

have many newer orders like the Kkottongnae 

Sisters of Jesus, the Lovers of 

the Holy Cross, and the Sisters of the 

Poor Jesus. 

We are an immigrant Church and 

women religious have come from 

every corner of the world to serve the 

family of God here — from Africa, 

India, China, the Philippines, Ireland, 

and Italy, the countries of Eastern Europe, 

from Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and 

many of the nations of Latin America. 

And God has placed in our midst several 

women religious who are on the 

path to sainthood. These include Blessed 

María Inés Teresa Arias, founder 

of the Poor Clare Missionary Sisters of 

the Blessed Sacrament, and Venerable 

Maria Luisa Josefa de la Peña, who 

founded the Carmelite Sisters of the 

Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles. 

Women religious form a vital heart of 

the Church’s mission in Los Angeles, 

from prayer and contemplation to direct 

service to the most wounded and 

vulnerable persons in our society. 

You can find our sisters serving in 

some of the most violent and impoverished 

parts of our city, working with 

domestic abuse and human trafficking 

victims, nursing the sick and elderly, 

serving the homeless of Skid Row. Our 

sisters are a voice for the voiceless, and 

a witness to thoughtfulness and prayer 

in a world that has too little of either. 

In our society, where more and more 

people seem to have forgotten that 

God exists, women religious bear witness 

to the power of Christ to change 

the direction of our lives. 

It is a beautiful thing to see women 

giving their lives totally to belong to 

God, in all confidence and with no 

compromise, taking the gospel and 

the example of Jesus as the rule for 

their lives, seeking holiness and union 

with him, committed to following him 

wherever he leads. 

We are building a culture of vocations 

here in Los Angeles, and all of 

us have a responsibility to hold up the 

beautiful vocation of religious life, for 

both women and men. 

Earlier this year, there was a fascinating 

article in a secular publication. 

The author of the piece was genuinely 

puzzled about a trend that we are 

seeing in the Church — more and 

more young women feeling a calling 

to become religious sisters. 

There is no secret to what is going on. 

Many young women I meet are seeking 

wholeness and holiness and a relationship 

of love with the living God. 

They know there is much, much more 

to life than what our technological and 

consumer society have to offer. 

They have a heart for the needs of 

others and a deep desire to live with 

a purpose that is greater than themselves. 

They understand what Jesus 

means when he says we must lose our 

lives and by this we will find our lives. 

Jesus is still calling his daughters. He 

never stops. It is up to us to create the 

“space” — in our homes and parishes, 

in our schools and religious education 

programs — where our young women 

can hear his call. 

Pray for me this week, and I will pray 

for you. And if you know any young 

woman who might feel called to 

religious life, please share our website 

with her: https://calledla.org. 

May our Blessed Mother Mary intercede 

for us and may she help many 

more women and men to hear the call 

of Christ and come and follow him in 

imitation and love. 

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


WORLD 

Why did Peter 

leave Rome? 

Pope Francis is 

explaining why he 

gifted precious relics 

of St. Peter in July 

to the head of the 

Orthodox Churches, 

Ecumenical Patriarch 

Bartholomew I. 

“I thought of the gift 

that Patriarch Athenagoras 

gave to Pope 

Paul VI: an icon depicting 

the brothers Peter and 

Andrew embracing, united in faith 

and in love of their common Lord,” 

Francis wrote in a Sept. 13 letter to 

Bartholomew. 

“Hence, in the peace born of 

prayer, I sensed that it would be 

highly significant were some fragments 

of the relics of the apostle 

Peter to be placed beside the relics 

Cardinal Pell to fight 

another round 

The reliquary gifted by Pope Francis to Ecumenical Patriarch 

Bartholomew I of Constantinople contains nine shards of bone 

believed to belong to St. Peter. 

of the apostle Andrew, who is venerated 

as the heavenly patron of the 

Church of Constantinople.” 

In speaking of the gift to Vatican 

News, Patriarch Bartholomew said, 

“We sincerely appreciate this gift, 

which is the manifestation of spontaneity, 

a sign of the true fraternal 

love that today unites Catholics and 

Orthodox.” 

Do parochial schools 

cause violence? 

ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE OF CONSTANTINOPLE 

A ‘blessed’ preacher 

to prisoners 

In the Nazi concentration camp of 

Dachau, he was known as the “secret 

preacher of block 17” who witnessed 

to Christ. To Catholics, he’ll now be 

known as “Blessed” Father Richard 

Henkes. 

The German Pallottine priest, who 

died in the German concentration 

camp in 1945 while caring for prisoners 

sick with typhus, was beatified 

Sept. 19 in Limburg, Germany. 

He was harassed and eventually 

arrested by the Gestapo for speaking 

out against the Nazi ideology and condemning 

the regime’s crimes against 

human dignity. 

“In the face of this neo-pagan ideology, 

Father Henkes surmised that 

wherever God is reduced to insignificance 

and pushed out of the public 

eye, man is also reduced to insignificance,” 

said Cardinal Kurt Koch at his 

beatification Mass. 

Australian Cardinal George Pell’s 

legal saga is not over yet. 

The former Vatican finance czar’s 

legal team confirmed that Pell will appeal 

his conviction on historical child 

sex abuse charges to the Australian 

High Court, the country’s equivalent 

of the U.S. Supreme Court. 

The announcement follows the 

controversial Aug. 21 decision by the 

Court of Appeal in Victoria to uphold 

his conviction for child sexual abuse 

that allegedly occured in a cathedral 

sacristy in Melbourne in the late 

1990s. 

Pell is currently serving a prison sentence 

of six years, of which he must 

serve at least three years and eight 

months before being eligible to apply 

for parole. He also faces a pending 

investigation by the Vatican. 

A former police official in Scotland is 

blaming “religiously segregated education,” 

i.e., Catholic schools, for sectarian 

violence in Scotland. 

In a Sept. 16 column, former Edinburgh 

deputy chief constable 

Tom Woods wondered whether “it is 

acceptable that in the 21st century, we 

emphasize differences by separating 

5-year-old children based on their parents’ 

religion.” 

Catholics in the country have been 

quick to hit back. 

“This staggeringly intolerant attitude 

is symptomatic of a simplistic belief 

that educating children in a faith-based 

environment is wrong and will inevitably 

lead to conflict and strife in society,” 

director of the Scottish Catholic Media 

Office, Peter Kearney, wrote in a Sept. 

18 op-ed responding to Woods. Blessed Richard Henkes in 1940. 

PALLOTTINER.ORG 


NATION 

A mom’s growing social rosary chain 

An Illinois mom with seven children and a career 

in banking has found another job: leading her social 

media followers in daily prayer. 

Every morning at 6:45 Central Standard Time, Kristin 

Reilly leads more than 400 people from around the 

world in a live recitation of the rosary online through 

her Facebook and Instagram pages. 

“It’s just growing and growing,” said Reilly, who started 

the live presentation last October from her home 

in Illinois and invites Catholic authors and leaders to 

join her as guest hosts. 

Reilly’s Facebook page, One Hail Mary at a Time, 

explains the rosary, offers thoughtful Marian reflections 

and encourages family prayer. 

“My goal is to get a hundred million people around 

the world to pray the rosary,” she said in an interview 

with North Texas Catholic, magazine of the Diocese 

of Fort Worth. 

For the past year, rosary participants have supported 

one another through hospital stays, surgeries, 

and deaths, according to Reilly. Some homebound 

listeners, who suffer with autoimmune illnesses, make 

a point of contacting others in the group to pray with 

them privately. 

New York: Religion vs. Rikers 

Aerial view of Rikers Island prison. 

Catholic bishops in the Big Apple are joining leaders of 

other faiths in calling for New York City to close the infamous 

Rikers Island prison. 

“The life and dignity of the human person, made in the 

image and likeness of God, is a principle of our faiths, and 

must be applied to all. The conditions found in Rikers 

Island robs the imprisoned of their dignity, denies them justice, 

and deprives them of mercy,” members of the Commission 

of Religious Leaders (CORL) said in a statement. 

The 400-acre island between Manhattan, Queens, and 

the Bronx is known for overcrowding and a history of controversy 

related to brutal treatment of inmates. It is said to 

house nearly 10,000 inmates. 

“In the name of God, let’s tear down this place,” said New 

York Archbishop Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who was joined 

by two other Catholic bishops and representatives of several 

other faiths at a press conference Sept. 19. 

Arson attacks on El Paso churches 

USGS/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS 

Kristin Reilly with her children. 

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/KRISTIN REILLY 

The FBI is asking for the public’s help in finding the culprits 

behind a series of arson attacks on Catholic churches 

in El Paso. 

Arsonists threw “incendiary devices” at El Paso’s St. Patrick 

Cathedral and two other churches in May and June of 

this year in an attempt to set them on fire, officials said. 

“Each church sustained damage caused from these 

devices. Thankfully, to date no one has been injured,” the 

FBI said. 

Investigators are offering a reward of $5,000 for information 

leading to an arrest in each attack. 


LOCAL 

An abortionist’s 

troubling admission 

Archbishop José H. Gomez presents Pope Francis the proceedings and conclusions of the V 

Encuentro. 

Where Peter is... 

Archbishop José H. Gomez met twice with Pope Francis during a trip to 

Rome this month. 

During the Holy Father’s Wednesday General Audience on Sept. 18, a delegation 

led by Archbishop Gomez presented the pope with the proceedings 

and conclusions of the V Encuentro process concluded last year. 

Two days later, Archbishop Gomez, who serves as vice president of the U.S. 

Conference of Catholic Bishops, met again with Francis and the conference’s 

leadership. 

Devotion from the dugout 

PATRICIA JIMENEZ/V ENCUENTRO 

An abortion industry official’s sworn 

testimony suggested her firm harvests 

and supplies fully intact fetuses from 

abortions. 

The unnamed official from California 

company StemExpress made the 

admission in testimony at a Sept. 5 

preliminary hearing in San Francisco 

against the Center for Medical Progress 

(CMP) investigators David Daleiden 

and Sandra Merritt. In her testimony, 

she admitted that in order to harvest a 

fetal brain, a baby’s head must still be 

attached to the body. 

According to the CMP’s investigation, 

StemExpress researchers preferred that 

feticide drugs such as Digoxin not be 

used to kill the unborn child inside the 

womb, thus ensuring that the child’s 

organs be “fresh.” 

Peter Breen of the Thomas More 

Society, which is representing Daleiden 

at the hearing, said the admission begs a 

troubling question. 

“If you have a fetus with an intact head 

and an intact body, and intact extremities, 

that is something that would indicate 

that child was born alive, and then 

had their organs cut out of them, or that 

the child was the victim of an illegal 

partial-birth abortion,” Breen said. 

In past years, the annual Los Angeles 

Catholic Prayer Breakfast has welcomed 

bishops, scholars, and even a religious 

sister as guest speakers. 

This year was a little different. On 

Sept. 17, hundreds of local Catholics 

listened to former Los Angeles Angels 

of Anaheim manager Mike Scioscia 

talk about his faith, his marriage, and 

his career while answering questions 

from those in attendance. 

“As you start to look through the 

rearview mirror a little bit, and look 

at the gifts we were given through our 

lives, there’s one thing that jumps that’s 

the most important, and that’s faith,” 

Scioscia remarked. 

“There’s no way in the world I’d be standing 

here today…if it weren’t for faith.” 

Anne and Mike Scioscia with Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell at this year’s annual Los Angeles 

Catholic Prayer Breakfast. 



LA Catholic Events 

Items for LA Catholic Events are due two weeks prior to the date of the event. They may be mailed to Angelus News (Attn: LA Catholic Events), 3424 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90010-2241; emailed to 

calendar@angelusnews.com; or faxed to 213-637-6360. All items must include the name, date, time, and address of the event, plus a phone number for additional information. 

Sat., Sept. 28 

Feast of San Lorenzo Ruiz Regional Celebration. 

St. John Eudes Church, 9901 Mason St., Chatsworth, 

10:30 a.m. procession immediately followed by 

eucharistic celebration with Father Joel Henson. 

Reception, fellowship, and program to follow. Call 

Patty Santiago at 818-472-4288, Dominic Mendoza 

at 818-687-4890, or Mia Macalino at 818-517-4300 

for more information. 

Life in the Spirit Seminar. Incarnation School auditorium, 

1001 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale, 8:30 a.m. For 

information or to register, call 818-421-1354 or email 

hojprayergroup@gmail.com. 

Spiritual Warfare: What You Need to Know. St. 

Edward the Confessor School gym, 33926 Calle La 

Primavera, Dana Point, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Speakers 

include Father Bob Garon and Dominic Berardino. 

Topics include “Evil spirits — Are they for real?” and 

“Discernment of spirits.” Day includes Mass. Cost: 

$25/person at door. Contact SCRC at 818-771-1361, 

email spirit@scrc.org, or visit www.scrc.org. 

Sun., Sept. 29 

Pechanga Resort & Casino Trip. Meet at Our Lady 

of Perpetual Help Church, 23233 Lyons Ave., Newhall, 

at 8 a.m., return at 6 p.m. Hosted by Italian Catholic 

Club of the Santa Clarita Valley. Coffee and donuts 

served before leaving, birthdays celebrated on the 

way home. Cost: $25/person and includes $5 casino 

credit. Call Anna Riggs at 661-645-7877 to RSVP. 

Spirituali-Tea with Cheryl Zellhoefer. Mary & 

Joseph Retreat Center, 5300 Crest Rd., Rancho Palos 

Verdes, 2-5 p.m. Share generations of faith with one 

another and deepen relationships with Mary and 

St. Anne while sipping tea. Bring a teacup to loan 

to a fellow participant for the day, a picture of your 

mother, grandmother, or other mother figure, and an 

object from your history of faith. Cost: $25/person. 

Call Marlene Velazquez at 310-377-4867, ext. 234, 

for reservations or information. 

Mon., Sept. 30 

Junipero Serra High School: Dedication to 

Excellence and Celebration of the Arts. 14830 

Van Ness Ave., Gardena, 5-8 p.m. Event honors poet, 

former chairman of the National Endowment for the 

Arts, and former California Poet Laureate Dana Gioia 

1969. For more information, call Vince Kates at 310- 

324-6675, ext. 3010, or email vbkates@la-serrahs. 

org. 

Woman to Woman Ministry: Gathered in Joy 

and Kinship. Holy Spirit Retreat Center, 4316 Lanai 

Rd., 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Join other women to welcome 

the sacred gifts of autumn and winter. Suggested 

donation: $15/person. Email jmcbroehm@aol.com 

with questions and to RSVP. 

Wed., Oct. 2 

ADLA Career Fair. Calvary Cemetery & Mortuary, 

4201 Whittier Blvd., Los Angeles, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Bring 

résumé for on-the-spot interviews. Open positions 

with the Archdiocesan Catholic Center, parishes, 

cemetery, mortuary, and schools. Email employment@la-archdiocese.org 

for more information. 

Thur., Oct. 3 

An Evening at Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat 

Center with J.C. Spires and Friends. 700 N. Sunnyside 

Ave., Sierra Madre, 6:30 p.m. Cost: $35/person 

and includes a light supper. For more information 

or to purchase tickets, visit https://materdolorosa. 

org/an-evening-at-the-monastery-with-j-c-spiresfriends-singer-songwriter-musician/, 

call Jeanne 

Warlick at 626-355-7188, ext. 103, or email jwarlick@materdolorosa.org. 

Fri., Oct. 4 

St. John Fisher Women’s Council Movie Night: 

“Unplanned.” Barrett Hall, 5448 Crest Rd., Rancho 

Palos Verdes. Dinner will begin at 6 p.m., movie 

begins at 7 p.m. Cost: $15/person and includes hot 

dogs, popcorn, chips, candy, and soda. RSVP at the 

parish office or call Bernie Maynard at 310-541-1826 

by Oct. 2. 

Beginning Experience: Loss of Spouse Ministry. 

Holy Spirit Retreat Center, Encino, Oct. 4-6. The 

weekend helps a person move from the darkness of 

grief into the light of a new beginning with renewed 

hope. For men or women who have experienced the 

loss of a spouse through death, divorce, or separation. 

Call Peg Setti for more details at 818-767-1007. 

Sat., Oct. 5 

Altar Servers and Sacristans Training. Mary 

Star of the Sea Church, 463 W. Pleasant Valley, Oxnard, 

1-5 p.m. Cost: $15/person. Register at http:// 

store.la-archdiocese.org/altar-servers-and-sacristans-training. 

Music and Cantor Liturgical Ministry. Mary Star 

of the Sea Church, 463 W. Pleasant Valley, Oxnard, 

8 a.m.-1 p.m., Oct. 12, 2-7:30 p.m., Oct. 19 and 26, 

8 a.m.-1 p.m. Cost: $60/person. Register at http:// 

store.la-archdiocese.org/mclm-1019. 

Blessing of the Animals. St. Bede the Venerable 

Church, 215 Foothill Blvd., La Canada Flintridge, 10 

a.m. Pets will receive a St. Francis holy card, a Bless 

My Pet collar medal, and a bottle of holy water. Pets 

should be on a leash or easily contained. Call the parish 

at 818-949-4300. 

Centering Prayer Introductory Workshop. Holy 

Spirit Retreat Center, 4316 Lanai Road, Encino, 9 

a.m.-12:30 p.m. (arrival 8:30-9 a.m.). Centering 

Prayer is a form of contemplative prayer. It is a method 

of prayer that opens us to interior transformation 

and deeper intimacy with God and others. The workshop 

includes four presentations and the practice of 

Centering Prayer. Cost: $35/person. Register online at 

HSRCenter.com. Call Amanda Berg at 818-815-4480 

or Linda Snow, CSJ, at 818-815-4497. 

Receiving God’s Supernatural Healing Love. St. 

Denis Church, 2151 S. Diamond Bar Blvd., Diamond 

Bar, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Speakers include Auxiliary Bishop 

David O’Connell, Father Ethan Southard and Dominic 

Berardino. Topics include, “Why are we afraid to 

let God love us?” and “The redeeming love of Jesus.” 

Day includes healing Mass. Cost: $20/person by Oct. 

2, $25/person at door. Bring sack lunch or eat at 

nearby restaurants. Contact SCRC at 818-771-1361, 

email spirit@scrc.org, or visit www.scrc.org. 

Sun., Oct. 6 

White Elephant Rummage Sale. Msgr. Gallagher 

Hall at St. Charles Elementary School, 10830 Moorpark 

St., N. Hollywood, 8 a.m.-6 p.m. Arts, books, 

furniture, and jewelry all on sale. All proceeds benefit 

the school. Call Gretchen Schreck at 818-766-3838 

or email kdss@aol.com for more details. 

Wed., Oct. 9 

Women’s Catholic meeting: Aging with Grace. Incarnation 

Church, 1001 Brand Blvd., Glendale, 9:30 

a.m.-1:30 p.m. The East San Fernando District of the 

Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women invites all 

women to a talk by Sister Gretchen Hail on “Aging 

with Grace,” followed by Mass and lunch. Cost for 

lunch is $12/person prepaid. Make check payable to 

and mail to Marie Urrutia, 1351 Loreto Dr., Glendale, 

CA 91207. Call Marie at 818-244-0547 for more details. 

Thur., Oct. 10 

Free College Fair. Don Bosco Technical Institute, 

1151 San Gabriel Blvd., Rosemead, 6-8 p.m. Bosco 

Tech is hosting its annual college fair for local high 

school students and parents. The Princeton Review-sponsored 

event will feature representatives 

from more than 70 public and private universities 

and colleges across the country. Food trucks on site. 

Email Ray Chavez at rchavez@boscotech.edu or Paul 

Ortiz at portiz@boscotech.edu for more details. 

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vibrant and diverse community of 

Roman Catholic Believers committed 

to bringing the Good News of Jesus 

Christ to all we encounter. We are guided 

by the core values of hospitality, 

collaboration, faith sharing and 

reconciliation. Through the impact of 

the Gospel, we seek to fill lives with hope. 

We, the Office of Catechetical Ministry, 

lead and journey with people into 

discipleship with Jesus Christ, by 

encountering Him through the 

Sacraments and the teachings of the 

Catholic Church, impacting our 

communities with Faith, Hope and Charity. 

DIOCESE OF SAN BERNARDINO 

RESPONSIBILITIES INCLUDE, 

BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO 

• Provides direction, ongoing consultation and follow 

up to Pastors, Pastoral Coordinators, DCMs/CCMs, 

Master Catechists, Coordinators of Infant Baptism, 

Confirmation, RCIA, and Marriage in the ministry of 

Evangelization and Catechesis; 

• Plans, coordinates, and implements monthly 

DCMs/CCMs meetings in collaboration with the office 

director, other Vicariate Coordinators and Advisory 

Board members; 

• Throughout the year, plans, coordinates and 

implements meetings with RCIA, Infant Baptism, 

Confirmation coordinators and other committees; 

• Visits new Pastors, Pastoral Coordinators and 

DCMs/CCMs to introduce him/herself and the services 

the OCM office provides; 

• Ensures the implementation of the 800 Series of the 

Diocesan Policy regarding Catechesis; 

• Promotes diversity and multicultural sensitivity. 

Ensures inclusive services; 

• Recruits, trains/mentors and evaluates OCM 

instructors according to the area they teach; 

• Supervises and coordinates instructors for formation 

and specialization courses; making sure their 

methodologies and course content are appropriate for 

each audience; 

• Schedules and secures locations for OCM 

Specializations to be held; 

• Coordinates and oversees committees and task forces 

for the revision of the specialization courses; 

• Plans, coordinates, budgets and oversees the 

implementation of the Annual Conference 

(Catechist Day); building committees, contracting 

speakers, publishing companies, and evaluating the event; 

• Develops and coordinates special projects as assigned 

by Director, including workshops, Spring and Fall 

Gatherings for Catechetical Directors and Coordinators, 

retreats, Publishers’ showcases, reports, publications, 

symposiums, conferences, etc.; 

• Coordinates and oversees the Curriculum Committee 

to review new curriculum for parishes catechetical 

programming; 

Interested candidates, please forward your resume 

with salary requirements to: 

Attention: Sinia Bustamante 

Diocese of San Bernardino 

1201 E. Highland Avenue 

San Bernardino, CA 92404 

Email: employment@sbdiocese.org or fax to: 909-475-5189 

The Diocese of San Bernardino is an Equal Opportunity Employer. 

SUNDAY 

READINGS 

BY SCOTT HAHN 

Amos 6:1, 4–7 / Ps. 146:7–10 / 1 Tim. 6:11–16 / Lk. 16:19–31 

The rich and powerful 

are visited with woe and 

exile in today’s liturgy — 

not for their wealth but 

for their refusal to share it; 

not for their power but for 

their indifference to the 

suffering at their door. 

The complacent leaders 

in today’s First Reading 

feast on fine foods and 

wines, reveling while the 

house of Joseph, the kingdom 

of Israel (see Amos 

5:6), collapses around 

them. 

The rich man in today’s 

Gospel also lives like a 

king, dressed in royal 

purple and fine linen 

(see 1 Maccabees 8:14). 

The rich man symbolizes 

Israel’s failure to keep the 

Old Covenant, to heed the 

commandments of Moses 

and the prophets. 

This is the sin of the rulers in today’s 

First Reading. Born to the nation 

God favored first, they could claim 

Abraham as their father. But for their 

failure to give, their inheritance is 

taken away. 

The rulers are exiled from their 

homeland. The rich man is punished 

with an exile far greater: eternity with 

a “great chasm” fixed between himself 

and God. 

In this world, the rich and powerful 

make a name for themselves (see 

Genesis 11:4) and dine sumptuously, 

while the poor remain anonymous, 

refused an invitation to their feasts. 

But notice that the Lord today knows 

Lazarus by name, and Joseph in his 

‘The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus,” by Jan Steen, 

1625/1626-1679. 

sufferings, while the leaders and the 

rich man have no name. 

Today’s liturgy is a call to repentance, 

to heed the warning of the One 

who was raised from the dead. To lay 

hold of the eternal life he promises, 

we must pursue righteousness, keep 

the commandment of love, as Paul 

exhorts in today’s Epistle. 

“The Lord loves the just,” we sing in 

today’s Psalm. And in this Eucharist 

we have a foretaste of the love that 

will be ours in the next life, when 

he will raise the lowly to the heavenly 

banquet with Abraham and the 

prophets (see Luke 13:28), where we, 

too, will rest our heads on the bosom 

of our Lord (see John 13:23). 

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

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS 


IN EXILE 

BY FATHER RONALD ROLHEISER, OMI 

Intelligence vs. wisdom 

There’s a huge difference between 

being bright and being wise, between 

brilliance and wisdom. We can be 

highly intelligent, but not very wise. 

Ideally, of course, we should strive to 

be both, but that isn’t always the case. 

We’re living in a culture that rewards 

brilliance above wisdom and within 

which we pride ourselves first of all in 

being brighter than one another. Who 

has the highest degree? Who went to 

the most elite university? Who’s the 

most entrepreneurial? We never ask, 

“Who’s the wisest?” Today intelligence 

is valued far above wisdom, and 

that’s not always good. We’re a highly 

informed and intelligent people, but 

our compassion is not nearly on par 

with our brilliance. 

What’s the difference between 

intelligence and wisdom? Wisdom is 

intelligence that’s colored by understanding 

(which, parsed to its root, 

means infused with empathy). In the 

end, what makes for wisdom is intelligence 

informed by empathy, intelligence 

that grasps with sympathy the 

complexity of others and the world, 

and this has implications. 

Learning, to be truly helpful, must 

be matched by an equal growth in 

empathy. When this isn’t happening, 

then growth in intelligence will 

invariably be one-sided and, while 

perhaps providing something for the 

community, will always lack the kind 

of understanding that can help bind 

us together and help us better understand 

ourselves and our world. 

When intelligence is not informed 

by empathy, what it produces will generally 

not contribute to the common 

good. Without a concomitant empathy, 

intelligence invariably becomes 

arrogant and condescending. 

True learning, on the other hand, is 

humble, self-effacing, and empathic. 

When we develop ourselves intellectually, 

without sufficient empathy, our 

talents invariably become causes for 

envy rather than gifts for community. 

Ironically, at the end of the day, intelligence 

not sufficiently informed by 

empathy will not be very bright, but 

instead will be an arrested intelligence 

wherein its fault will not be in what it 

has learned (for learning itself is good) 

but in where its learning stopped. 

It will suffer from a hazard aptly 

named by 18th-century English poet 

Alexander Pope, where “a little learning 

is a dangerous thing,” where we 

have read one book too many but one 

book too few! 

One might object here and make a 

plea for science and scientific objectivity. 

Isn’t empirical science the 

product of a pure intellectual pursuit 

that refuses to be colored by anything 

outside itself? Isn’t the ideal of all 

learning to be purely objective, to not 

have a bias of any sort? Where does 

empathy play a role in pure research? 

Doesn’t an eye turned toward empathy 

fudge pure objectivity? 

Pure objectivity doesn’t exist, in science 

or anywhere else. Science today 

accepts that it can never be purely objective. 

All measurement has its own 

agenda, and cannot help but interfere 

(however infinitesimally perhaps) with 

what it measures. 

Everyone and everything, including 

science, has a bias (euphemistically, a 

pre-ontology). Thus, since all learning 

necessarily begins with an angle, 

a bias, pre-ontology, the question is 

not, “How can I be purely objective?” 

but rather, “What serves us best as 

an angle from which to learn?” The 

answer is empathy. Empathy turns 

intelligence into wisdom and wisdom 

turns learning into something that 

more properly serves community. 

However, empathy is not to be confused 

with sentimentality or naiveté, 

as is sometimes the case. Sentimentality 

and naiveté see a fault within intellectuality 

itself, seeing learning itself 

as the problem. But learning is never 

the problem. One-sided learning is 

the problem, namely, learning that 

isn’t sufficiently informed by empathy, 

which seeks knowledge without 

understanding. 

I teach graduate students who are 

mainly preparing for ministry within 

their churches and so, for them, 

graduate learning is, by definition, 

meant to be more than just scoring 

high marks, graduating with honors, 

being informed and educated, or even 

just satisfying their own intellectual 

curiosities and questions. 

By their very vocation, they are striving 

for wisdom more than for mere 

intelligence. But even they, like most 

everyone else in our culture, struggle 

to not be one-sided in their learning, 

to have their studies bring them as 

much compassion as knowledge. 

It’s difficult to resist a temptation 

that’s as endemic in our culture as 

certain bacteria are in our waters, that 

is, the temptation to be clever and 

bright, more informed than everyone 

else, no matter if we aren’t very compassionate 

persons afterward. 

And so this column is a plea, not a 

criticism. To all of us, remember: It’s 

not good merely to be smart, we must 

also be compassionate. 

Oblate of Mary Immaculate Father Ronald Rolheiser is a spiritual writer, www.ronrolheiser.com. 


Gaining more than they give up 

To much of society, their decision 

remains a mystery, but in choosing to 

leave everything for Christ, more and 

more women are finding a happiness 

that today’s world can’t give them 

BY ELISE ITALIANO URENECK / ANGELUS 

Women religious from the Archdiocese of 

Los Angeles celebrate the ordination of 11 

new priests at the Cathedral of Our Lady of 

the Angels June 8. 


10 • ANGELUS 10 • ANGELUS • September • September 27, 201927, 2019

Members of the Sisters of Life chat with Catholic youth at SEEK 2019 January 6. 

I’ll never forget the promo for the 

Oprah Winfrey Show that stopped 

me in my tracks. 

In February 2010, Oprah advertised 

an episode featuring behind-the-scenes 

footage of women whose lives were 

mostly hidden from the world. 

Lisa Ling, who did some investigative 

journalism for the show, decided 

that one group she would get to know 

would be the Dominican Sisters of 

Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, a growing 

order of women religious (with a 

decreasing median age) in Ann Arbor, 

Michigan. 

The interviews from that first episode 

were so captivating that Oprah had 

the sisters back for a second episode 

and reconnected with the community 

again in 2015. 

The promo opened with Oprah’s signature 

dramatic voice overlaying b-roll 

footage of the sisters walking around 

the convent: “They will never have 

sex. They will never own possessions. 

They will never have money of their 

own for the rest of their lives.” 

Despite the ominous opening, Oprah 

displayed a genuine desire to understand 

why so many young women 

were choosing this way of life. I was 

delighted by the moments in which 

she found common ground with the 

women religious, even if she used 

different language to describe a shared 

experience or point of view. 

The sisters’ effusive joy, as well as 

their prioritization of silence, contemplation, 

and community life, shifted 

the conversation from what they gave 

up to what they gained. 

Several young women later shared 

with Oprah that they traced their 

decision to enter religious life to that 

first interview. 

I’ve been thinking of those episodes 

in light of the recent cluster of stories 

about nuns in the news, most notably 

the in-depth look at millennial women 

discerning the religious life in the 

Huffington Post, and the ESPN story 

about a star Villanova University basketball 

player who gave up a promising 

professional athletic career to live as a 

cloistered Poor Clare nun. 

Nearly 10 years later, after Oprah 

introduced the world to the faces and 

stories of young women entering the 

convent, the phenomenon remains 

intriguing, and somewhat puzzling, to 

many people. 

The common question that emerges 

from reporters and the voices in the 

comment boxes is the same as Oprah’s: 

Given the manifold opportunities that 

contemporary young women have, 

how is it that the number of millennial 

women discerning religious life, and 

those signing up for a set of select traditional 

communities, is on the rise? 

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ 


A group of LA-area religious sisters meet for prayer. 

SUBMITTED PHOTO 

WHAT IS GOING ON? 

Perhaps the sub-headline of the Huffington 

Post article put it more bluntly, 

asking, “What on earth is going on?” 

To get at that answer, it’s helpful 

to look at the social and economic 

landscape for millennial women in 

general, and how they are responding 

to it, regardless of vocation. 

According to a 2017 article in The 

Fiscal Times, nearly 60 percent of all 

college students are women, meaning 

that their prospects for employment 

are increasingly good. 

And a recent U.S. Census Bureau 

analysis revealed that as more young 

women obtain college degrees, delay 

having children, and join the workforce, 

they are getting better paying 

jobs than their male peers at a rapid 


CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/COURTESY VILLANOVA ATHLETICS 

Shelly Pennefather, who later became 

Sister Rose Marie, a member of the Poor 

Clare order, during her time as a member 

of the women’s basketball team at Villanova 

University in Pennsylvania. 

Sister Rose Marie hugs her mother, Mary Jane Pennefather, for the first time in 25 years during her 25th jubilee celebration at the Poor Clare convent 

in Alexandria, Virginia, June 9. 

MARY F. CALVERT 

rate. Millennial women are also able 

to enter into fields once dominated by 

men, including finance, technology, 

engineering, and entrepreneurship. 

When you add to this the data 

demonstrating a general upward trend 

of women landing executive and 

leadership positions in Fortune 500 

companies as well as political office, 

the facts are clear: Millennial women 

have nearly every door opening to 

them for professional success, economic 

stability, and upward mobility. 

While this is certainly great news, the 

phenomenon simultaneously creates 

a cultural expectation, and a very real 

kind of pressure, for young women to 

walk through these doors, often at the 

expense of other goals or goods such 

as personal relationships or sustained 

self-reflection and discovery. 

Let’s look at the situation of professional, 

educated women thinking of 

the vocation to marriage and motherhood. 

A 2013 study entitled “Knot 

Yet: The Benefits and Cost of Delayed 

Marriage in America,” took a deep 

dive into the marriage and childbearing 

decisions of men and women in 

their 20s and 30s. 

They found that women who delay 

marriage until age 30 enjoy an annual 

income premium and have more 

professional opportunities available to 

them than those who marry earlier. 

This is sold as a one-size-fits-all, unequivocal 

good. 

There are also growing incentives 

for women to stay in the workforce 

after having children. In a recent issue 

of National Review, author Patrick 

Brown looked at how public policy advocates 

are overwhelmingly working to 

help working mothers stay in the labor 

force and climb the economic ladder, 

while next to no policies incentivize 

or reward women who want to work 

part time or stay at home with their 

children. 

Yet according to a 2013 Pew Research 

Center poll, only 7 percent of mothers 

with young children wanted to work 

full time, and 47 percent of all working 

moms said their ideal situation 

would include part-time work. 

To get off the conveyor belt, for a period 

of time or permanently, demands 

a level of self-possession, courage, 

and a willingness to be mistakenly 

perceived as ungrateful for the barriers 

that have been broken by previous 

generations. 

It also requires wrestling with the 

purpose of one’s education and the 

value of professional accomplishments 

in light of other possibilities. 


WOMEN WALKING AWAY 

Now, look at the accomplished, educated 

women interviewed about their 

decision to enter the convent. Villanova 

basketball star Shelly Pennefather 

walked away from a $200,000 contract 

in Japan which, according to the 

ESPN article, “would have made her 

one of the richest players in women’s 

basketball” in the 90s. 

Just consider her stats: Pennefather 

scored 2,408 points, Villanova’s 

all-time record for women and men, 

which she still holds today. And, the 

author noted, “she did it without the 

benefit of the 3-point shot.” 

Eve Fairbanks, author of the Huffington 

Post piece, observed the following 

about millennial discerners’ credentials: 

“[T]he aspiring sisters aren’t like the 

old ones. They’re more diverse: Ninety 

percent of American nuns in 2009 

identified as white; last year, fewer 

than 60 percent of new entrants to 

convents did. They’re also younger: 

The average age for taking the final 

step into the religious life a decade ago 

was 40. Today, it’s 24. 

“They’re disproportionately middle 

children, often high-flying and 

high-achieving. Typical discernment 

stories on blogs or in the Catholic 

press start with lines like, “She played 

lacrosse and went to Rutgers” or she 

was “a Harvard graduate with a wonderful 

boyfriend.” 

In fact, one Harvard student, Mary 

Anne Marks, was the 2010 valedictorian. 

Her plan after graduation? Join the 

Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother 

of the Eucharist. “When people hear 

Harvard to the convent they think, 

‘You are giving up a lot of opportunities,’ 

” she said. 

It would stand to reason that what 

women in their 20s and 30s have been 

offered — economic stability, sexual 

choice, independence, and technology 

at their fingertips — should be making 

them happier. Money, sex, and personal 

possessions: These are the things 

that Oprah noted women religious 

give up. 

And yet we see what scholars have 

called the “paradox of declining 

female happiness” emerge as women’s 

rights and gains have increased. It’s 

not only nuns who are dissatisfied with 

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CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/CHAZ MUTH 

Women religious pray the rosary at their Washington, D.C., convent in 2017. 

the material, sexual, and economic 

offerings in front of them, it’s women 

across the board. 

Sister Mary Catherine told Oprah 

that she walked away from her career 

and felt freedom. “I had a cellphone, 

PDA, a laptop. Laptops are supposed 

to make you ‘mobile.’ It was the biggest 

ball and chain of my life. I was so happy 

to be rid of it!” 

And of a life of 

celibacy, another 

sister shared, “I 

feel like I’ve reclaimed 

my sexuality 

in an oversaturated, 

sexualized 

world.” 

Two recent studies 

out of Harvard 

Divinity School 

and the Fetzer Institute that traced the 

phenomenon of religious disaffiliation, 

called “How We Gather” and “Something 

More,” revealed that millennials 

are searching for meaning and belonging 

in a variety of spaces, particularly 

those that offer them the following: 

community, personal transformation, 

social transformation, purpose-finding, 

creativity, and accountability. 

While some are finding fulfillment 

in “spiritual-but-not-religious” spaces 

like Soul Cycle, others have bucked 

the trend of disaffiliation from institutional 

religion and found their way to 

the Catholic Church, embracing its 

traditions and precepts along with its 

opportunities for personal and social 

change. 

Within that cohort, 13 percent of millennial 

Catholic women between 18 

and 35 have said that at one point they 

have thought of becoming a religious 

sister. 

It would stand to reason that what millennial 

women have been offered — 

economic stability, independence, and 

technology at their fingertips — should 

be making them happier. But is it? 

Community, joy, personal transformation 

— these are all palpable in 

the communities featured by Oprah, 

ESPN, and the Huffington Post. 

‘KNOWING WHO WE ARE’ 

At a recent event at Boston College 

(where I work), Father Matt Malone, 

president and editor-in-chief of America 

Media, said this: 

“People ask me, ‘What do we do to 

promote vocations?’ You live them joyfully. 

To find that truth that lies at the 

heart, that comes from the One who is 

Truth, that can only bring about joy, is 

needed more than ever. I don’t mean a 

giddy happiness. I mean knowing who 

we are and helping other people to 

become what they are called to be.” 

The rather pressing mission for 

Catholics, then, is to find every 

opportunity to encourage conversation 

around purpose, vocation, and 

meaning with young people, since they 

are desperately 

looking for it. 

Back in 2010, 

Oprah mused, 

“I’ve been 

thinking about 

how people move 

through the 

world without 

ever taking a 

moment to think 

about the power 

that’s greater than themselves.” One of 

the sisters responded, “If you don’t believe 

in anything greater than yourself, 

you’ll never do anything greater than 

yourself.” 

When it comes to millennial women, 

we should encourage them to pursue 

every opportunity for greatness. But we 

should also be prepared that it might 

just lead them to the most surprising 

places, including the convent. 

Elise Italiano Ureneck is a communications 

and public relations professional 

who writes from Boston. 


‘ 

Love 

is the key!’ 

She’s been ranked among 

the world’s ‘most influential’ 

and hung out with popes and 

athletes. But at the heart of 

Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe’s 

work is a clear call from God ‘to 

do small things with great love’ 

BY MARÍA RUIZ SCAPERLANDA / ANGELUS 

Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe delivers a keynote address during the Catholic Media Conference in Buffalo, New York, June 25, 2015. 

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/BOB ROLLER 

If her eyes could talk, they would 

tell the hundreds of gruesome 

stories that Sister Rosemary 

Nyirumbe has witnessed or heard 

throughout the years. 

Stories like that of Valerie, the girl 

who arrived at St. Monica’s Girls 

Tailoring Center with a baby barely 

a month old. After years of living in 

the Ugandan bush under the rebels’ 

control, Valerie had escaped just one 

week after giving birth to little Joy. 

When Valerie approached Nyirumbe, 

grumbling about her roommate, 

Nyirumbe initially dismissed 

it as a petty grievance between girls. 

Then Valerie began to describe how 

the rebels had forced her to kill villagers 

“in the most brutal way,” including 

her roommate’s parents. 

“Now she is helping me take care of 

my baby,” she told Nyirumbe. “I feel 

so bad. … I can’t sleep in the same 

room with her. What if she finds 

out?” As Valerie sobbed, Nyirumbe 

pondered how to respond to this tragic 

situation with a mother’s heart. 

“Don’t be afraid,” Nyirumbe finally 

said to Valerie. “Tell her what happened. 

She may be upset at first, but 

she will understand because she was 

forced in captivity to do the same to 

other people, so she knows what it’s 

like, and she will eventually forgive 

you … you are sisters now.” 

Best known as the driving force who 

saved hundreds of children from abduction 

during the bloody wars that 

have devastated northern Uganda and 

Sudan for decades, Nyirumbe knows 

through personal experience that loving 

those who have never known love, 

and whom the world believes don’t 

deserve love, requires that she and 

her sisters become spiritual mothers 

for the girls at St. Monica’s. 

And that’s exactly what Nyirumbe’s 

religious order, the Sisters of the 

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have done for 

the past two decades. 

She is one of TIME magazine’s “100 

Most Influential People in the World” 

(2014). She is the subject of the book 

“Sewing Hope,” and a documentary 

by the same name, narrated by 

Academy Award winning actor Forest 

Whitaker (2013). 

She received the United Nations Impact 

Award, the John Paul II Veritatis 

Splendor Award, and she has been 

named a CNN Hero. She even had a 

song written in her honor, “Touched 

by a Rose,” by JAIA. 

A MISSION OF HEALING LOVE 

In modern African history, northern 

Uganda is infamously known for its 

violent stories. Idi Amin carried out 

mass executions of its native Acholi 

and Lango Christian tribes as well 

as other ethnic groups, a tragedy followed 

by years of tribal “Bush Wars.” 


CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/BOB ROLLER 

Soon afterward, for decades that 

persisted into the early 2000s, warlord 

Joseph Rao Kony and his militia, the 

Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), battled 

government forces and tortured 

the population across the borders of 

Sudan, Congo, and back. 

They regularly abducted children, 

forcing boys into becoming child 

soldiers and girls into becoming sex 

slaves, as well as soldiers. The LRA 

killed those who didn’t comply. 

Most estimates document more than 

30,000 children stolen by the LRA 

over the course of the war, although 

some list the number as high as 

60,000. 

The one place that has always welcomed 

them back as they escaped the 

bush is St. Monica’s in the northern 

Uganda city of Gulu. 

For almost 20 years, Nyirumbe has 

lived and worked there, rescuing and 

teaching marketable skills to girls 

and children who first suffered as the 

ones abducted, then were forced into 

joining the violent, gruesome world 

of Kony’s mercenaries. 

“You could see it in their faces,” Nyirumbe 

remembered that first group 

of girls, pausing, trying to describe 

what she is now well-trained to recognize 

in the eyes of her girls. 

Making matters worse, because most 

had been taken as young children, 

these girls had also missed out on any 

form of education. Even the most basic 

vocational class, like learning how 

to sew, would be an insurmountable 

mountain to climb for girls who had 

never learned math. 

So Nyirumbe began a literacy program, 

forming special groups for girls 

who shared this common past, but 

above all, girls who desired a new beginning 

but were lacking the building 

blocks of a basic education. 

“When we open our arms and 

embrace [the girls], they feel more 

accepted; they become stronger and 

stand up straight. You can see the 

change, physically,” noted 63-year-old 

Nyirumbe. 

Even though active abductions of 

children in northern Uganda ended 

in 2006, the girls escaping from bush 

captivity continue even now. 

“Just last year we had girls who 

came to us from bush captivity. 

[Recently] we had two girls come 

who were BORN in captivity!” While 

her community’s work has changed, 

she emphasizes, it is far from done, 

remaining faithful to the mission of 

providing a safe home and education, 

in particular, to orphans and young 

women. 

Although appearances make life 

in Uganda seem normal, in reality, 

“Uganda is going to be recovering 

from this for a very long time. My 

effort is to not let the world forget this 

situation, that people here continue 

to suffer,” she explained. “Every time 

we tell the story … we help stop this 

evil from happening again … and we 

let the girls know that the world cares 

about them.” 

The closer one gets to Paidha, the 

small village of huts with grass roofs 

where Nyirumbe was born on the 

West Nile, the more obvious the 

road walkers become. Men, women, 

children, all walking on both sides of 

the red dirt road leading into town, 

women carrying 5-gallon yellow containers 

of water on their heads. 

Clumps of tall, bushy pine trees 

seem out of place in the tropical 

highlands of northwest Uganda, 

where nature shows off its bounty of 

Two girls, who had been abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army, in an undated photo, near Gulu, 

Uganda. They are learning to crochet soda can pop-tops with thread to turn into accessories sold 

through Sewing Hope, building a new life with the money they earn. 

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/EMI, ITALIAN MISSIONARY PUBLISHING HOUSE 


GOD IS CALLING YOU TO GREATN 

SHUTTERSTOCK 

A R E Y O U L I S T E N I N 

Katie Couric and Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe attend the Time 100 Gala for the Most Influential People 

at Frederick P. Rose Hall at Lincoln Center on April 29, 2014, in New York City. 

cassava, coffee, mango, and banana 

trees. “They are grown for firewood,” 

Nyirumbe said, explaining how pine 

trees came to be part of her familiar 

landscape overlooking the Western 

Rift Valley. 

This area connects to the African 

Great Lakes, including to the far 

south Lake Victoria, the third largest 

freshwater lake in the world (by area). 

It is where Nyirumbe was born and 

raised, and where numerous relatives 

still reside. 

18 • ANGELUS • September 27, 2019 

GOD 

A R 

GOD IS CALLING YOU TO 

A R E Y O U L I S T 

GOD IS CALLING YOU TO GREATN 

A R E Y O U L I S T E N I N 

HAPPY AND LOVED 

In spite of having little money and 

no extras in her upbringing, Nyirumbe, 

the youngest of eight, grew 

up feeling happy and loved. From 

a very young age, “baby sister” was 

quick to learn, a natural leader with 

the other children, and she excelled 

at sports, no doubt an acquired skill 

from wanting to keep up with her 

four older brothers. 

As much as they valued education, 

Nyirumbe’s parents would be proud 

to know that their youngest daughter 

speaks at least six different languages. 

When Nyirumbe met Pope Francis 

in person in September 2016, she 

was moved to tears by his kindness. “I 

could not say anything but hold his 

hands,” she said, still amazed at her 

unlikely loss for words. 

She handed him a copy of the 

“Sewing Hope” book translated in 

Italian, “Cucire la Speranza,” and 

when Francis saw the book cover, a 

photo of her with a baby girl wrapped 

on her back in a traditional colorful 

kitenge cloth, he smiled and asked, 

“Is this you?” 

“When I responded ‘Yes,’ he gave 

me a gentle pat on my left cheek, 

just as was done when I received my 

confirmation!” 

And Nyirumbe, with eyes closed 

to take in the fullness of that perfect 

moment, instinctively raised her left 

hand and placed it on his. 

“It was quite emotional for me because 

I got the sense of Jesus coming 

physically to touch my hands. That 

brought tears of joy in my eyes.” 

AN AFRICAN MOTHER TERESA 

Nyirumbe has prayed the same fourword 

supplication every day of her 

life, “Rwoth para, Mungu para — my 

Lord and my God,” always spoken in 

her soul-language of Alur. She walks 

with a sense of purpose and, always, 

with joy, all in the name of what she 

calls the gospel of presence, healing, 

and forgiveness. 

“I want the world to know about her 

sincerity, that it is grounded in a real 

love of the Risen Christ,” emphasized 

Father Jim F. Chamberlain, a diocesan 

priest incardinated in Austin, 

Texas, who has spent a month at St. 

Monica’s every summer since 2016. 

“She does not have this optimism 

without her prayer. She doesn’t manifest 

this joy without her rootedness in 

her Catholic faith.” 

What gives Nyirumbe her strength 

and what drives her vision is quite 

obvious, said Chamberlain, an environmental 

engineer who works at the 

University of Oklahoma’s WaTER 

Center, a program that develops 

water and sanitation projects. 

“Every time I am there in Gulu, 

Sister Rosemary insists that I celebrate 

Mass with her and her sisters 

each day at 7 a.m.,” he said, smiling, 

“gathered in prayer around the table 

of the Eucharist. 

While she doesn’t hesitate to speak 

out for the poorest among us, Nyirumbe 

tends to shy away from recognition, 

quickly pointing to others and 

the brave work they are doing. She 

laughs often, and heartily, especially 

as she explains how most members 

of her tribe, the Alur, look physically 

like her: “short and robust,” while 

GO 



A 

P

EATNESS. 

I N G ? 

GOD IS CALLING Y 

A R E Y O U 



OD IS CALLING YOU TO GREATNESS 

A R E Y O U L I S T E N I N G 

EATNESS. 

I N G ? 

GOD IS CALLING 

YOU TO GREATNESS 

ARE YOU LISTENING? 

TO GREATNESS. 

PLEASE PRAY FOR 

OUR PRIESTS ON 

PRIESTHOOD SUNDAY 

S T E N I N G ? 

GOD IS CALLING Y 

A R E Y O U L 

GOD IS CALLING YOU TO G 

A R E Y O U L I S T E 

GOD IS CALLING YOU TO GREATNE 

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2019 

A R E Y O U L I S T E N I N G 

TO GREATNESS. GOD IS CALLING Y 

S T E N I N G ? 

their neighbors, the Acholi, are lean 

and tall. Yet the same woman who 

jokes about her 5-foot stature has also 

shaken hands with foreign presidents, 

kings, American NBA and NFL 

stars, and dignitaries. Rome Reports 

described her in 2017 as “the Mother 

Teresa of Africa.” 

But, she will interrupt to say, grinning, 

“None of these things make me 

taller than what I am! I’m levelheaded 

because I don’t see these things as 

lifting me to be someone different.” 

Nyirumbe credits her love of children 

and the Italian Comboni Sisters 

for her passionate ministry and religious 

vocation, a call she answered at 

the young age of 15. 

Her community of more than 325 

sisters, in fact, grew out of the Comboni 

Missionary Sisters, who in 1976 

encouraged them to form an African 

community and to elect their first 

African Superior General. 

In addition to their motherhouse in 

Juba, South Sudan, the Sacred Heart 

of Jesus Sisters also live out their motto, 

“Live Love in Truth,” in Kenya 

and Uganda, where most vocations 

come from. 

The truth is that “I am not strong,” 

said Nyirumbe surprisingly. “So that 

keeps me dependent on God! I keep 

praying, ‘Give me the energy and the 

strength, and give me the right words 

to speak to each audience.’ ” 

But speaking engagements and 

awards are simply occasions to tell 

the story, “platforms where I can 

really speak on behalf of the voiceless, 

where I can speak perhaps a 

little louder than I could if I was only 

there. That’s all!” she paused. “I have 

the great opportunity to speak on 

behalf of people who cannot speak for 

themselves.” 

“Love is the key for doing all the 

work we can do,” she clarified, adding 

that Mother Teresa has joined her 

personal posse of saints, the ones 

that she relies on, because Mother 

Teresa’s calling was to do small things 

with great love. “Real love will always 

make you different. 

María Ruiz Scaperlanda writes from 

Norman, Oklahoma. Her latest book is 

“Rosemary Nyirumbe: Sewing Hope in 

Uganda” (Liturgical Press, $14.95). 

September 27, 2019 • ANGELUS • 19 

A R E Y O U L

‘It is never too 

late for healing’ 

New program for victim-survivors 

of abuse by priests begins in LA, 

five California dioceses 

BY PABLO KAY / ANGELUS 

PABLO KAY 

Former California Gov. Gray Davis, business leader Maria Contreras-Sweet, and former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta spoke to media at a Sept. 

16 press conference near LAX. 

A 

new, private independent program set up to compensate 

victim-survivors of child sexual abuse by priests 

was rolled out Sept. 16 in six participating Catholic 

dioceses in California, including the Archdiocese of Los 

Angeles. 

At a news conference in Los Angeles, three lay Catholics 

with extensive experience in government leadership, praised 

the new program’s commitment to victims’ healing and its 

independence from Church control. 

“I commend the Church for establishing a program that 

helps those people who don’t want to write a book, don’t 

want to be in a public trial, don’t want to take a public deposition, 

but do want to be compensated for the pain that they 

endured,” said former California Gov. Gray Davis. 

Davis, along with former CIA Director and Secretary of 

Defense Leon Panetta and former Small Business Administration 

head Maria Contreras-Sweet, will oversee the program’s 

handling of abuse claims submitted between now and 

March 2020, when the window for submitting claims closes. 

The idea behind the California program is not new. The 

program’s administrators, nationally known mediators 

Kenneth Feinberg and Camille Biros, currently run similar 

programs in New York, New Jersey, Colorado and Pennsylvania. 

For more than 30 years, they have represented victims of 

tragedies, including the 9/11 attacks, the Deepwater Horizon 

oil spill, and the Sandy Hook massacre. Feinberg and Biros 

answered reporters’ questions via telephone during the news 

conference. 

In this new program, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and 

the Dioceses of Fresno, Orange, Sacramento, San Bernardino, 

and San Diego agree to allow Feinberg and Biros to 

independently assess claims of abuse. They also agree to pay 

Kenneth Feinberg and Camille Biros, co-administrators of the new Independent 

Compensation Program for Victim-Survivors of Sexual Abuse of 

Minors by Priests. 

SCREENSHOT VIA YOUTUBE 


whatever Feinberg and Biros determine is appropriate for 

claims that they deem to be credible and substantiated. 

“Our work and this ICP [Independent Compensation 

Program] are entirely independent of the clergy and the 

Church,” explained Feinberg in a video statement played at 

the press conference. 

“By formal agreement, the Church has no authority 

whatsoever to challenge our determinations of eligibility, to 

challenge amounts of compensation that we offer individual, 

eligible victims.” 

Together, the six dioceses represent more than 10 million 

Catholics — more than 80 percent of the state’s Catholic 

population. 

According to its proponents, the new program promises 

victims several advantages to filing abuse suits in court. 

Anyone with a claim of sexual abuse by members of clergy 

in those dioceses, even victims without legal status in the 

U.S., can file abuse claims anonymously. 

The program also offers victims a cheaper, quicker alternative 

to drawn-out litigation in courts, as well as counseling 

sessions with licensed professionals of the victims’ choosing 

in addition to the compensation payments. 

Claimants who accept 

the compensation offered 

by the program are 

required to agree not to 

“The time for providing this 

program is long overdue.” 

take legal action over the 

abuse claim. Feinberg and 

Biros stressed that there is 

no confidentiality requirement 

for victim-survivors, 

who are free to report or 

discuss their claim in public 

or to law enforcement 

after compensation. 

Payments will be made from a joint fund paid into by the 

dioceses, who have also agreed to hand over any relevant 

documents to the program’s investigators. 

“The time for providing this program is long overdue,” 

remarked Panetta at the news conference. 

Panetta, who served on an independent blue-ribbon panel 

of lay Catholics studying the causes and response to the 

2002 U.S. clerical abuse crisis, recalled the panel’s conclusion 

that the Church’s crisis was not “a legal crisis, a media 

crisis, or a personnel crisis, but a crisis of trust and faith.” 

“Today, 15 years after that report, the Church and all of us 

who are part of that faith, are finally beginning to live out 

the tenets of that faith,” Panetta told the room of reporters 

gathered at the Marriott Hotel at Los Angeles International 

Airport. 

In a letter to the faithful, Los Angeles Archbishop José H. 

Gomez pointed to the archdiocese’s history of providing 

pastoral support and financial assistance to abuse victims. 

But, he added, “we also understand that some victim-survivors 

are reluctant to come to the Church for assistance. 

Our hope with this new program is to give these people a 

chance to seek redress and healing through an independent 

program.” 

“I realize, as you do, that no program, however well-intentioned 

and well-designed, can repair the damage done to 

victims and their families,” the archbishop wrote. “But I pray 

that this new program might provide another avenue toward 

healing and hope.” 

In her remarks, Contreras-Sweet struck a similar tone, 

beginning by admitting that she was struggling with this 

“bittersweet moment” as a mother. 

“I can’t fathom what it would feel like to be a parent 

of somebody who trusted their spiritual leader and was 

abused,” said Contreras-Sweet, who became visually emotional 

while speaking. 

The Mexican-born business leader and former White 

House cabinet official thanked Catholic priests “who have 

sacrificed everything to serve us.” 

She said she hoped the launch of this new program 

represented “a day, a time, and moment when we can say 

that the Church has pivoted and has created a new culture 

where everyone feels that they can report something that is 

inappropriate.” 

“I urge every one of us to accept some responsibility to 

make sure that when we see something that isn’t right, to 

speak up about it,” she added. 

The program’s rollout 

came three days after California’s 

legislature passed 

a bill that would rescind 

the statute of limitations 

on abuse cases of child 

sexual abuse. The bill, 

Assembly Bill 218, awaits 

a decision from Gov. 

Gavin Newsom, who has 

until mid-October to sign 

or veto it. 

Since the announcement of the ICP in May, the six dioceses 

have been reaching out to victims who have reported 

allegations of abuse in the past to alert them to the new 

program. 

Feinberg told reporters that in his experience, programs 

like the new one in California are about more than dollar 

figures. 

“More often than not, it’s not about the amount of compensation. 

What a claimant wants when they come to us 

… is validation of the claim,” said Feinberg in response to a 

reporter’s question. 

“For too long, the claimant has been denied recognition as 

to the credibility and validity of the claim.” 

Panetta said that as a Catholic, he prayed that the program 

he will help oversee will ultimately “provide some semblance 

of justice to the victims of crimes that for too long 

went unpunished, and provide the remedies that for too long 

have been delayed.” 

“It is never too late for healing,” he added. 

Editor’s Note: The six dioceses participating in the ICP are 

encouraging victim-survivors to visit the program’s website to 

find out how to file a claim. 

Pablo Kay is editor-in-chief of Angelus. 


Sensitive 

journeys 

Why the ‘Tale of Two Synods’ promises 

to be fall’s biggest Catholic drama 

BY JOHN L. ALLEN JR. / ANGELUS 

ROME — For Pope Francis, this 

fall shapes up as a “Tale of Two 

Synods,” and the juxtaposition 

between the two events tells us a 

great deal, not only about the kind of 

Church he wants to lead, but also how 

messy it may be to get there. 

The pontiff repeatedly has extolled 

the virtues of “synodality,” referring to 

broad consultation and shared decision-making 

in the Church, especially 

among the bishops. In effect, the twin 

synods now in the works illustrate 

both the promise and the peril of that 

approach. 

In Rome, Francis will host his keenly 

anticipated Synod of Bishops on the 

Amazon Oct. 6-27, an event that’s been 

generating controversy well before the 


curtain goes up. 

In Germany, the country’s bishops 

have confirmed plans for a two-yearlong 

“synodal journey” involving 

clergy, religious, and laity. 

A preliminary agenda features four 

highly sensitive subjects: the exercise 

of power and authority in the Church; 

sexual morality; the priesthood, including 

mandatory celibacy; and the role 

of women in the Church, including 

the possibility of opening more areas of 

ministry. 

Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich, 

president of the German bishops’ 

conference, was in Rome this week to 

address what he called some “misunderstandings” 

after Vatican officials 

told the German prelates that a local 

Pilgrims in prayer during an annual river procession 

and pilgrimage on the Caraparu River 

in SantaIzabel do Para, Brazil, in 2012. 

assembly can’t resolve issues that affect 

the entire Church. 

The bishops are set to vote on statutes 

for the synodal process later this 

month. Marx has said he sees no reason 

why the Germans can’t talk about 

whatever they want, even if, on matters 

regarding the universal Church, they 

can do no more than make recommendations 

to the pope. 

Aside from charges of reviving a nationalist 

conception of the Church, the 

German undertaking is controversial 

among conservatives largely because 

the assumption is that it will end up 

adopting progressive positions. In reality, 

however, such an outcome might 

backfire, since it could paint Francis 

into a corner and force him to answer 

questions he’d prefer to leave open. 

As for the pope’s Amazon synod, it’s 

stirring ferment for a whole slew of 

reasons, but the basic fault lines can be 

expressed in three points. 

First, critics say it amounts to transforming 

the Catholic Church into a 

sort of secular NGO, or nongovernmental 

organization, distracting it from 

its core mission of saving souls rather 

than rainforests. 

For bonus points, German Cardinal 

Walter Brandmüller has charged that 

for a synod of bishops to pronounce 

on ecology, economics, and politics 

PAULO SANTOS/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE, REUTERS 

Send m 

Name 

Addres 

City __

PAULO SANTOS/CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE, REUTERS 

amounts to “clericalism.” That’s hitting 

Francis where it hurts, given that clericalism 

is his bête noire, probably the 

quality above all others that brings out 

his most acerbic rhetoric. 

Second, critics complain that the 

synod seems poised for an uncritical 

embrace of the agenda of secular environmentalists, 

without taking account 

of how today’s ecological movement 

often relies on philosophical and political 

assumptions at odds with orthodox 

Catholic teaching. 

Third, because the synod for the 

Amazon is slated to discuss the “viri 

probati,” meaning tested married men 

who could be ordained to serve isolated 

rural communities as a solution to 

chronic priest shortages, critics worry 

about a slippery slope being created 

that would end in the de facto abolition 

of priestly celibacy. 

Those objections are mushrooming in 

online discussions, and they’re sure to 

feature prominently in a cluster of protests 

and counterevents scheduled for 

Rome as the synod opens, prominently 

including a campaign of prayer and 

fasting to save the synod from “heresy 

BOHUMIL PETRIK/CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY 

Cardinal Walter Brandmüller in his apartment 

in Rome, Oct. 1, 2014. 

and error.” 

So, what does all this say about “synodality” 

under Francis? 

To begin with, it says that this pope is 

willing to risk a great deal for it. Francis 

recently said that while he doesn’t want 

a schism and prays to avoid it, he’s not 

afraid of a schism either, and he clearly 

understands the depth of concern in 

some quarters the Amazon summit is 

generating. 

Nonetheless, the pope obviously 

wants the authority of a synod, meaning 

the perception of consensus, behind 

his campaign to save the Amazon 

and to defend the roughly 4 million 

people scattered across some 400 indigenous 

communities who live there. 

The state of things also tells us that 

the definition and limits of “synodality” 

remain a work in progress, since 

it seems what the Germans are doing 

isn’t quite what Francis has in mind, 

though it’s unclear what steps Francis 

might be prepared to take to rein them 

in should they press ahead in defiance 

of Vatican cautions. 

In other words, it’s not yet clear 

whether this “Tale of Two Synods” 

will be the best of times for Francis or 

the worst. Like the Dickens original, 

however, it does seem destined to be a 

gripping story, no matter how it ends. 

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

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AD REM 

BY ROBERT BRENNAN 

A true Handmaid’s Tale 

A Carmelite sister with a resident at Santa Teresita. 

© SANTA TERESITA 

The HBO series “The Handmaid’s 

Tale” has won many 

awards and high praise from 

all the right kind of people. This story 

of a dystopian world where religious 

fanaticism reigns supreme and women 

are subjugated by a crushing patriarchal 

system checks all the boxes for the 

people who write, produce, star, and 

critique “important” works of enter- 

tainment. 

The costuming in this series has 

infiltrated pop culture in general, 

becoming a mainstay of a variety of 

protest marches. I’m sure this Hal- 


loween there will be plenty of adults 

masquerading in the same red dresses 

and strange white bonnets that bear 

an uncanny resemblance to religious 

garb. 

I do not think for a minute that the 

writers, producers, and stars of series 

such as these believe women who 

still wear religious habits are 

somehow current-day victims 

of a patriarchal system and 

live suppressed and repressed 

lives. 

They probably never visited 

the Carmelite Sisters of the 

Sacred Heart in Los Angeles. 

Before I go any further, let 

me stipulate my bias. I have 

known about the sisters for a 

long time. Their elderly care 

facility “the manor,” on the 

Santa Teresita campus in 

Duarte, is where my mother 

spent her last years. 

She had been robbed of 

everything but her physical 

health due to the ravages 

of Alzheimer’s, and it was 

at Santa Teresita where she 

received the compassionate 

and loving care not only from the 

sisters, but from the equally dedicated 

staff. 

The first thing you will notice when 

you visit the sisters either at their Santa 

Teresita facility or their retreat house 

in Alhambra is how joyful they are, 

how expressive they are for their love 

of Christ, his Church, and for all the 

souls they feel privileged to minister to. 

With a charism that includes education 

of children, caring for the sick, 

and facilitating spiritual journeys of lay 

men and women, these sisters, more 

than 100 in the order, teach in a few 

archdiocesan schools, run a true oasis 

of a retreat center, and do God’s work 

(I’ve seen it firsthand) by caring for the 

sick and elderly. 

They have recently undergone a 

major construction campaign at Santa 

Teresita and now have 44 beautiful 

new apartments, providing independent 

housing for seniors living in a true 

communal sense, with access to the 

sacraments, social interaction with 

their neighbors, and all done under 

the tender and watchful care of the 

sisters. 

In a time where most college students 

cannot tell you who is buried in 

Grant’s tomb, fewer people still are 

aware of how terrible things were in 

the not-so-distant past when this religious 

order first came to Los Angeles. 

Like a lot of things in Los Angeles, 

it began in Mexico. It was the time 

Mother Maria Luisa Josefa 

of the Mexican Revolution in the 

early 1900s when the founder of the 

Carmelite Sisters of the Sacred Heart, 

Mother Maria Luisa Josefa, made the 

perilous journey through her homeland 

to get to the United States. 

This sojourn was all the more dangerous 

due to the rabid anti-Catholicism 

of the new Mexican revolutionary 

government. Priests and religious men 

and women were being arrested; in 

many cases they were executed for the 

crime of wearing Roman collars and 

religious habits. 

So as the fictional women in “The 

Handmaid’s Tale” are forced to wear 

their garb, the real religious women 

of Mexico were threatened with death 

for wearing theirs. Traveling incognito 

with a few other sisters, Mother Maria 

made it to Los Angeles in 1927, and 

the story of the Carmelite Sisters in the 

archdiocese began. 

It’s one of the great myths transported 

by the vehicle of popular culture since 

the days when many religious orders 

stopped wearing formal habits, that 

those orders that retained their traditional 

habits were somehow desperate- 

ly clinging to the past. 

It’s why, to the creators of the HBO 

show, this kind of “costuming” is used 

to constitute repression, rigidity, and 

the stifling of individuality. 

In preparation for this piece, I recently 

visited the Carmelite Sisters both 

at their retreat center and at Santa 

Teresita. I found a collection of 

women with different gifts, different 

talents and backgrounds 

as diverse as if you threw a dart 

at a map of the United States 

while blindfolded — women 

from ranches in South Dakota, 

© CARMELITE SISTERS OF THE MOST SACRED HEART OF LOS ANGELES 

farms in Minnesota, and the 

bayous of Louisiana. They pray 

together, work together, and 

live together in purposeful community. 

To the “outside” world it 

seems like the embodiment 

of the fictional world of “The 

Handmaid’s Tale.” The truth, 

which so often outpaces fiction 

for depth and profundity, is that 

these women from backgrounds 

as diverse, and with some family 

dynamics with as much pain 

and drama that would rival 

anything seen on an Amazon Prime 

drama, come together as one in love 

of Christ. 

They wear their love for Jesus and his 

Church on their sleeves and are living 

examples of what Catholic lay men 

and women are supposed to aspire to: 

deeper communion with God, love 

of Jesus and the Church, and love of 

others before self. 

Jesus gave us beautiful but sometimes 

paradoxical teachings to show us the 

way of happiness and truth, like losing 

our life to gain eternal life, or taking 

the last place in order to be first. 

The Carmelite Sisters of the Sacred 

Heart and the hundreds of other 

religious sisters in orders around the 

Archdiocese of Los Angeles may look 

like they belong in the past, but their 

zeal, their ministry and their tireless 

and joyful witness they give with their 

lives are more likely a sign of the 

future. 

Robert Brennan is director of communications 

at The Salvation Army 

California South Division in Van 

Nuys, California. 


IMDB 

Back at 

the estate 

The ‘Downton Abbey’ 

movie now in theaters 

is more like one long 

episode — but not a 

terrible one 

BY SOPHIA BUONO / ANGELUS 

Michelle Dockery and Matthew Goode in “Downton Abbey.” 

The king and queen are coming 

to Downton Abbey, and 

everything must be perfect. 

Such is the basic premise that launches 

the “Downton Abbey” film released 

Friday, Sept. 20. But, as is typical of the 

famous British TV series, one plotline 

simply will not do. 

On the one hand, it seems only natural 

to create a feature-length film out 

of the series. With six seasons running 

between 2010 and 2015, the show 

has received a total of 15 Primetime 

Emmy Awards (including Outstanding 

Miniseries in 2011), three Golden 

Globes, four Screen Actors Guild 

Awards, and dozens more nominations. 

In 2011, the Guiness Book of World 

Records recognized “Downton Abbey” 

as the most critically acclaimed English-language 

television show in the 

world. It has been broadcast in more 

than 200 countries and reached at least 

120 million people worldwide. 

A “Downton Abbey” movie would 

have no trouble finding an audience, 

to say the least. On top of all that, the 

breathtaking setting, costumes, and 

cinematography that plunge viewers 

into an era dripping with elegance and 

charm simply beg to be thrown on the 

big screen. 

On the other hand, the myriad 

characters and plotlines that captivated 

audiences for five years do not lend 

themselves well to a major motion 

picture in which a beginning, middle, 

and end can fit neatly into two hours 

and two minutes. 

But it appears that writer Julian Fellowes 

and director Michael Fingeler 

have embraced that reality. That is, 

they know they cannot trim “Downton 

Abbey” down to a central plot revolving 

around one or two characters, at 

least not without risking alienating the 

fan base, so they don’t try. 

As a result, the movie inevitably cannot 

be a traditional movie; for better or 

worse, it feels like one long episode. 

There is, of course, the overarching 

event that drives the plot, the royal 

visit, which alone creates a delightful 

escapade of preparations, triumphs, 

and pitfalls. But that particular event 

fades in and out of focus as other subjects, 

like the dilemmas facing Ladies 

Mary and Edith, the mission preoccupying 

Lady Violet Crawley, or the 

quibbles among the staff, trade places 

in the spotlight. 

The main benefit of this structure 

is that it highlights moments of great 

acting and brilliant dialogue for many 

characters. Lord and Lady Grantham, 

Mrs. Patmore, Carson, and Daisy all 

have their moments to shine. And 

thankfully, the film does not fail to 

provide some signature, hilarious, and 

flawlessly delivered one-liners from 

Maggie Smith’s impeccable Lady 

Violet. 

The drawback to the film’s structure 

is that it can feel choppy at times. 

Moreover, some of the side stories are 

more compelling than others, and a 

few leave loose ends untied. For the 

most part, however, “Downton Abbey” 

successfully weaves them together into 

a coherent narrative. 

Unfortunately, the lack of a strong 


IMDB 

Maggie Smith in the new film “Downton Abbey.” 

central plotline also leaves room for 

“Downton Abbey” to incorporate the 

scandals and unseemly themes that 

appeared throughout the series. 

Most prominently, butler Thomas 

Barrow’s homosexuality is the subject 

of a side story that involves the 

discovery of a gay bar, a run-in with the 

police, and a romance that is made out 

to be no different from the endearing, 

male-female love interests that develop 

among other characters. 

However historically accurate the 

forced secrecy and police actions 

might be, the story’s portrayal pushes 

the narrative that the homosexual 

lifestyle is normal, even admirable, 

and makes Barrow and his companions 

out to be victims in a cruel society that 

simply cannot understand their ways. 

If it weren’t for distasteful, agenda-driven 

elements like this one, 

“Downton Abbey” might have been 

worth a family trip to the movie 

theater. But those who wish for a more 

filtered version might be better off 

waiting until the streaming option is 

available and the fast-forward button is 

at hand. 

And that’s a real shame, since it 

means missing out on enjoying the 

vast expanses of the British countryside 

and exquisite detail of the Downton 

ballroom on the big screen. 

In the end, one thing is clear: “Downton 

Abbey” was tremendously successful 

as a series, and it has enough 

brilliant cinematography, characters, 

and dialogue to make it (give or take a 

few scenes) a pleasant movie, if not a 

profound one. 

Sophia Buono is a writer living in 

Arlington, Virginia. 

September 27, 2019 • ANGELUS • 27 

September 27, 2019 • ANGELUS • 27

THE CRUX 

BY HEATHER KING 

A boxed 

miracle 

from India 

IMAGE VIA FACEBOOK @PACIFICASIAMUSEUM 

Old photos and 

new art have a 

‘visual conversation’ 

at a cross-cultural 

exhibit in Pasadena 

BISWARUP GANGULY/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS 

Toward the end of World War II, 

an unknown U.S. serviceman, 

stationed in India, took over a 

hundred black-and-white photographs 

of the people and life in rural West 

Bengal. 

Decades later, Chicago-based artists 

Alan Teller and Jerri Zbiral bought 

an estate-sale shoebox of photos and 

negatives, a treasure trove that would 

forever link their destinies to that unknown 

soldier’s. 

Through Jan. 26, 2020, an exhibit 

called “Following the Box” at the Pacific 

Asia Museum in Pasadena, features 

12 contemporary artists, two American 

and 10 Indian, who have been inspired 

by the photographs to create works of 

their own. 

Each artist was given digital and/or 

print copies of the photographs and 

asked to incorporate, deconstruct, or 

in some way imaginatively spin off of 

them. 

Disciplines include painting, photography, 

film, mixed-media, installation, 

graphic arts, 

graphic novels, book art, 

and folk art. 

Curators Teller and Zbiral 

served as “participant conduits” 

with their efforts included alongside 

those of their Indian colleagues. 

“ ‘Following the Box,’ ” they maintain, 

“is a visual conversation between 

Americans and Indians across space, 

time, and culture, a mystery tale of old 

photographs and a celebration of new 

artistic interpretations.” 

It is also, mainly, haunting. Who was 

the serviceman photographer? We 

don’t know. Was he commissioned to 

take the photos or simply moved by 

curiosity and interest? We don’t know. 

We know that he used a Speed 

Graphic 4x5 press 

camera. Thanks to years 

of curatorial research, we 

know that he was stationed at a 

then secret military site called the 

Salua Air Field. 

A couple of cavils: 

The background noise of two (at least) 

continuously looping videos make 

concentration difficult. Many of the 

works include small-scale images and 

text that require up-close peering, and 

all deserve single-minded focus. 

And if you haven’t first acquainted 

yourself with the exhibit through its 

website (http://www.followingthebox. 

com), you will enter the main hall 

and have very little idea of what you’re 

looking at or hearing. 

The “Following the Box” multimedia art exhibition at the Birla Academy of Art and Culture in Kolkata, India. 


OK @PACIFICASIAMUSEUM 

India. 

Not until two galleries to your left will 

you get your bearings, in the form of 

30 of the original 4×5 photographs, a 

selection from the 127 vintage images 

in the collection. 

Clearly, the U.S. serviceman was captured 

by the people with whom he was 

surrounded. The photos are respectfully 

and carefully composed, with a 

striking lack of “colonial gaze.” The 

subjects — a plow, a woman selling 

pottery, a man tending a forge, a group 

of children playing — are so elemental 

as to seem timeless. 

From there, the contemporary 

artists collectively create an intriguing 

cross-cultural palimpsest. 

Swarna Chitrakar’s two hand-painted 

scrolls and sung poem depict her 

amazement and delight at the discovery 

of the photos. 

Prabir Purkayastha comes from a 

family of farmers, dancers, and storytellers. 

His series of six triptych panels 

form the photo-essay narrative of a 

fictionalized U.S. soldier named John 

Miller, who the artist imagines as the 

unknown photographer. 

Teller’s “The Ruined Temple” is 

based on a poem by legendary Bengal 

poet Rabindrath Tagore. 

Amritah Sen’s accordion format photo 

album juxtaposes the Bengali villagers 

featured by the American serviceman 

with photos of her own parents’ middle-class 

life in India in the early 1940s. 

Mamata Basak repurposes the 

pictures by placing them in a framework 

of miniature Mughal miniature 

paintings. 

Sanjeet Chowdhury’s “Series B-29” 

consists of six digital prints on archival 

paper of dreamlike photos superimposing 

a toy model airplane, clouds, and a 

giant camera. An accompanying short 

video takes the form of imagined letters 

read by the unknown photographer 

(who in Chowdhury’s imagination is 

Jewish) to his girlfriend back in the 

United States. 

Bits and pieces of history, much of it 

horrifying, seep quietly through. Chhatrapati 

Dutta’s combination of text, 

posters, comics, and photos memorialize 

the Famine of 1943, in which up to 

3 million Indians died, largely because 

England, under Winston Churchill, 

had bought up all their rice for the war 

effort and hoarded it. 

We learn of the devastating 1942 

Japanese bombing of Kolkata, of the 

often violent independence movement 

of which Bengal was the center, and of 

the death of Indian Nationalist Subhas 

Chandra Bose, who famously said, 

“Freedom is not given, it is taken.” 

It’s a display that makes us feel our 

cultural ignorance, the unimaginable 

harm we can unthinkingly do one 

another, the seeming powerlessness of 

the individual. 

And yet it is always within our power 

to “bother to love.” If I came away from 

“Following the Box” with one thing, 

it’s that the real history of mankind 

is written not in books, but in the 

anonymous, generally invisible human 

encounter. 

That unknown serviceman saw the 

humanity of the other. He captured 

the value, the dignity, the beauty of the 

lives that, for whatever reason, he felt 

moved out to meet. 

Even had the photographs remained 

undiscovered, moldering away in a 

shoebox in Chicago, his efforts would 

have remained a light shining in the 

darkness, a silent cry against famine, 

war, blindness, greed, fear. 

That they were discovered constitutes 

its own kind of miracle. Kudos to Teller 

and Zbiral for recognizing the photos’ 

value, opening a dialogue, and so creatively 

and imaginatively sharing them. 

The approximately 3,000-square-foot 

exhibit has been shown in Kolkata, 

Delhi, and the Loyola University Museum 

of Art in Chicago. Workshops, 

lectures, screenings, and conversations 

will take place throughout its duration 

at the Pacific Asia Museum. 

Heather King is a blogger, speaker and the author of several books. 

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ANGELUS 


FR. SERAPHIM MICHALENKO, MIC 

Fr. Seraphim has been a priest for 

63 years and has spent most of his 

life spreading the message of 

Jesus, The Divine Mercy. He served 

for 20 years as Vice-Postulator in 

North America for the canonization 

cause of St. Maria Faustina, to whom 

Jesus entrusted the message of The 

Divine Mercy in the 1930’s. 

FR. JOSEPH AYTONA, CPM 

Fr. Joseph is the founder of the 

Spiritual Motherhood Sodality as 

well as the founder of Family 

Vocation Ministries, an apostolate 

that promotes vocations through 

the sanctification of families. 

FR. PARKER SANDOVAL 

Following his formation at St. 

John’s Seminary in Camarillo, he 

was ordained a priest for the 

Archdiocese of Los Angeles 

in 2015 and coordinator of Adult 

Faith Formation in the Office of 

Religious Education. 

FR. ED BROOM, OMV 

He is a member of the Oblates of 

the Virgin Mary and was ordained 

by Saint John Paul II on May 25, 

1986. Fr Ed teaches Catholic 

Ignatian Marian Spirituality 

through articles, podcasts, a radio 

show, retreats and spiritual direction. 

PURISIMA NARVAEZ 818.543.1831 

MARY WHITTLE 818.395.0143 

Please cut and mail bottom portion only. 

ESTRELLE MIJARES 562.972.5675 

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Angelus News | September 27, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 32

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